Thinking about restitution as the great debate in museums in the 21st century (Schorch and McCarthy 2019), this paper aims to contribute to discussions regarding the repatriation of films. We aim to supplement absences in the literature that privilege objects and, when dealing with images, focus only on photographs (Poignant 1992; Edwards 2001; Lydon 2010), addressing little about the particularities of the audiovisual. This research is located at the same time in the field of art and anthropology, taking the photographs and films produced by Vladimir Kozák between 1960 and 1970, based on a friendship of more than 20 years with the Xetás, as a case study. Based on a dialogue with researcher Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998, 2004), we propose the concept of third life of heritage to think about restitution as a contribution to heritage studies. We want to demonstrate with the case study of the Xetá indigenous people that the return of museum items, far from being a policy that causes museums to lose their heritage, is in fact a possibility of proliferating the production of new objects and collections for museums.
