Abstract

WOOD, David M.J.. Vestiges of History: the Family Archive in Contemporary Documentary and Experimental Film. An. Inst. Investig. Estét [online]. 2014, vol.36, n.104, pp.97-125. ISSN 0185-1276.

In recent years both film archives and documentary and experimental filmmakers have shown a growing interest in preserving, collecting and re-using home and amateur analogue film in search of new ways of narrating and thinking about the past. This forms part of a broader tendency to interrogate history from the subjective and the corporeal. In Mexico, filmmakers such as Natalia Almada, Gregorio Rocha and Bruno Varela, along with the Archivo Memoria project at the Cineteca Nacional, propose various ways of working with such filmic registers, discussing their status as a historial record of a tangible past, as a seductive object, as fragmented, prosthetic or mechanical memory, and as a ritual artefact. These different uses of non-professional footage propose various ways of intervening in the contemporary public sphere.

Keywords : Mexican cinema; documentary film; experimental film; home movies; film archives.

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