2014 Another Memory of the World Another Memory of the World
Restitution of the conclusions of the workshop “Another Memory of the World”, held in advance of the États généraux du film documentaire on August 16 and 17 at Saint-Laurent-sous-Coiron.
Monday 18 à 2:00 pm, Cinema 2
The filmed interview is one if the identity markers of documentary film, one of the distinctive signs separating it from fiction but also, by its nature and form, from the journalistic interview. A noble genre within cinema and creative audiovisual, we have welcomed it with enthusiasm at the États généraux for many years. Fengming, a Chinese Memoir by Wang Bing, Bernadette by William Karel, or yet again Gilles Deleuze from A to Z by Pierre-André Boutang are among recent examples which celebrate this approach to filmmaking, for the acuity with which it is able to represent thought and as a certain eulogy to otherness.
Today it seems interesting to put the spotlight on the various projects aimed at restituting popular memory on a large scale, which have multiplied these last years, and to try to understand their meanings.
Over two days, attending historians, directors, academics and critics worked, reflected and discussed around three large documentary epics being developed: Il Pane di San Guiseppe, Mémoires, Commune and Tombouctou, ville meurtrie. These large scale works are motivated by the desire to create a memory and are the symptoms of an emerging practice whose meanings we have to understand and whose limits we need to question: what shooting protocols are established during these interviews? What is the contribution of number in terms of representation? What connection with the representation of History? And considering the “public utility” dimension of this type of projects, can we imagine them being recognized by the Unesco and spreading accordingly? What then about their installation or screening?
This public restitution will draw up a critical synthesis of these two days of shared reflection and will attempt to establish a conceptual framework for the growing future of these practices.
In the presence of Robert Bonamy, Bertrand Cabedoche and Annette Wieviorka.