During the Winter Semester of the Academic Year 2022/2023 the Center of Excellence in Image Studies of the University of Bucharest held a series of seminars on the topic “Film and Archives: Theory, History, Montage”.
During these seminars the lecturers and the students discussed the role of archives in films that offer a critical assessment of traumatic events in recent history. These interactive seminars analysed the way in which Romanian film-makers have tackled the complexity of archives both theoretically and practically. Archives are also discursive formations, traversed by political, social and technological forces, for which the representation of history becomes a difficult task, that cannot be achieved without interrogating the medium specific possibilities of each medium of storage and expression and without a discussion about the possibility of the medium of cinema to transform archival footage through formal experimentation. As it comes to Romania, in the early nineties and early 2000s archives were considered both a way to preserve and access recent history, as well as a subject for fiery debates regarding their public status and access to materials documenting traumatic events in recent Romanian history. The Holocaust in Romania, the crimes of the totalitarian communist regime, crimes against ethnic minorities such as Jewish, Roma people, and other ethnic minorities, as well as political repression, religious and gender discrimination policies were addressed in the discussion regarding archives. Historically, archives were institutions subjected to the effects of political power, entities generated by dominant ideologies in totalitarian regimes under the systems that controlled representations of recent history. A critical approach to archival footage and materials which document traumatic events in recent Romanian history can be found in recent found footage cinema in films that either use archives through montage practices or as a starting point for telling stories that offer a critical view of history
The first seminar was held on the 14th of December 2022 by the Cezar Gheorghe, Lecturer of Film Studies at the Center of Excellence in Image Studies of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest. During this seminar, the lecturer analysed the role played by archives in Romanian found footage cinema after 1990, highlighting the special status of indexic audiovisual documents such as photographs, films, videos, audio recordings, materials which were often politically charged.
The second seminar was held on the 9th of January 2023 with a meeting with Romanian director Radu Jude, whose films are essential for the formally provocative way of using archival footage and materials to discuss traumatic events in recent history.
The third seminar was held on the 26th of January, featuring film editor, sound designer and film director Dana Bunescu, who discussed her contribution to found footage films and her extended work in over 40 film projects.
Learn more on these Seminars on
Center of Excellence in Image Studies
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