Family films, amateur cinema and memory of the world

• Main Authors: Consuelo Lins, Thais Blank
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade de São Paulo 2012-06-01
• Series: Significação: Revista de Cultura Audiovisual
• Subjects: Filme de família, apropriação, documentário.
• Online Access: http://www.revistas.usp.br/significacao/article/view/71254

<p>The resumption of amateur images and home movies in <br />documentaries has intensified over the past two decades. This <br />article discusses the notions of amateur and family movies proposed <br />by the theorist Roger Odin and the gesture of appropriation and <br />displacement of these images, as well their recontextualization, in <br />contemporary cinema. We focus our analysis on the work of the <br />Hungarian artist Péter Forgács, who since 1980 makes installations <br />and documentary films with amateur images, largely produced by <br />Jews cameramen from Central. Forgács creates complex plots in <br />his films, where the characters’ life, the directions taken by them <br />and the fate of the world entwine.<br /><br /></p>