Yael Mazor

From the movie: Respite, 2007

Abstract

This article offers a new reading of Harun Farocki’s essay film Respite (2007). In considering the film’s unique use of archival materials from the transit camp of Westerbork, it associates the film with a new need to go back to the archive, and rethink its documents, in the post-testimonies era—when the last survivors disappear from the public discourse. Farocki’s film, I argue, demonstrate the potential role of films in future historical inquiries, through its ability to interweave sources that were produced at a particular moment and carefully detach them from their place in Western iconography. In re-appropriating these materials, namely in re-editing and presenting them in a different order and context, the filmmaker also performs and act of re-archiving that reveals the potential of the archive to undo historical narratives. This process places familiar images alongside lesser-known ones in new ‘constellations’ that connect various temporal, visual and conceptual layers into a new perception of the past.

Shai Biderman

From the movie: The walk, 2015

Abstract

This article argues that cinematic recreations of historical events in recent years involve three major changes in the ways realism is produced and perceived. The first is related to the extensive use of new technologies (primarily that of CGI) in the formation of the “historical” image. A second shift stems from the reciprocal transition of truth and fiction, as manifested through the hybrid genres of docudrama and true crime. A third shift involves newly developed cinematic strategies and rhetorical tools during the past decades. These changes, when crafted together, evolved into a new cinematic perception of history. This new, understudied, approach to historical authenticity in film is crucial for contemporary memory culture. The article considers the threefold shift in cinematic representations of history through a close reading of Robert Zemeckis’ historical films. In these films—from the Back to the Future trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990) to Forest Gump (1994) and The Walk (2015)—Zemeckis employs all three components of the new historical image, thus serving as a polygenic case study for the aforementioned analysis.

Erga Heller

From the TV series: Doctor Who

Abstract

This paper studies the representation of a ‘Historical Event’ – e.g. July 20^th, 1969 Apollo 11’s lunar walk – within the plot of the BBC’s Doctor Who episode of “Day of the Moon” (30/4/2011). Doctor Who is a Science Fiction television series, in which time travels to past historical events are common. This episode is exceptional, however, by its use of authentic documentation of the historical event.

Apollo 11’s televised lunar walk is regarded as one of the most watched live events in history. Dr. Who accurately restage the broadcast in order to reflect on history and authenticity. The use of original footage underscores a key theme in the show, the potential paradox of time travel, which is crystalized in the episode’s paradoxical climax: changing the present moment (defeating the hostile aliens) causes a different past (in which the aliens are the only reason to the Space Race), that must be resulted at the same fictional/Historical moment (as the American Moon Landing). The article analyzes the episode’s plot—simultaneously a newly-created Human history and a re-telling of old Historical moment—through the use of Derrida’s conceptualization of ‘Archival Knowledge.’

Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan 

From the movie: The Last of the Unjust, 2013

Abstract

The article examines Claude Lanzmann’s understanding of Nazi racial policy in Theresienstadt, and the ambivalent role played by Rabbi Dr. Benjamin Murmelstein, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Vienna. Lanzmann substantiates his position on the Judenrat of the Ghetto through a reconsideration of a 1975 interview with the head of the Jewish Council in Theresienstadt, Dr. Murmelstein. The original interview was filmed during the work on Lanzmann's film Shoah. Three decades later, Lanzmann revisited and reedited the interview to establish his perception of politics and responsibility in the Ghetto. The article analyzes the outcome of this project, The Last of the Unjust (France/Austria, 2013), to decipher Lanzmann’s position and its changes in the past decades.