3. The Return to the Archive and Memory of the Holocaust in Respite (Harun Farocki, 2007)

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.