Memory and the Moving Image

Abstract

A vital rethinking of memory and the moving image for the digital age, this book investigates the role of the moving image in cultural memory, considering the impact of digital technologies on visual culture. Drawing on an interdisciplinary range of theoretical resources and an unusual body of films and moving image works, the book examines the ways in which recent French filmmaking conceptualises both the past and the workings of memory. Ultimately the book argues, memory is an intersubjective process, in which filmic forms continue to play a crucial role even as new media come to dominate our contemporary experience. The book introduces new ways of thinking about the relation between film and memory, arising from an interdisciplinary study of theories and films; explores the French context while drawing theoretical conclusions with wider implications and applicability; provides detailed close readings of varied moving image works to aid theoretical explorations; moves away from auteurist approaches, examining work by canonical directors including Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Agnès Varda alongside that of less well-known filmmakers such as Claire Simon and Yamina Benguigui; and brings together thinkers such as Bergson, Deleuze, Bazin and Barthes with, for example, Rodowick and Mulvey, in an interweaving of theories. Works considered include Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1989–98), Yamina Benguigui's Mémoires d'Immigrés (1997), Chris Marker's CD-ROM Immemory (1998), Claire Simon's Mimi (2003), Michael Haneke's Caché (2005) and Agnès Varda's multi-media exhibition, L'Île et Elle (2006).

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