Call for papers: Zanzalá – Revista Brasileira de Estudos sobre Gêneros Cinematográficos e Audiovisuais

Topic: Remembering and Forgetting: Plural Stories and Contemporary Documentary

Publishers

Michelle Sales (UFRJ / Unicamp)

Ana Cristina Pereira (CECS – University of Minho)

Isabel Macedo (CECS – University of Minho)

Sheila Khan (ECSH – University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro)

Memories are “small islands in a sea of oblivion.” (Erll, 2011, p. 7)

In processing our reality experience, forgetting is the rule and remembering is the exception. Contemporary cinema has had a close relationship with history, inviting the public to remember past events and to question the processes by which we represent ourselves and the world. The filmmaker has the possibility to translate unrecorded and undocumented experiences into images and trigger memories, associations and emotions necessary for the rewriting of history. The documentary, in particular, can invite the audience to participate in the construction of collective historical remembrance, instigating them to think about their place in the meanings of films and about their responsibility towards the past and the interpretations we make of it. Many films have challenged the meanings that history has produced, deconstructing them and making room for diverse stories. Films highlighting the fragility of identity constructions explore the gaps and silences of memory, raising fundamental questions about how different generations understand traumatic historical events and their relationships with them. We want to analyse this process, seeking to understand and discuss what documentaries about history and the current moment have been produced and viewed, what we remember, what we forget and what questions these images raise. The poetics of this forgetting and remembering necessarily passes through a vision that does not shrink from the colonial legacies stagnated by prejudices and stereotypes and that understands well that the present will have to be conscious, bearer of a historical clairvoyance that allows it to expand new avenues of thought and challenging dialogues.

Further details: Lembrar e esquecer: estórias plurais e o documentário contemporâneo