The performance and politics of memory-work in contemporary documentary film: transforming violent pasts

Housby, Kelly Elizabeth

Abstract

This thesis investigates the dynamics of ‘memory-work’ in contemporary documentary films that deal with painful pasts involving violence. The analysis will focus on four recently produced documentary films. Memory-work in this thesis is understood as ‘an active practice of remembering that takes an inquiring attitude towards the past and the activity of its (re)construction through memory,’1 and as ‘a conscious and purposeful staging of memory.’2 The thesis uses the concept of “staging” memory analytically to investigate the process of memory as an active and creative practice of making meaning and to investigate the literal staging and the performances in each documentary film. This thesis makes an argument for the productive and transformative potential of such memory-work through the close analysis of four recent documentary films dealing with violent pasts: Tower (2016, directed by Keith Maitland), Gun No. 6 (2018, directed by James Newton), Casting JonBenét (2016, directed by Kitty Green), and Z32 (2008, directed by Avi Mograbi). The analysis considers three levels of memory-work: firstly, how each film facilitates memory-work by the film’s participants; secondly, the filmmaking strategies used to represent memory-work on screen, with particular reference to the layering of visual codes that foreground the act of remembering and the construction of narratives about the past to create filmic memories; and thirdly, to consider the memory-work for the audience, that is, the enabling or constraining pathways that the films employ to invite particular affective responses from their primary audiences. The films have been chosen purposively because they demonstrate the imaginative and interpretive possibilities between the film’s on-screen participants, the filmmakers, and the film’s audiences. The thesis reveals creative pathways for documentary memory-work whereby new understandings of violent pasts and new more liberatory and connective/ multidirectional identities are facilitated. It examines how memory-work challenges and complicates the seemingly clear-cut subject positions of victim, perpetrator, and bystander, and examines the audience’s perspective. The thesis demonstrates how documentary films can engage in such transformative memory-work as a basis for construing varied notions of how violence and justice can be shared as meaningful stories.

Footnotes: 1 Kuhn, A. 2010. Memory Texts and Memory-Work: performances of memory in and with visual media. Memory Studies, XX(X). Sage Publications. p.6. 2 Ibid. p.6.

Citation

Housby, K. E. (2024). The performance and politics of memory-work in contemporary documentary film: transforming violent pasts. (Thesis). Keele University. Retrieved from https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/674606

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Dec 21, 2023
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/674606
• Additional Information: Embargo on access until 11 December 2028 - The thesis is due for publication, or the author is actively seeking to publish this material.; ; Post embargo (11 December 2028) digital copy of full text version available upon request from the Archives https://forms.office.com/e/sRWE7eQWgU - third party copyright content preventing thesis being published online.
• Award Date: 2024-03