Memory, Forgetting and the Moving Image

Abstract

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Forgotten Images and the Geopolitics of Memory: The Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–6)

“…14 argue for the ways in which the traces of memories which have been silenced or remain unremembered are not completely erased but continue to endure in memory interacting with its processes. 15 In the case of the Italo-Ethiopian war such environments of remembering pertain to the ideological legacy of fascism and the transcultural recollection of European imperialism in Africa and to a broader discussion of the politics of memory in the present.…”

Encountering sound: the musical dimensions of silent cinema

“…Günter Berghaus identifies 1909-28 and1965-85 as the two main "periods of great artistic explosion" (2005,85) but typifies the perspective of recent media historians by discussing only theatrical experimentation during the era of silent cinema. Even studies that explore liveness from ancient theatre onwards segue rapidly to twentieth century media (Dixon 2007;Sexton 2007;Rees et al 2011;Albano 2016). Lev Manovich does discuss early cinema as a precedent for multimedia art, interpreting "microcinema" as a "return of the repressed" from film history (2001,208); yet his exploration of "interactivity" bypasses human "performance" and shows little interest in the variety of silent exhibition.…”

Haunted Television: Trauma and the Specter in the Archive

“…Here, and elsewhere in the documentary, clips from the original documentary and its rushes are haunted by Savile and the knowledge of his crimes; to draw on Caterina Albano's phrase, describing Eva Braun's home movies of Hitler, they offer the "thorny banality" of a once "innocuous" image now haunted by, in this case, the potential for abuse. 56 Whilst this documentary forms its narrative around a series of investigations of 'haunted houses' (old footage from Savile's flat, new footage from his secretaries' and victims homes) -and it never investigates the children's homes, hospitals and television studios which might expose further culpability for Savile's crimes and move this documentary away from being a story about a lone spectre -we see Savile's spectre 'hang over' a number of domestic spaces (perhaps a metonymic image of the haunting he enacts via television) 57 . This is particularly well-illustrated in the final sequence of the documentary, where we are shown an extended, static exterior shot of the house of Samantha Brown, one of the women who was abused by Savile in her teens.…”