Cinema, história, memória e verdade: found footage e apropriação em Wajda

Abstract

This article discusses the appropriation of film and video footage archives for representational proposals with a historical background in cinema, through some works by filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (War Trilogy, Marble Man and Katyn). Although researchers in the area, throughout the twentieth century, have always questioned the relationship between historical studies and images, the use of photographycinema and video, in general, has been increasingly incorporated and expanded into the historical field. Wajda was a filmmaker who, due to his nationalist bias, had a marked approximation with historical genre, since his debut when adopted images from film files (footage), mixed with a fictional character. However, the forms of appropriation of the footage, by Wajda, were not limited, as was common in the 1930s, to a purely documentary or illustrative character, but became, like in other artists, a creative and critical resource. Thus, in the works examined here - War Trilogy (Generation, Channel and Ashes and Diamonds), Marble Man and with an emphasis on Katyn - it is possible to attest how the use of footage not only provides other meanings to official history, but engenders a meta-history, both of official history, as well as of the canonical ways of seeking memory and history. Taking the concept of “file effect” elaborated by Jamie Baron (2012), this analysis also seeks to highlight the determining role of reception in establishing the meanings of document and “elements considered “fictional” in the use of image files.