Family films, amateur cinema and memory of the world

Abstract

The resumption of amateur images and home movies in
documentaries has intensified over the past two decades. This
article discusses the notions of amateur and family movies proposed
by the theorist Roger Odin and the gesture of appropriation and
displacement of these images, as well their recontextualization, in
contemporary cinema. We focus our analysis on the work of the
Hungarian artist Péter Forgács, who since 1980 makes installations
and documentary films with amateur images, largely produced by
Jews cameramen from Central. Forgács creates complex plots in
his films, where the characters’ life, the directions taken by them
and the fate of the world entwine.