Watching Memory: The Cinematic Construction of COllective Memories

The relationship between cinema and memory has long been—and remains—a central topic in humanities and social sciences research (Kuhn, 2023; Radstone & Schwartz, 2023). This includes studies in art, language, aesthetics, semiotics, history, anthropology, media studies, and sociology. Interest in the audiovisual medium, particularly cinema, as a means of representing, shaping, and (re)creating individual and collective memory has never diminished. Fait culturel itself (Gauthier, 2007), the medium of cinema serves as a “privileged” site of memory. It’s because of its technical ability to produce a diachronic view of a temporal sequence, of an event - as in the cognitive case of visual memory (Dinoi, 2008). Thus, among all memory spaces, cinema aspires to be the metronome, translator, and interpreter of new social rhythms, while also acting as a living archive of existing social memories (Deng, 2015). Through the camera, directors capture the present and reflect on the past opening to the future, allowing cinema to enhance our understanding of history and to reshape our notion of memory itself.