Paper short abstract:

Drawing on two recent films from the ethnographic film production of the Mediterranean Voices project, I discuss two different perspectives on filming memory and memory reconstruction, and the filmmaker’s possibilities regarding the representation of the informants’/subjects’ memories.

Paper long abstract:

[Reflections on two perspectives on filming memory: Two examples

from the recent ethnographic film production of Mediterranean Voices ]

This presentation is concerned with matters that emerge on the attempt to film memory. Through the oral history research procedure, memories and signs of nostalgia usually emerge during the interviews. The researcher or filmmaker that is concerned with the making of a film out of such researches usually confronts the problem of how to represent the subjects' memories. Within this confrontation, one might commit what MacDougall (1994:267) calls the "crime" of representation, naming the personal attempt for translation of memories in images. Such a translation and visual representation contains the danger to impose the filmmakers' vision over the audience. But on the other side, a raw realism, which would, for instance, permit only clips of interviews on a film, runs the danger of losing any necessity for visualization, for such material could perhaps have the same value in textual forms. The wide spectrum that is described by these two extremes is by no means only a space of latent ethnographic dangers or potential "crimes": This is also a space of countless potentials for representation, a space with opportunities for the camera to become active, to see, to feel and to bring to the screen something from the people that the ethnographer and his camera has interviewed/ interacted with.

Under this light, and within the context of Visual Anthropology, I will discuss about two recent films from the ethnographic film production of the project of Mediterranean Voices. The first film, "Fragments from the Past" (2005), presents in a realistic approach, people from London's Turkish speaking communities, talk about their memories of arriving in London and the role of cinema in adjusting to their new life there. Differentiated from this approach is the second film, "Ilhna Beltin" ('Voices of Valletta', 2005 -an approach to the 'hidden', and the less popularised aspects of life in Valletta today, and within living memory), in the sense that the filmmakers attempt some fictional experiments of reconstructing scenes of memory described by the interviewees or visualizing a sense of nostalgia that emerge from the interviews. The possibilities for representation that emerge from these two different approaches of filming memory will be discussed through reflections on these two films, within the context of memory reconstruction.

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I'm referring to two documentary films produced for the Mediterranean Voices Project (www.med-voices.org). This Project is funded by the Euromed Heritage II programme.

MacDougall D 1994, Films of Memory, in Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R. 1990-1994, ed. Taylor L; Routledge, USA

Made by Hakan Demiralay and Vedide Kaymak, for the London team of Mediterranean Voices.

Produced by Mark Casha & Rachel Radmilli (University of Malta) and Directed by Edward Said (Ballottra Films).