Photographic and cinematic appropriation of atrocity images from Cambodia: auto-genocide in Western museum culture and The Missing Picture

As a harrowing sub-discipline of English and Comparative Literature, Trauma Studies is in need of geographical expansion beyond its moorings in European genocides of the 20th century. In this article, the authors chart the institutional and cinematic appropriation of atrocity images in relation to the Khmer Rouge’s auto-genocide from 1975–1979 in Cambodia. They analyse the cultural and scholarly value of these images in conjunction with genocide studies to reveal principles often overlooked, taken for granted, or pushed to the periphery in photography studies and film studies. Through grim appropriations of archival or news footage to more experimental approaches in documentary, such as the use of dioramas, the authors examine the commercial and artistic articulations of trauma, reconciliation and testimony in two case studies: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition Photographs from S-21: 1975–1979 (1997) and Pithy Panh’s documentary The Missing Picture (2013). The authors first focus on the relatively obscure scholarship devoted to contextualizing images from international genocides outside the Euro-American canon for genocide study in order to build their critical formulations; they go on to explore whether these atrocity-themed still and moving images are capable of defying aspects of commodification and sensationalism to instead convey positive notions of commemoration and memory. Finally, their contribution to this debate regarding the merit of appropriating atrocity imagery is viewed from two perspectives: ‘commodified witnessing’ (a negative descriptor for the MoMA exhibition) and ‘commemorative witnessing’ (a positive term for the Cambodian film).

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Painful Neutrality: Screening the Extradition of the Balts from Sweden

Baltic Screen Media Review ◽

10.2478/bsmr-2018-0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 72-92

Author(s):

Lars Kristensen ◽

Christo Burman

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Film Studies ◽

Traumatic Event ◽

Historical Event ◽

Trauma Studies ◽

The Novel ◽

World War ◽

Moving Images ◽

The Holocaust ◽

The Baltic

Abstract The article deals with the extradition of Baltic soldiers from Sweden in 1946 as represented in Per Olov Enquist’s novel The Legionnaires: A Documentary Novel (Legionärerna. En roman om baltutlämningen, 1968) and Johan Bergenstråhle’s film A Baltic Tragedy (Baltutlämningen. En film om ett politiskt beslut Sverige 1945, Sweden, 1970). The theoretical framework is taken from trauma studies and its equivalent within film studies, where trauma is seen as a repeated occurrence of a past event. In this regard, literature and moving images become the means of reaching the traumatic event, a way to relive it. What separates the extradition of the Baltic soldiers from other traumas, such as the Holocaust, is that it functions as a guilt complex related to the failure to prevent the tragedy, which is connected to Sweden’s position of neutrality during World War II and the appeasement of all the warring nations. It is argued that this is a collective trauma created by Enquist’s novel, which blew it into national proportions. However, Bergenstråhle’s film changes the focus of the trauma by downplaying the bad conscience of the Swedes. In this way, the film aims to create new witnesses to the extradition affair. The analysis looks at the reception of both the novel and film in order to explain the two different approaches to the historical event, as well as the two different time periods in which they were produced. The authors argue that the two years that separate the appearance of the novel and the film explain the swing undergone by the political mood of the late 1960s towards a deflated revolution of the early 1970s, when the film arrived on screens nationwide. However, in terms of creating witnesses to the traumatic event, the book and film manage to stir public opinion to the extent that the trauma changes from being slowly effacing to being collectively ‘experienced’ through remembrance. The paradox is that, while the novel still functions as a vivid reminder of the painful aftermath caused by Swedish neutrality during World War II, the film is almost completely forgotten today. The film’s mode of attacking the viewers with an I-witness account, the juxtaposition and misconduct led to a rejection of the narrative by Swedish audiences.

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The Films of Bill Morrison

10.5117/9789089649966 ◽

2017 ◽

Keyword(s):

Film Studies ◽

Contemporary Music ◽

Modern Art ◽

Museum Of Modern Art ◽

Library Of Congress ◽

Avant Garde ◽

Creative Play ◽

The Subject ◽

To Receive

Avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison has been making films that combine archival footage and contemporary music for decades, and he has recently begun to receive substantial recognition: he was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and his 2002 film Decasia was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. This is the first book-length study of Morrison's work, covering the whole of his career. It gathers specialists throughout film studies to explore Morrison's "aesthetics of the archive"-his creative play with archival footage and his focus on the materiality of the medium of film.

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The Cinema Intelligence Apparatus

Cinema's Military Industrial Complex ◽

10.1525/california/9780520291508.003.0008 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nathaniel Brennan

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Film Studies ◽

Modern Art ◽

Museum Of Modern Art ◽

Film Library ◽

Gregory Bateson ◽

Central Case ◽

Test Film ◽

The Cold War

This chapter, by Nathaniel Brennan, discusses the efforts of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library to make use of captured enemy motion pictures on behalf of the federal government’s wartime intelligence programs during World War II. While the chapter presents an overview of the film library’s governmental intelligence work, ranging from matters of storage to the challenges of training analysts, the central case study examines the work of British anthropologist Gregory Bateson, whose work at the film library consisted of trying to define an objective approach to the study of culture through cinema and the preparation of a test film that would instruct American soldiers about the peculiarities of the German character. Although Bateson’s plans did not materialize, the efforts of Margaret Mead to adapt Bateson’s anthropological film methodology for the Cold War nonetheless influenced the development of postwar film studies and the analysis of national cinemas.

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Museum of Modern Art

Film Quarterly ◽

10.1525/fq.1962.16.2.04a00090 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 35-37

Author(s):

Eileen Bowser

Keyword(s):

Modern Art ◽

Museum Of Modern Art

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Ontological Laboratory in the Making: “After Year Zero” and the Resetting of Historical Imagination

Widok. Teorie i Praktyki Kultury Wizualnej - Siła kobiet ◽

10.36854/widok/2015.9.1179 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Anselm Franke ◽

Annett Busch ◽

Katarzyna Bojarska

Keyword(s):

Modern Art ◽

Museum Of Modern Art ◽

Historical Imagination

A conversation between Annett Busch, Anselm Franke, and Katarzyna Bojarska about the exhibition "After Year Zero. Universal Imaginaries - Geographies of Collaboration", shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw between June and August 2015.

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