O Khmer Vermelho e o cinema de Rithy Panh: uma análise das relações entre cinema, memória e identidade social

Abstract

Cinema not only portrays reality, but intrinsically carries an ideological bias: what is real is constructed by a subjective vision of its filmmakers. Based on the assumptions made by Kracauer (1966), Furhammar and Isaksson (1976) and Ferro (1975), this work seeks to identify the intersections between cinema, history, politics and memory in the works of Rithy Panh, a filmmaker who plays an essential role in the reconstruction of the Cambodian people‘s memory after the communist revolution in 1975. The studies of Halbwachs (2004), Pollak (1992, 2006, 2010) and Nora (1993) give directions to understand the questions about memory within the works of Panh, as the processes of forgetting and silencing, and the ways of framing memory and the rise of subterranean memories. Through the analysis of the film "The Missing Picture" (Panh, 2013), it is possible to understand the mechanisms of aesthetic and narrative construction in favor of the political and memorial bias of his work, such as the use of clay figures, imagery metaphors, the sound and the archives that work with a logic of resignification and the poetic way of bringing dignity to neglected memories.