Filmes de arquivo: possibilidades para a construção de uma memória sobre as cidades

Abstract

This work investigates the reuse of archival images in audiovisual productions that embrace the memory of cities and their inhabitants. For this purpose, it’s assumed to exist a constant process of crossover of information as a way of recontextualization and sense assimilation of the gaps from the archive and the memory itself. The thought that these pre-existing images help build the history of a past in the present reinforces the importance of preservation and access to those old materials. However, we know that, often, the obsolescence of the support constitutes an obstacle to the conservation of audiovisual collections – especially those belonging to the private sphere, the unknown anonymous – and therefore, we comprehend the work of reusing these materials in new films as a possibility of safeguard. In the face of those questions, we divided this research into six chapters. The first one addresses the arguments about what it is an archival film and presents a brief history concerning its production over the decades. The second chapter covers the relationship between the themes city, individual and collective memory, archive and montage. The third one contains a little bit of the life story of the documentary filmmaker Marcos Pimentel and the characteristics of his oldest and current productions. In chapter four, we discuss issues related to the preservation, access and resumption of archives. In chapter five, we tell the history of some audiovisual formats. And in the last section, an analysis of the documentary Cemitério da Memória (2003), by Marcos Pimentel, is carried out in the light of the previous discussions. The short film uses archival material to portray the daily life in Juiz de Fora between the decades of 1930 and 1990.