The Filmmaker as Metallurgist: Political Cinema and World Memory

Abstract

Compared to earlier waves of political cinema, such as the Russian revolution films of the 1920s and the militant Third Cinema movement in the 1960s, in today's globalized and digital media world filmmakers have adopted different strategies to express a commitment to politics. Rather than directly calling for a revolution, ‘post-cinema’ filmmakers with a political mission point to the radical contingencies of history; they return to the (audio-visual) archives and dig up never seen or forgotten materials. They reassemble stories, thoughts, and affects, bending our memories and historical consciousness. Following Deleuze and Guattari's geophilosophical ideas in A Thousand Plateaus filmmakers can be considered metallurgists. Discussing the work of Tariq Teguia, John Akomfrah and others, this article investigates several metallurgic strategies that have a performative effect in reshaping our collective memory and co-constructing the possibility of ‘a people to come.’