Filmes Caseiros Mal-ditos — A Imagem Dialética e o Mal de Arquivo no Cinema de Found Footage Contemporâneo

Abstract

In this article, we analyse two found footage films composed entirely of home movies: Happy End (1996) by Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky and the feature-length Private Footage (2022) by Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Nagata. These films are part of a contemporary movement dedicated to reimagining and revisiting private archives in order to problematize official History. We begin with a theoretical review that references key bibliographical sources relevant to our analysis, followed by a brief historical overview of the state-of-the-art debate surrounding found footage. Subsequently, we perform an ad hoc analysis of each film, employing a qualitative comparative approach that integrates scene analysis, film theory and film philosophy. This methodology uncovers ghosts and suppressed histories that continue to haunt these films, inhabiting hidden layers of meaning that surface from this ostensibly “innocent” archive through the operations of montage. Could these films, situated at the intersection of memory and imagination, reclaim overlooked and denied narratives and constitute a form of “pro-memory”? We explore how these works engage with Walter Benjamin’s concepts of the optical unconscious and the dialectical image, while also situating them within the framework of Jacques Derrida’s “archive fever.” Finally, we argue that each filmmaker confronts the hauntological virtuality — or the “silent” side — of the archive, leveraging its dialectical power to interrogate colonial histories and the spectres of fascism. Tscherkassky and Nagata confront the “origins” of these images, demonstrating that the past persists as an unspoken, denied, and repressed force that can finally be brought to light through the artistic gesture of détournement.