Every­thing old is new again: archival cin­e­ma at Lon­don Short Film Festival

Archives hold repos­i­to­ries of time, peo­ple and place, and rep­re­sent pletho­ras of infor­ma­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, films found in, or cre­at­ed for, archives are rich socio-his­tor­i­cal mate­r­i­al, swelling with inter­pre­ta­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties. That is, archival films are less sta­t­ic relics of his­to­ry than very mal­leable resources to those that retrieve and screen them with cre­ative intent. This year’s Lon­don Short Film Fes­ti­val saw var­i­ous film­mak­ers and cura­tors pull from archives, as well as cre­ate and recre­ate them. In this, they formed a con­cep­tu­al­ly charged rela­tion­ship with ​‘the archive’ across the pro­gram that was nei­ther pre­dictable or heavy-handed. 

In assort­ed pack­ages and pan­els that spanned over a week, Lon­don Short Film Fes­ti­val posi­tioned its use of archives as a tool, not for nos­tal­gic view­ing, but for cre­at­ing mood, flesh­ing con­text only as need­ed. The program’s wealth of archival films, fea­tur­ing both new and old mate­r­i­al, didn’t the­mat­i­cal­ly speak to each oth­er (except with­in their own pack­ages) or attempt to say any­thing earnest or cliché, like one must learn from his­to­ry to avoid repeat­ing it. But they had some pur­pose. To sum­marise var­i­ous speak­ers at an LSFF pan­el, ​‘incor­po­rat­ing the archive’ brings unheard sto­ries to new audi­ences to reflect our diverse world. With this approach, the films land­ed with emo­tion­al res­o­nance; audi­ences might feel the emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences of the archive’s sub­jects, even from a detached place. 

This isn’t inci­den­tal, but rather process dri­ven. Gra­ham Rel­ton from the York­shire Film Archive posed the ques­tion at an LSFF pan­el, ​“What is the key human mes­sage in the film?” He described the process of enter­ing meta­da­ta into the archive  – such as hope and con­nec­tion  –  to guide film­mak­ers in their search for footage. With such a sub­jec­tive approach, they gath­er, repo­si­tion, and rein­tro­duce mate­r­i­al loaded with psy­cho­log­i­cal mean­ing. It’s a restora­tive approach, but how gen­uine is it? 

Poli­ty­ka i ani­mac­ja, one of the program’s more his­tor­i­cal pack­ages, start­ed to unpack the place of truth ver­sus feel­ing when screen­ing archive films in con­tem­po­rary set­tings. The pack­age fea­tured 15 short ani­ma­tions cre­at­ed between 1963 and 1989, influ­enced by events in Poland at the time. Its cura­tor, Michal Mroz, explained the films as sub­lim­i­nal; cer­tain­ly, they weren’t abstract nor clear as day. Unless flu­ent in post­war Pol­ish life, the view­er wouldn’t be able to pick them apart as much as the ani­ma­tions, either then or now, can say every­thing they want­ed to. With three decades elaps­ing since the Pol­ish People’s Repub­lic dis­band­ed, the col­lec­tion of films didn’t add con­text to this peri­od of his­to­ry so much as revis­it its mood. After all, the sub­tle man­i­fes­ta­tions of liv­ing in a spe­cif­ic time are not as often record­ed as explic­it expla­na­tions of social and polit­i­cal move­ments. That’s where cre­ative cin­e­ma comes in. 

In the shorts, bod­ies move togeth­er in crowds, split from them, and resist rules. The ten­sion cut­ting through is on the nose, sniff­ing at the anx­i­eties of social order, group­think and per­son­hood. A man vis­its end­less offices for paper­work approval until even his body is cov­ered in stamps, but he con­tin­ues to smile, despite the incon­ve­nience; a man opens a bas­ket of body parts and builds Pinoc­chio-like chil­dren who destroy him so they can go and do what they want togeth­er. The repeat­ed sym­bol­ism itch­es to uncov­er the per­me­at­ing sen­ti­ment of this cul­tur­al chap­ter rather than giv­ing us uni­ver­sal themes to pon­der as a 2023 audi­ence. Inter­est­ing­ly, women are most­ly absent from the ani­ma­tions. Maybe their expe­ri­ences are cap­tured else­where in the archive (or they aren’t in it at all). 

In Maria Schnei­der, 1983, rein­tro­duc­ing the archive brings emo­tion­al depth, even if that requires recre­at­ing the mate­r­i­al. The film draws on a 1983 Ciné­ma Ciné­mas inter­view with French actress Maria Schnei­der on her expe­ri­ence of the film indus­try. Shot close up on Schneider’s face, she’s trapped in the frame, reflect­ed by a mir­ror imme­di­ate­ly behind her. It’s an inti­mate por­trait of an expres­sive and dis­so­ci­at­ed artist. 

Direc­tor Elis­a­beth Sub­rin, also cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing a fea­ture-length biopic about Schnei­der, did not use the orig­i­nal inter­view but repli­cat­ed it across three per­for­mances. Each iter­a­tion, per­formed by a dif­fer­ent actress, alters Schneider’s lan­guage, age and gen­der back­ground, while retain­ing her sub­tle man­ner­isms and con­trolled voice and the inter­view ver­ba­tim with only slight tweaks. Crit­i­cal­ly, in one of the lat­er inter­view ren­di­tions, Schnei­der uses the word rape in ref­er­ence to the film Last Tan­go in Paris (Schnei­der was 19 at the time of film­ing in 1972 when direc­tor Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci sur­prised her with a rape scene not in the orig­i­nal script; Bertoluc­ci lat­er admit­ted to delib­er­ate­ly humil­i­at­ing her). 

In Subrin’s reimag­in­ing, the archival mate­r­i­al is repeat­ed and stretched to exceed its lim­its. LSFF released Schneider’s words from 40 years ago to hope­ful­ly more pro­gres­sive, empa­thet­ic audi­ences, even if the film indus­try remains dan­ger­ous for women. Then or now, with­out the need for recon­tex­tu­al­i­sa­tion, it holds equal­ly dis­tress­ing weight. 

With­out being trite, LSFF cre­ative­ly maneu­vered their use of archive films to respond to trau­ma and social ten­sion. In this, they see screen­ing archival mate­r­i­al as less dust­ing off a film from stor­age than a com­mu­ni­ty effort of col­lect­ing, digi­tis­ing, review­ing, curat­ing and redis­trib­ut­ing. They also con­tem­plat­ed the ethics of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Who’s includ­ed? Who’s drawn out again for cin­e­ma? LSFF aimed to use the archival’s pos­si­bil­i­ties to show those over­looked in real life and on screen. It’s an act of anti-cen­sor­ship to see some­one as told by themself. 

And if there is a gap in the archive, film­mak­ers can fill it. For The Oth­er­ness Archive: As Bit­ing The Image, a col­lec­tion of shorts by trans­mas­cu­line film­mak­ers curat­ed by April Lin 林森, an archive can be cre­at­ed here and now for a vision, like, in their words, ​‘the medi­a­tion of Otherness.’ 

In As Bit­ing The Image, new films with DIY pro­duc­tion and self-as-sub­ject become items to deposit with­in a cus­tom archive. In this, there was hon­est exper­i­men­ta­tion to doc­u­ment the trans­masc voice in its many man­i­fes­ta­tions and pre­sen­ta­tions. They draw out the expe­ri­ence of nav­i­gat­ing bod­ies, gen­der, and rela­tion­ships through text mes­sag­ing, web browsers, pho­to­copiers, Google Maps, and phone calls. Form­ing diary-like nar­ra­tives, the cre­ators use comedic, poet­ic, musi­cal and con­ver­sa­tion­al voiceovers to cap­ture dia­logue rarely heard in cin­e­ma, which is usu­al­ly hyper-focused on the cis­gen­der het­ero­nor­ma­tive experience. 

In show­ing ​‘unex­pect­ed’ sto­ries, we could query the audi­ence response: how impor­tant were these nar­ra­tives to them? What did they illus­trate to them, or what should they have learned? If it fell out­side the cul­tur­al milieu or the social con­text of their lives, maybe noth­ing. But it was nev­er about the audi­ence real­ly. Archives pro­vide less uni­ver­sal­i­ty than momen­tary truth. And the pow­er of pro­gram­ming archival films  – at least at this year’s LSFF  – is to bring screen time, as a ton­ic, to their subjects.