13 April - Elvire Popesco Cinema - French Institute - 15:30 - 
“Brushing history against the grain - Documentary; Truth; Montage”
When facing the current spectacle of history, it seems that the shades of the last half of the 20th century’s beliefs in memory, as a shield against evil, and in history, as a teacher against failure, are vanishing. What is the actual socio-political relevance of a documentary creative practice that is based on the reanimation of archival footage? What are 'memory' and ‘history'?
Browsing critically through my own cinematic practice that uses archival footage (‘THE SPECIALIST’ - 1999, ‘I LOVE YOU ALL’ - 2004, and ‘JAFFA, THE ORANGE’S CLOCKWORK’ - 2009), I will address the conceptual and theoretical questions, as much as the political challenges posed by a ‘radical' (creative) use of archival footage - and, most specifically, historical footage originally produced by dominant and nationalistic powers. Focusing on the role they play in shaping the concepts of ‘history' and ‘memory’ and way these notions are understood, I will invite to envision these concepts through a practitioner’s experience and a critical reading of some core elements of film language such as frame, timeline, continuity, point-of-view, gaze or witness.
Finally, I will propose that ‘Montage,’ as a concept and practice, as methodology and gesture, should be imagined as a regenerator of a permanent, radical and creative archival cinematic practice. I will finish with my digital archival research projects [Montageinterdit.net, Common Archive Palestine 1948], exploring the potentialities of the process of de-archiving/re-archiving as a conceptual frame and as a permanent creative process that begins with brushing the history (and the archives) of documentary practice against their own grain, beliefs, assumptions, ethics and moral perceptions.
Eyal Sivan
Eyal Sivan was born in 1964 in Haifa Israel and grew up in Jerusalem. After exercising as a professional photographer in Tel-Aviv, he left Israel in 1985 and settled in Paris. Since then he is sharing his time between Europe and Israel. He publishes and lectures on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, documentary filmmaking and ethics, political crimes and representation, political use of memory, genocide and representation, etc. He is the founder and artistic director of the Paris based documentary films production company momento! and the film distribution agency Scalpel. Sivan was Reader (associate professor) in media production at the school of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI), at the University of East London (UEL) were he was co-leading the MA program in Film, video and new media. Presently Sivan is an Honorary Fellow at University of Exeter UK, he is teaching at the Master in Film at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam and he is member of the editorial board of the Paris based publishing house La Fabrique Editions.
