The visible in ruins
the essayistic gesture in the reappropriation of archival images
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22475/rebeca.v15n1.1288Keywords:
Archive cinema, Aura, Essay Film, MontageAbstract
This essay examines archive cinema as a practice that displaces the aura of images — not as a trace of authenticity, but as a political force of reactivation. In dialogue with Boris Groys (1995, 2008), Georges Didi-Huberman (2015, 2021), and Walter Benjamin (1989, 1994, 2008), it analyzes film curatorial gestures that operate through anachronic montage and the essay form. These films do not restore the past but activate its fissures and silences, revealing the archive as a space of conflict between memory and erasure. Curation thus becomes a political act that rearticulates the visible into critical constellations capable of interrogating the present. Anachronic montage fractures historical linearities, exposing tensions between temporalities and resinifying documents through contemporary urgencies. The film essay emerges as a method of dialectical thinking where past images collide with the now, generating new readings. By insisting on the archive's incompleteness, these films reject closed narratives, transforming it into contested territory. Their power lies in reopening forgotten meanings, destabilizing visual hierarchies, and proposing alternative histories. Through this practice, dormant images become active agents that challenge dominant historical narratives and reveal the transformative potential of archival reappropriation.
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