Memory, Performance and Affects – Genocide in the Films by Joshua Oppenheimer

Krzysztof Loska

krzysztof.loska@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4078-798X

Abstract

The starting point for the reflection on Joshua Oppenheimer’s films is the concept of performance by Rebecca Schneider – especially her remarks on historical reconstructions – and the theory of affects by Jill Bennett (because the actual effect of performative practices is being “affectively moved”). In the author’s reading of The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), these historical performances registered by the director, with their ability to affect emotions, i.e. to provoke specific affective reactions (disgust, repulsion, sympathy, fascination), offer a new way in which genocide can be talked about. Starting from the analysis of Oppenheimer’s films, the author wonders how the memory of historical events is constructed and reconstructed, to what extent the past exerts influence on the present, and, finally, whether it is possible to observe yourself “from the outside” to face your own affections.


Keywords:

genocide, Indonesia, documentary, affect theory, performance

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Published
2020-11-13

Cited by

Loska, K. (2020) “Memory, Performance and Affects – Genocide in the Films by Joshua Oppenheimer”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (111), pp. 88–104. doi: 10.36744/kf.367.

Authors

Krzysztof Loska 
krzysztof.loska@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4078-798X

Professor of Human Sciences in the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He is the vice-president of the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies and member of Editorial Advisory Board of the bi-monthly Ekrany. He has authored 150 papers and dissertations on media, popular culture, film history and Japanese cinema, published in various journals (Kwartalnik Filmowy, Studia Filmoznawcze, Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, Ekrany, Kultura Współczesna, Ethos) and edited volumes. He has published twelve books (in Polish), e.g. Dziedzictwo McLuhana – między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością [McLuhan’s Legacy: Between Modernity and Postmodernity] (2001), Poetyka filmu japońskiego [Poetics of Japanese Cinema] (2009), Kenji Mizoguchi i wyobraźnia melodramatyczna [Kenji Mizoguchi and the Melodramatic Imagination] (2012), Nowy film japoński [New Japanese Cinema] (2013), Mistrzowie kina japońskiego [Masters of Japanese Film] (2015) and Postkolonialna Europa. Etnoobrazy współczesnego kina [Postcolonial Europe: Ethnoscapes of Contemporary Cinema] (2016).



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