Mediated Remembering of Having Been Traumatized Collectively in Recent Hungarian Historical Films: Transmediating Analogue Photography in Post Mortem (2020) and Natural Light (2021)
Mediated Remembering of Having Been Traumatized Collectively in Recent Hungarian Historical Films: Transmediating Analogue Photography in Post Mortem (2020) and Natural Light (2021)

Summary/Abstract: Analogue photography takes on additional characteristics and functions as it is transmediated in such 21st century Hungarian—e.g. small national, and Eastern European—film historical examples like Post Mortem (Péter Bergendy, 2020) or Natural Light (Dénes Nagy, 2021). The examination of thetransmedial media representation, or simply the transmediation (Lars Elleström) of the oldest electronic mechanic visual medium, analogue photography, shall guide the comparative analysis—meant to assess photography’s features as an apparatus of/for culturally mediating collective traumas within the confines of historical feature filmic narratives, and also in the context of modelling communicative generations in their relationship(s) to identify-crafting collective crises. The aim is to demonstrate that contemporary Eastern European, and more specifically Hungarian filmmakers who belong to a third generation of “memory restorers” (Aleida Assmann) when faced with the First or the Second World War present interesting epistemic constructions on the collective past and offered for common remembrance in the context of the cinematic feature film. The main proposal that the present paper makes as a theoretical argument concerning the multifaceted process of transmediation—in this case the narrative feature filmic transmediation of the apparatus of analogue photography—is that the examined two films, PostMortem and Natural Light, may be conceived of as post-digital age meta-exercises on the role of analogue photography in constructing cultural memories of often collectively traumatic happenings.

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