Dokumentas ir / ar prisijaukintas valdžios žvilgsnis: „Blokados“ archyvas
Document and/or the gaze of power: “The Siege” archyve

Summary/Abstract: The article questions the order of contemporary film archive working with cinematic documents of mass extermination, dying and suffering. It scrutinizes how the forms of historical memory based on archive footage are constructed, what “acceptance” of these forms by general and professional public tells us about the collective identity of “acceptees” and the configuration of their historical memory. The main material is the World War II archive footage films, primarily films about the Holocaust and the Leningrad Siege. The general framework of the article is based on the question of historical memory forms and the peculiarities of its cinematic construction. It starts with the concept of (war) archive (Michel Foucault, Allan Sekula) and moves to the re-interpretation of visual documents from the WWII in the European experimental film and visual arts. Then it surveys the ways of conceptualizing the experience of witnessing / looking at the sites challenging the limits of humanity (Giorgio Agamben, Georges Didi-Huberman). Finally, it analyses in detail the film “The Siege” (2006) by Sergei Loznitsa, a “consensual” film in regard to the common understanding of “the truth of the blockade”.

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