Grandpas and Grandmas: The Memory of the Two World Wars in Documentary Films Cover Image

Nagypapák és nagymamák. A két világháború emlékezete dokumentumfilmekben
Grandpas and Grandmas: The Memory of the Two World Wars in Documentary Films

Author(s): Réka Sárközy
Subject(s): Recent History (1900 till today), Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Korunk Baráti Társaság
Keywords: First World War; Second World War; Holocaust; dialogic memory; documentary film

Summary/Abstract: The essay analyses the representation of polyphonic memory in two groundbreaking Hungarian documentary films, made thirty years apart: János and Gyula Gulyás’s I was at the Isonzo, too (Én is jártam Isonzónál, 1984–87) and Bálint Révész’s Granny Project (Nagyi projekt, 2017). The earlier film was made in the 1980s, within the state-socialist system, when doing memory work of both World Wars was limited, if not forbidden. The second film was made recently, in 2017. They differ from each other in many ways, but instinctively they chose the same solution for representing and working out traumas: through transnational dialogue. They focus on traumatic experiences of the past, changing national, so-called monologic memory into a broad perspective, putting Aleida Assmann’s (2005) theory of dialogic memory into practice.

  • Issue Year: 2023
  • Issue No: 11
  • Page Range: 73-81
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: Hungarian
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