22 October 2022
Lucy Szemetová (PhD Student in the Department of Film Studies)
Tell us about your research and how it connects to memory/identity studies?
My research interrogates the relationship between memory politics and audio-visual archives, with a particular focus on the reuse of archival footage in documentary films in Hungary. I am particularly interested in the dialogues between historical preservation and appropriation in filmmaking across different political contexts and the ways in which they establish and/or challenge cultural memory on the screen.
What are you working on now?
At the moment I am working on the first chapter of my thesis that traces the origins of the particular filmmaking practice of reusing archival footage in Hungarian documentary films. Working with a variety of historical footage (newsreel, war reportage, home movies) originated in the Béla Balázs Studio, a semi-independent film studio that laid the foundations for reworking pre-existing materials and revolutionised Hungarian audio-visual heritage starting from the 1960s. I have just came back from my archival research fieldtrip and looking forward to delving into how these filmmakers engaged with the past and memory in a future-focused socialist state.