Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

This abstract is the theoretical contribution to the video essay “Images on 1975” that I made within the Make Film History program, in collaboration with the Kingston University School of Art and the centenary of the British network BBC in 2022. The best way to present the conference is screening also the short film (5 min.) as a practical part of the theoretical research. In 1975, Margaret Thatcher is elected to chair the British Conservative Party. The first LAN network is invented and the Vietnam war is officially over. In Spain, Franco dies. But in 1975 also three unknown documentaries were released: A Town of many colours in UK, Ali aux pays des merveilles (Ali in wonderland) in France and Gitanos sin Romanceros (Gypsies Without Ballads) in Spain. An unexpected trilogy about work, class and gender with gestures, images and customs in common, from a globalized world on 1975. “Images on 1975” is configured through the comparative visual analysis of these surviving images (Didi-Huberman), configuring a video essay that recalls Warburg’s mnemosyne, Farocki’s dialectical montage and Godard’s use of the open image. Because as Godard and Miéville said: “Cinema is also a factory. A factory were images are made”. We can remember repetitions to resist the oblivion of the struggle but, what is the meaning of an image while it remains forgotten?