Sylvie Jasen

This dissertation investigates the use of reenactment in contemporary documentary and narrative films. It is specifically concerned with the meanings and repercussions of reenactment for non-professional performers whose memories, emotions, and subjectivities both inform the film’s depiction and are deeply affected by its making. The study argues that reenactment is both an imitative and formative activity that not only takes place on the screen but encompasses the entire filmmaking process. It therefore expands what is understood as reenactment in film beyond the frame to address the ethical and political implications of film production. This is what I call reenactment as an event, a concept developed here through four case studies: Michael Winterbottom’s In This World (2002), Peter Watkins’ La Commune (Paris 1871) (2000), Igloolik Isuma Productions’ The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006), and Roger Spottiswoode’s Shake Hands with the Devil (2007). Indeed, the reenactment as event is less interested in replicating or even representing the past than in evoking its current traces and ongoing impact. The presence of the past is specifically marked in the body and the performance of the non-professional actors. The amateur is thus a key site of the blurring of temporalities (past and present) and of filmic categories (documentary and fiction). This project therefore shifts away from the original-copy relationship that has preoccupied much of the theorizing of reenactment in cinema. Whereas the original-copy comparison implies a relationship between two separate and complete entities, this study argues that neither the reenactment nor the referent constitutes a clearly defined and delimited object.

Both are instead characterized by fluidity and lack of boundaries; just as the past persists in the current memories and gestures of the performers, the reenactment extends beyond the screen and continues after the film’s production. Moreover, an examination of reenactment as an event centers on the singularity of the performance as a dynamic process that simultaneously attests to and generates a continuity of tradition in contemporary conditions.