Tip

Moving the mouse cursor over the top of the page will display the menu bar.

Tip

This page contains media that is intended to start playback automatically on opening. This may include sound. Your browser is blocking automated playback. Please click here to start media.

• contents
  • Visual abstract & introduction
  • Remembering the days when we remembered
  • Remembering through writing
  • Spoken portraits
  • A place that only exists within memory
  • Casting a memory
  • Mise-en-scène
  • Memory & imagination
  • Memory as montage
  • A method to learn filmmaking
  • Acknowledgements & credits
  • Emilio Angel Reyes Bassail
• navigation
• abstract
  This research develops a method for filmmaking that uses autobiographical memory as a guiding principle for the production of images. The proposed method comes as the result of a double gesture in which I wanted to a) acquire a subjective understanding of memory that came from artistic practice; and b) materialize the process of memory through film. I used the filmmaking apparatus as a technique to give visibility to the process of remembering and forgetting: I worked with strategies such as the elaboration of a “memory diary”; the drawing of spoken portraits and locations based on memories; casting techniques which involved a dialectical approach towards memory; scouting trips to find places from my memory; hypnosis sessions as a technique to recover lost memories; reenactments of memories; a method to direct actors that relied on memory as a guiding mechanism; and the editing of the footage through a process of memory associations. While doing this research, I inadvertently found that the techniques I used led to a process in which memories were rewritten through experimentation. Thus, the method produced a conceptualization of "memory" that frames it as a creative process. In the process of working on this project, I developed a very subjective approach to the craft of filmmaking that was informed by my particular relationship with memory. Thus, the proposed method of using personal memory as a core mechanism for the production of audio-visual products can be utilized as a tool for film education, promoting the creation of personal film languages based on an individual's memory, and as device to reflect on the subjective process behind an individual's artistic practice.
• Emilio Angel Reyes Bassail - MEMORY AS A METHOD FOR FILMMAKING - 2019
• Meta
• Comments
• Terms