The Fire of Love and The Fire Within. Uses and Interpretations of Archives in Documentary Film

For a documentarist, observing the present is constantly accompanied by a glance backward or, rather, an inward gaze. When working with archive material, the filmmakers dig like storytelling paleontologists, exploring and connecting the material without always having full knowledge of what they are making, letting the images lead the way before working backwards to find a narrative. Soon, their subjective perspective comes into play, leading toward the future storytelling. There are multiple types of truth: emotional truths that shape our inner selves and historical truths that mold our external reality. With each piece of archival material, new interpretations of reality emerge, and new authors are born. In this article, I will analyze the different perspectives of two documentary filmmakers regarding the same archival material. Thus, the filmmaker’s subjective viewpoint becomes essential, what can be found in any work.As a result of reinterpretation, the film archive is infinite. History is written and rewritten using all fragments of memory, regardless of their medium of representation.