All The World's Memories

Memory and knowledge are explored in the fascinating All the World's Memories at GOMA Cinema A – a collection of documentaries, film-essays and artist videos that present cinema as a repository of past knowledge, until Feb 24.

The program takes its inspiration from French New Wave auteur, Alain Resnais’s short film, Toute la mémoire du monde (1957), which explored the limits of human memory through the rigorous cataloguing and organising of collections at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It looked at the lengths humanity will go to keep from forgetting.

There are four overlapping thematic sections – Travelogues, Home movies, Hijacked media, and Ready-made cinema. Each grouping use subjects such as visual and political histories, cultures and environments as the artists and filmmakers convey their own deeply personal view of the human condition.

There’s so much to see and experience with this collection, with work reflecting on humanity’s engagement with the natural world and built environment; portraits of public and private personalities made from home recordings; material appropriated and compiled from news agencies, advertising and popular cinema; and collage films that juxtapose found footage from disparate sources.

It goes without saying that anyone interested in the craft and power of film shouldn’t miss it.

One of the must-sees is Agnès Varda’s 2008 film, Les plages d'Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès), an autobiographical essay which the prolific French director made to celebrate her 80th birthday (Wed, Jan 24, 6pm), while Raoul Peck’s searing 2016 documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, looks at the state of racism in the U.S.A. (Sat, Jan 20, 3.30pm).

Other filmmakers include Jean-Luc Godard, Terence Davies, Tracey Moffatt and Sophie Fiennes, so there’s no shortage of prodigious talent on show.

SEE FULL PROGRAM

By Vicki Englund