Psychoanalytic notes on memory in first-person documentary cinema

Abstract

This paper seeks to make some remarks on the theoretical impressions that psychoanalysis has developed on memory, insofar as it has an affinity with the unconscious. This with the purpose of expanding the referential framework in which first-person documentary filmmakers work, since a large number of these works have focused on creating personal audiovisual narratives where their memories are the launching point to talk about events that have become traumatic. This results in works loaded with affection, questions and meanings that, in our opinion, are channeled by unconscious determinations. For this we will briefly develop the classical conception of what has been catalogued as documentary cinema and then what is documentary cinema in the first person. We will also use some examples of first-person documentaries that can give us some clues that when working with the intimate, we can find unconscious activity.