Remanence
2024, film, 22 min
With never seen archive footage and unique testimonies REMANENCE entwines memories of a forgotten
1930’s women’s anti-war movement.
DESCRIPTION
In 1981, two researchers recorded the accounts of several members of a pre-war pacifist and feminist movement formed in the Netherlands. By the time of the recording, all were in their eighties. Grappling with a faltering memory, one member regrets not being able to get hold of a film shot during their last collective action, carried out in Rotterdam in 1939, before the bombing of the city. Following the execution of the person who made the recording during the war, the film was left to be forgotten in a private collection. These two archives, recently recovered and almost never before seen or heard, make up the material of Remanence. The title of Sabine Groenewegen’s film points to the effect brought on by the layering of time periods. At each level, the film emphasizes the way in which events persist across time, highlighting the traces left in the memories of the protagonists and in each of the viewers. In the same way that echoes of gender politics run through the film, viewers are invited to consider how history permeates the present. These women’s experiences, both intimate and political, highlight a history of internationalist struggles against rising fascism and its recapitulation of patriarchal norms, drawing a connection with feminist struggles across the world. There remain few records of this history, whose actors were forced to destroy or burn any and all evidence likely to incriminate them. Ultimately, Remanence chooses not to fetishize the archive, emphasizing instead the reverberations of memory—and in doing so, perpetuates it.
—Antoine Thirion
FESTIVALS & VENUES
Cinéma du Réel, International Competition, Paris
Pink Screens, Brussels
Festival dei Popoli Festival Internazionale di Cinema Documentario, Florence
Yogyakarta Documentary Festival, Yogyakarta
CREDITS
Director, Editor, Sound Designer Sabine Groenewegen
Music Malu Peeters
Additional Sound Editor Michael Bucuzzo
Soundmix Wart Wamsteker
Postproduction Producer Adela Botcher
Title Design Frederique Gagnon
Supported by | Amarte Foundation | Wilhemina Drucker Foundation | Espacio Azala | Sound & Vision
2024, film, 22 min
With never seen archive footage and unique testimonies REMANENCE entwines memories of a forgotten
1930’s women’s anti-war movement.
DESCRIPTION
In 1981, two researchers recorded the accounts of several members of a pre-war pacifist and feminist movement formed in the Netherlands. By the time of the recording, all were in their eighties. Grappling with a faltering memory, one member regrets not being able to get hold of a film shot during their last collective action, carried out in Rotterdam in 1939, before the bombing of the city. Following the execution of the person who made the recording during the war, the film was left to be forgotten in a private collection. These two archives, recently recovered and almost never before seen or heard, make up the material of Remanence. The title of Sabine Groenewegen’s film points to the effect brought on by the layering of time periods. At each level, the film emphasizes the way in which events persist across time, highlighting the traces left in the memories of the protagonists and in each of the viewers. In the same way that echoes of gender politics run through the film, viewers are invited to consider how history permeates the present. These women’s experiences, both intimate and political, highlight a history of internationalist struggles against rising fascism and its recapitulation of patriarchal norms, drawing a connection with feminist struggles across the world. There remain few records of this history, whose actors were forced to destroy or burn any and all evidence likely to incriminate them. Ultimately, Remanence chooses not to fetishize the archive, emphasizing instead the reverberations of memory—and in doing so, perpetuates it.
—Antoine Thirion
FESTIVALS & VENUES
Cinéma du Réel, International Competition, Paris
Pink Screens, Brussels
Festival dei Popoli Festival Internazionale di Cinema Documentario, Florence
Yogyakarta Documentary Festival, Yogyakarta
CREDITS
Director, Editor, Sound Designer Sabine Groenewegen
Music Malu Peeters
Additional Sound Editor Michael Bucuzzo
Soundmix Wart Wamsteker
Postproduction Producer Adela Botcher
Title Design Frederique Gagnon
Supported by | Amarte Foundation | Wilhemina Drucker Foundation | Espacio Azala | Sound & Vision