This thesis explores the agency and practices of visual material in the construction of collective memory and national identity. It is grounded in the case study of one particular institution, the Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA) in Luxembourg, and in the institutional life and transformations of a specific body of images, Luxembourg’s Amateur Film Collection and the exhibition Hidden Images mounted in 2007. The CNA is Luxembourg’s central repository for film, photography and sound documents brought together under the rubric of ‘national heritage’. The amateur film archive comprises today about 10.000 objects from the 1920s to the mid 1970s. Made in Luxembourg or by people from Luxembourg, the movies, and even more so the film stills as a condensed version of the archive, represent the nation, yet as an ensemble they remain contained, making a close examination possible. I consider in this context that images are not however only indexical referents, but also, and especially, bundled objects existing materially in the world, entangled in a complex tissue of social interactions and practices, tensioned between document and art work and interwoven with shifting institutional aspirations. Drawing on the work of Ingold, I characterize this as a meshwork, in which everything is connected and visual objects evolve organically, subject to internal and external influences. Thus, this thesis observes the private family films as they meet and mesh with the public institution CNA where they develop new agency as historical documents, as works of art or triggers of collective memory. It explores the filmed material in relation to the national and institutional politics of the CNA’s emergence, the shifting culture of curatorial intention and ambition for the collection, the hierarchies of information within CNA. By making visible the lines, the connections and the nodes of this meshwork, as well as its patterns of disruption and fracture, this study highlights the varying interactions with Luxembourg’s Amateur Film Collection in particular, and, more generally, the performative nature of family photographs and films as they are used to construct images of nationality. The small scale of Luxembourg as a nation-state presents a demonstrable case study of the ecology of images in national identity building and makes an unusually grounded contribution to the wider debate about the ways in which images strengthen a sense of belonging, and how archives and museums use photography and film to construct and articulate visions of nationhood.

À partir de l’œuvre du cinéaste et artiste hongrois Péter Forgács, la thèse aborde plus généralement la question du remontage de films amateurs dans le documentaire contemporain et examine les enjeux esthétiques, historiques et politiques du remploi des films de famille. Les concepts de déterritorialisation et de reterritorialisation développés par Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari nous permettent d’interroger la manière dont la pratique « archéologique » du remontage ouvre les films de famille à de multiples resignifications. Comment traversent-ils des territoires esthétiques, géographiques, institutionnels et politiques, de mémoire, d’histoire et de pensée ? Comment, à travers le temps, les histoires que contiennent ces rouleaux des pellicules substandard sont-elles traversées par l’Histoire ? Comment ces films peuvent-ils, rétrospectivement, subvertir la construction officielle de l’histoire et de la mémoire et renégocier la perception du temps historique ? Quelle métahistoire construisent-ils ?L’analyse de la déterritorialisation et de la reterritorialisation des films de famille par le remploi, nous permet d’interroger la manière dont la pratique du remontage crée un nouveau territoire cinématographique, où la mémoire et l’histoire du passé comme de l’avenir peuvent être creusées dans et par l’image. Ici apparaissent les enjeux poét(h)iques et politiques du remploi. / Through the work of Hungarian artist and filmmaker Péter Forgács, the thesis addresses the question of the reuse (remontage) of amateur films in contemporary documentary and examines the aesthetic, historical and political implications of the appropriation of home movies. The concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari allow us to question how the “archeological” practice of reassembly exposes home movies to multiple significations. How can they traverse aesthetic, geographical, institutional and political territories as well as territories of memory, history and thought? How are the stories contained in these rolls of substandard film traversed by History? How can these films subvert the official construction of history and memory and renegotiate the perception of historical time? What metahistory do they establish?The analysis of deterritorialization and reterritorialization of home movies allows us to question how the practice of reassembly creates a new cinematographic territory, in which memory and history of the past, as of the future, can be mined in and by the image. Thus remontage implicates poet(h)ical and political issues.

Le corpus de films est constitué par les films amateurs tournés par les coloniaux dans les colonies françaises, Madagascar et le Sénégal. Ce corpus source est enrichi des films contemporains les utilisant. Dans le cadre d'une pratique d'action-recherche, deux films ont été réalisés. En 3 mouvements nous avons essayé de déterminer la valeur des films amateurs coloniaux aujourd’hui. Nous nous sommes appuyés sur l’anthropologie pragmatique et la philosophie de l’ordinaire pour comprendre les enjeux de ces films. Nos enquêtes révèlent que cette absence de valeur correspond à un déni de réalité de la situation coloniale, niant à la fois les injustices et les liens affectifs qui avaient pu être créées principalement entre les enfants de colons et les domestiques. D'où le paradoxe : des films dits "domestiques", les domestiques sont absents. Cette absence est essentielle. Sans les nounous et les boys, ces films sont des no man’s land. De plus, le contexte colonial crée un rapport d'illégitimité voir d'illégalité de ces films. En conclusion nous proposons d'une part une méthode de reconstruction cinématographique qui mette au cœur de son dispositif les trois acteurs liés aux films amateurs : les filmeurs, les filmés, les personnes dans le Hors champs. D'autre part nous proposons la création d'un institut des films amateurs coloniaux reposant sur des principes établis par un éthique de l'archivistique audiovisuelle et qui permettrait aux anciens colonisés de se réapproprier les images spoliées de leur propre passé à une époque où il y avait un monopole des moyens de production audiovisuelle. Cela répondrait à une justice mémorielle, audiovisuelle et affective. / The films corpus is made by amateur films shot by colonials in the French colonies, Madagascar and Senegal. This source corpus is enriched by contemporary films using these amateur films and films from the colonial era. As part of a practice of action research, two films were made. In 3 movements we tried to determine the value colonial home movies may have today. We relied on the pragmatic anthropology and ordinary philosophy to understand the issues of these films. The starting assumption was that these films had been abandoned, they had no more value as a result of a colonial state denied by settlers. Our historical and sociological surveys show that this lack of value is a denial of reality of the colonial situation, denying both injustice and emotional ties that had been created mainly between the settler children and servants. Hence the paradox of films called "domestic" is that domestics are absent. This lack is essential. Without nannies and boys, these films are a no man's land. Moreover, the colonial context creates a report view illegitimacy illegality of these films. In conclusion we propose firstly a cinematic reconstruction method that puts the heart of its system linked to the three actors amateur films: the filmmakers, the filmed people and those in the fields Out. Secondly we propose the creation of an institute of colonial amateur films based on principles established by an ethic of audiovisual archiving that allow former colonized to reclaim the images of their own past at a time when there was a monopoly of audiovisual means of production. This would respond to a memorial, audiovisual and emotional justice.