"Kore wa dare no Eiga ka? Dokyumentari Eiga to Ajia no Kyotsu no Kioku" (Whose film is this? Documentary film and collective memory in Asia)

This chapter takes an essay by Australian ethnographic film maker David McDougall as the starting point for exploring the ownership of archival documentary film material. “Ownership” in this context means not only legal ownership (copyright etc.), but also a sense of identification with the content of the film. The chapter introduces case studies of a number of documentary fragments taken in East Asia in the mid-twentieth century, and now held in Australian and New Zealand archives. It explores the ways in which the film-makers perceive and represent their East Asian subjects, and considers ways in which these film fragments could be re-incorporated into, and reinterpreted in, historical memory and historical debates in East Asia.