Resumen: In recent decades, in line with historiographical trends advocating ¿history from below,¿ a new type of historical documentary has emerged, focusing on tightly circumscribed subjects, personal archives, and first-person perspectives, a type of films the author defines as ¿microhistorical documentaries¿.
Cuevas pinpoints the key features of these documentaries, identifying their parallels with written microhistory: a reduced scale of observation, a central role given to human agency, a conjectural approach to the use of archival sources, and a reliance on narrative structures. Microhistorical documentaries also use tools specific to film to underscore the affective dimension of historical narratives, often incorporating autobiographical and essayistic perspectives, and highlighting the role of the protagonists¿ personal memories in the reconstruction of the past. These films generally draw from family archives, with an emphasis on snapshots and home movies.
Filming History from Below examines works including Péter Forgács¿s films dealing with the Holocaust such as The Maelstrom and Free Fall; documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Rithy Panh¿s work on the Cambodian genocide; films about the the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War such as A Family Gathering and History and Memory; and Jonas Mekas¿s chronicle of migration in his diary film Lost, Lost, Lost.
