Remanence

Combining two recently discovered unique archival sources, this short film evokes a lost history of a Dutch women’s peace movement which brought together women in collective action in the 1930’s

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