Reminiscences (2010)

• 93%
• 2010
• J.D. Fernández Molero

What began as a means of recovering his temporary amnesia by watching his family's home movies, Molero explored the visual archive of his life, and it gradually evolved into an experimental found footage autobiography. He collages disparate footage from various formats-8mm, VHS, miniDV, HD, and a cell phone camera-ranging from his grandfather's 8mm films of a family outing at the river, which predates Molero himself, to universal scenes of growing up-the kindergarten classroom, the persistence of a boy learning how to skateboard-and footage he himself shot after his accident, in which he seeks out relatives in remote regions of Peru in the indigenous Quechua community. The singular vision with which Molero weaves a lyrical and visual narrative of his own history is both affecting and radical. Employing both celluloid and video textures, Molero uses the errant visual elements as metaphors for malfunctioning and wandering memory. Reminiscencias is a self-reflexive exploration that both questions and relies on these fragments to remind us of our memories, and to salvage forgotten scraps of time. This unique document of life in Peru is also a testament to the mediated, image-saturated lives of those born after the advent of home movies, and the uncanny and fragmented depictions that these informal documents portray of our lives.