Abstract

Archival materials—like moving images, sound recordings, and photographs—are a fundamental resource for documentary filmmaking, especially in works that engage with immigrant trajectories. Archives materialize memory. By connecting past and present, they foster a more nuanced understanding of the variables shaping human displacement on a global scale. Traditionally, documentary filmmakers have often used archival images to convey authenticity (Bruzzi, 2000). However, when filmmakers manipulate, recontextualize, or reorder these images, the original meaning can shift. This can lead viewers to see these records differently than intended. Family archives footage in migration documentaries, for example, can go beyond serving as personal records and gain historical value by reinterpreting migration events and connecting personal stories to larger histories. Related to the African context, we highlight documentaries such as Waithira (Eva Njoki Munyiri, 2017) and No simple way home (Akuol de Mabior, 2022); in the Latin America context, Migración (Marcela Gómez Montoya, 2008) and Decile a Mario que no vuelva (Mario Handler, 2007). Accordingly, beyond a theoretical review of archival documentary practices, this research adopts the concept of the “archive effect” (Baron, 2020) as a methodological approach. This notion understands the meaning from archival materials as emerging from their juxtaposition with other audiovisual elements in the film, as well as from the resulting “temporal disparity” or “intentional disparity”. This approach complicates conventional understandings of the archive and is pertinent for analyzing contemporary documentary production, especially when it brings narratives marginalized from official historical accounts due to the absence of institutionally generated archives.