The film Landscapes of Memory explores Germany’s Holocaust remembrance culture and the concept of collective memory and trauma. Filmmaker Leah Galant talks to KBIA's Alec Martirez about her journey to uncover how these ideas have been directed against activists organizing for Palestinian rights and used to justify what has been called a genocide and the displacement of Palestinian people. Here’s an excerpt from their conversation:
Alec Martirez: I think art plays a really big role in the film and in the construction of collective memory in general. So, I wanted to know what you think about art's relationship with collective memory and trauma.
Leah Galant: Yeah, thank you for saying that. It was intentional to include artists in this way, because I initially had wanted to look towards artists and art to answer some of the questions that I still have right now lingering about collective memory and its role in society. And I think what's really beautiful is that it's just the opposite of this singular, institutionalized idea of what remembering looks like.
I think it's great to have oral history and recorded events and, of course, historians play a very important role. But I also think just as important is an artist's interpretation of the time. And an artist's interpretation of a historical moment and of a collective memory.
I definitely think the future of collective memory needs to include artists and should be valued just as much as historians and historical fact. But for it to be just controlled by statecraft is something that I don't think is probably going to to get us a result that we want in terms of the purpose of memory and why we even remember.
"I think Jewish people that are in solidarity with Palestine need to speak up, speak to their family, speak to their friends. I think that the Jewish community needs to deeply talk to each other right now and have these challenging conversations about trauma memory and collective memory."Leah Galant
Martirez: I wanted to know if you felt like your relationship did change with the fight for Palestinian rights over time and in general your relationship with collective memory and trauma throughout the production of the film.
Galant: I'm really interested in speaking to my fellow Jewish community, because I think Jewish people that are in solidarity with Palestine need to speak up, speak to their family, speak to their friends. I think that the Jewish community needs to deeply talk to each other right now and have these challenging conversations about trauma memory and collective memory.
So, while the world should not wait for us to change our minds and hearts, I think that nobody who is oppressed needs to wait and ask for permission to experience freedom.
I still also think that it is important that we have these conversations because there are numerous cases of the ways in which collective memory in each community around the world impacts how politics are shaped and formed. And I think that is something that is absolutely worth discussing right now.
So while this issue right now is urgent, I do think it's a lot wider than that, too — about how we're using memories as weapons, how we have in the past, how we're doing it now, and how we can prevent that from happening in the future, which I think is in the hands of activists, organizers, artists, historians and scientists.
Martirez: Going off of that, do you think there are any other conversations or stories from those activists, scientists, historians, artists that really stood out to you in the production of the film that you weren't able to include?
Galant: I think, as with any documentary, there's so many people that you meet along the way that can't be included in the final cut but are doing really important work. There is a growing community of people that are seeing specifically how Holocaust memory is weaponized, but then also more broadly how consent is manufactured through capitalizing on people's collective traumas.
And I think, of course, that has been happening for a long time — as I mentioned, 9/11 [is] in our not-so-distant memory — but there is a growing number of people who are working on this very topic that span genres and span disciplines.
And so that's where I'm thinking about the future of collective memory and also just putting an immediate stop to a genocide that's happening right now. I mean, that is paramount and most important. So I think we need to really act and then understand how memory is manipulated, too.
