Embodying sense memory: archive image and traumatic experience inSon of Saul,Warsaw UprisingandRegina

Recent cinematic evocations and transnational academic interest in the Holocaust and World War II atrocities have raised a sensibility to the affective qualities of historical trauma and generated questions about the mediation of archival sources in a post-witness era. László Nemes’ award winning feature film (Saul fia/Son of Saul, 2014), as well as Diána Groó’s poetic documentary (Regina, 2013) and Jan Komasa’s war documentary (Powstanie Warszawskie/Warsaw Uprising, 2014) were inspired by visual and written archive documents produced by eyewitnesses of the historical events evoked. Associating these three films to the ‘empathy mode’ of memory transmission, described by Aleida Assmann (Citation2015, 32–37), this article argues that these films use a special strategy of contacting the ‘sense memory’ (Bennett Citation2003, 28–29) of traumatic events, preserved in the black and white, silent archival photographic and filmic documents. The author states that the movies perform three different types of ‘post memory work’ to recall and audio-visually remediate the deep, sensual aspects of these past traumas.