ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders (2006) by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, and Frédéric Lemercier, and Waltz with Bashir (2008) by Ari Folman and David Polonsky represent memories of war and conflict via drawn and photographic, and animated registers, respectively. The Photographer retraces Didier Lefèvre’s journey with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) into Northern Afghanistan in 1986, an expedition that reveals the profound impacts of the Afghan–Soviet War, which lasted from December 1979 to February 1989, on the civilian populations from both sides of the conflict. On the other hand, the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir traces Folman’s journey of discovery as he uses a community of remembrance to support the recovery of his repressed memories about the events leading up to the Sabra and Shatila massacre that took place in Lebanon in 1982. This chapter analyses the way that memory, and particularly traumatic memory, can find expression through alternate structures of remembrance, and how its remediation can reflect these varied modalities of recollection.
