ABSTRACT
The history of cinema is an object of study in numerous academic publications, which seek to recount and explain the filmic past. This chapter focuses on how non-fiction films perform the same operation by narrating the history of the medium with its own tools, namely images and sounds. Using two reflexive documentaries as key case studies, Maximilian Schell’s Marlene (1984) and Chris Marker’s The Last Bolshevik (1992), the author aims to investigate how the formal parameters of these works determine the historical explanations that arise from their respective portraits of Marlene Dietrich and Alexander Medvedkin. In addition, she discusses how the aspect of self-reflexivity in historical film-making invites a more complex and contextual approach to the filmic past.
