“I Imagine or Remember…”: Narrative Strategies of a Historical Document Based on the Example of Natalia Koryncka-Gruz’s Film “A Minor Genocide”

Abstract

The article is an in-depth, contextual analysis of Natalia Koryncka-Gruz’s film A Minor Genocide. The author focuses on its narrative structure, in which the documentarian tried to reflect the nature of the work of memory and post-memory. The film is a documentary adaptation of Anna Janko’s (auto)biographical essay. The narrative complexity of the literary text is reflected in the film version, which takes the shape of a palimpsest. Its individual layers consist of verbal narratives from three generations of women, contemporary sequences, archival photographs and stylistically diverse animated sequences. The memory of traumatic experiences is superimposed on the idea of them. For the author, A Minor Genocide is an example of bringing Polish documentary film and literature closer together, as well as a new formula of a historical document.