Animated Documentary, Recollection, ‘Re-enactment’ and Temporality

In this chapter Paul Ward focuses particularly on the concept of re-enactment, arguing that it raises varied questions about the nature of performance, agency, point of view and temporality within animated documentary. Ward grounds his theoretical speculations and conceptual distinctions in close readings of two animated documentaries, Andersartig (2011) and The Children of the Holocaust (2014), both of which depict individual childhood memories of living in Nazi-era Germany. He concludes that works such as these encourage audiences and critics alike to understand and engage with animated documentary as a filmmaking mode able to portray intangible, often non-indexical (and therefore un-photographable) documentary phenomena.