From the cliché to the commonplace The use of photographs in the movie Récits d’Ellis Island

The archival photographs play a key role in this documentary devoted to an historical place: but far from being a simple testimony, they call, by their setting in space, a conversion of the gaze in order to fight against the already-known and to detach oneself from superficial emotions. Robert Bober's filming and editing techniques, close to Perecquian writing techniques, allow a “sensitive” appropriation of these places and resound the "stories of wandering and hope" it contains until today.