What are the connections between memory and motion pictures? In order to set in motion an investigation into this question, I will need to begin at the beginning, with an inquiry into the nature of memory. How can it be defined? And what are the implications of those definitions for thinking about cinema? The first section of this chapter draws on a range of modes of thinking about memory, from the philosophical to the psycho-sociological to the scientific. However, in pursuing this subject such disciplinary demarcations become unclear. Memory, that elusive topic, seems to pervade and trouble the boundaries not only between academic disciplines, but also between the individual and the collective, self and other, mind and body, inside and outside. In response to these tendencies it seems appropriate to weave together theories from different disciplines, drawing out the points that will form a productive framework for thinking about memory in contemporary French cinema. It is not my intention for this framework to impose a rigid lens through which to read films, however. Rather, my aim in this chapter is to raise the ideas, questions and problems that will remain at stake throughout the book. I therefore intend to leave them open to further exploration as both theorisation of film as medium and analyses of individual films are drawn in to the argument in subsequent chapters.