Transnational Memories and Post-Dictatorship Cinema : Brazil, Chile and Argentina

This book investigates the role that cinemas in Brazil, Chile and Argentina have played in reconstructing memories of the most recent military dictatorships. These countries have undergone a distinctive post-dictatorship experience marked by unprecedented debates about human rights violations, the silencing of victims and accountability for state crimes. Meanwhile, politically committed filmmakers have created an extensive body of work addressing the dictatorship and its aftermath. This book employs a transnational and comparative approach to examine the strategies that these filmmakers have used to render visible what has remained hidden, to make reappear what has disappeared, and to reinterpret historical actors and events from a contemporary perspective. Through attention to the specific properties of the medium and the socio-historical context in which films have been made, it describes the different cinematic modes of remembering that emerged in response to wider memory frameworks in South America. Acknowledgements Contents 1 Introduction: Cinemas of Memory The Meanings of Memory: A Brief Discussion How Are Memories Cultural, Mediated, Transnational and Transcultural? Aims, Theoretical Framework and Structure of This Book A Note on Trauma References 2 Memory Frameworks: Dictatorship and Transition in the Countries of the Southern Cone The Movement of Exiles Across National Borders Transnational Campaigns of State Repression Transnational Networks of Solidarity and Human Rights Transition to Democracy Argentina’s Ruptured Transition Chile’s Ambiguous Path to Democracy Brazil’s Unfinished Mourning Frameworks for Remembering the Dictatorial Past Salvation and Demons The Humanitarian Framework The Framework of Oblivion Unsatisfied Memory: New Questions, New Demands Concluding Remarks Notes References 3 The Rise of the Witness: The Informative Mode of Cinematic Remembering Cazadores de utopías: Confronting the ‘Two Demons’ Hércules 56’s Shared Remembrance of the Armed Struggle Concluding Remarks Notes References 4 How We Remember: The Reflective Mode of Cinematic Remembering Guzmán’s Passion for Memory Evidence and Emotion in La ciudad de los fotógrafos Making the archive speak in Retratos de identificação Prisoner Mugshots, Biopolitics and Thanatopolitics Concluding Remarks Notes References 5 The Screened Self: The Diaristic Mode of Cinematic Remembering Filming Absence in El (im)posible olvido Reconfiguring Trauma in El color del camaleón9 Inaccessible Pasts in Fico te devendo uma carta sobre o Brasil Concluding Remarks Notes References 6 Imagined Pasts, Possible Futures: The Playful Mode of Cinematic Remembering Autofiction and Sensory Memory in Deslembro Performing Trauma in Teatro de guerra Playing the Witness in Ana. Sem título Concluding Remarks Notes References 7 Conclusion References Index