Post-dictatorship memories: some official, threatened, and preserved audiovisual records

Abstract

Recent statements and calls to think about and account for the 40 years of uninterrupted democracy are different. This is logical given the traumatic nature of the civil-military dictatorship in Argentina and its toll of 30,000 disappeared detainees. Post-dictatorial and democratic Argentina has been able to construct a network of social discourses with a strong interpellation of memory dynamics. Cinema has made a substantive contribution to these processes. We argue here the importance of film and video concerning history as a way of approaching the testimonies about the crimes of the dictatorship and the procedures of memory during these 40 years of democracy. In this paper we will develop the analysis of three audiovisuals –the fiction La Historia Oficial; the documentary Juan, como si nada hubiera sucedido; and ATC's recordings of the Trial of the Juntas and its derivations– from the democratic stage, as a great arc of 40 years, where the evocation of the post-dictatorial transition provokes some meanings that deserve to continue to be thought from three axes: representation, document, and political action.