Abstract
The historical film — defined here as a fiction film based on historical events — commits a sacrilege according to conventional wisdom: it transgresses the boundaries between documenting history as a verifiable truth, expressed in and confirmed by the use of archive, and fictionalizing this history into a fantasy, considered subjective and therefore somewhat unreliable. Within academia, this notion of a strict line of separation between history and fiction has, of course, been thoroughly debunked. Maybe Raul Hilberg’s rhetorical question puts it best: If we cannot write poetry any more after Auschwitz, why should writing history be possible?1
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Notes
Raul Hilberg, ‘I Was Not There’, B. Lang (ed.), Writing and the Holocaust (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1998), p. 25.
See Karl Schoonover, Brutal Vision: The Neorealist Body in Postwar Italian Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
See Vivian Sobchack (ed.), The Address of the Eye: a Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992);
Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000).
In the original: ‘la primera obra colectiva del cine chileno’. All translations from Spanish to English are mine. S. Caiozzi, quoted in A. Cavallo, P. Douzet, and C. Rodrίguez, Huerfanos y perdidos: El cine chileno de la transición, 1990–1999 (Santiago: Grupo Grijalbo Mondadori, 1999), p. 270.
See G. W. Mitnick, ‘Chile: La persistencia de las memorias antagónicas’, Polίtica y cultura 31 (Spring 2009), pp. 211–234 and
N. Richard, Cultural Residues: Chile in Transition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004);
V. V. O. de Zarate, ‘Terrorism and Political Violence during the Pinochet Years: Chile, 1973–1989’, Radical History Review 85 (2003), p. 182.
S. Stern, quoted in in F. Blanco, ‘Deviants, Dissidents, Perverts: Chile Post Pinochet’, unpublished PhD thesis, The Ohio State University (2009), p. 50.
Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 261.
J. Mouesca and C. Orellana, Breve historia del cine chileno: Desde sus orίgenes hasta nuestros dίas (Santiago: LOM, 2010), p. 214. The domestic audience for Chilean films has settled at six percent of total spectators or one million since 1999, despite an increase in production; see, e.g.,
R. Trejo Ojeda, Cine, neoliberalismo y cultura: Crίtica de la economίa polίtica del cine chileno contemporáneo (Santiago: Editorial Arcis, 2009);
J. Mouesca, Plano secuencia de la memoria de Chile: Veinticinco años de cine chileno (1960–1985) (Santiago: Ediciones del Litoral, 1988) and
V. Schmöller, Kino. Die chilenische Filmlandschaft nach 1990 (Aachen: Shaker Media, 2009).
See U. Jacobsen and S. Lorenzo, La imagen quebrada, Palabras cruzadas: Apuntes y notas (provisorias) sobre el ensayo fίlmico (en Chile) (Valparaίso: Fuera de campo, 2009);
John King, Magical Reels: A History of Cinema in Latin America (London: Verso, 1990);
M. Villarroel, La voz de los cineastas: Cine e identidad chilena en el umbral del milenio (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2005).
The regime censored and prohibited images, burnt films and stock, imposed censorship laws and closed all film schools. 16. See J. L. Déotte, ‘El Arte en la Época de la Desaparición’, N. Richard (ed.), Polίticas y estéticas de la memoria (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2000), pp. 149–161.
G. Liñero, Apuntes para una historia del video en Chile (Santiago: Ocho Libros, 2010).
L. Reygadas, ‘Imagined Inequalities: Representations of Discrimination and Exclusion in Latin America’, Social Identities 11 (2005), p. 489.
Compare C. Urrutia, ‘Hacia una politica en tránsito’, Aisthesis: Revista Chilena de Investigaciones Estéticas 47 (July 2010), pp. 33–44.
Judith Butler, War: When is Lite Grievable? (London: Verso, 2010).
A. Jocelyn-Holt, Espejo retrovisor: Ensayos históricopolίticos 1992–2000 (Santiago: Planeta, 2000), p. 89.
Tom Gunning, ‘To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision’, Grey Room 26 (Winter 2007), pp. 94–127.
Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 8 and 18.
Pablo Corro considers the desire to see these ghosts as necessary to become political subjects; P. Corro, Retóricas del cine chileno: ensayos con el realismo (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2012), p. 228.
See for instance J. R. Ballengee, The Wound and the Witness: The Rhetoric of Torture (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009);
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1991);
T. Moulian, Chile actual: anatomίa de un mito (Santiago: LOM, 1997);
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
J. D. Bolter and R. A. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1999), p. 6.
Paul Willemen in D. H. Jeffries, ‘Comics at 300 Frames per Second: Zack Snyder’s 300 and the Figural Translation of Comics to Film’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 31 (2014), p. 237.
In the original, ‘el discurso oficial es él de la publicidad’: Orlando Lübbert in A. L. Barraza, ‘Nuevo Cine Chileno 2005–2010’, unpublished PhD thesis, Universidad de Chile (2011), p. 49.
C. D. Flores, Excéntricos y astutos: Influencia de la consciencia y uso progresivo de operaciones materiales en la calidad de cuatro pelίculas chilenas realizadas entre 2001 y 2006 (Santiago: LOM, 2007), pp. 32–34.
Pam Cook, Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 2. The rejection of nostalgia as sentimental and unthinking is fortunately being reassessed.
See Svetlana Boym, Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
Dominic LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 78.
G. Long, ‘Chile Still Split Over Gen Augusto Pinochet Legacy’, BBC, 9 September 2013 (http://www.bbc.co.uk, accessed 11 September, 2013).
W. Pino-Ojeda, ‘Latent Image: Chilean Cinema and the Abject’, Latin American Perspectives 36 (2009), pp. 133–146, emphasis added.
‘Los que están por ahί, los que miran desde fuera, los que se mantienen neutros, indiferentes.’ N. Richard and J. Arrate, ‘Las Derrotas son Completas solo cuando los vencidos olvidan las razones por las que lucharon’, Revista Cultural 32 (2005), p. 192.
A. Estévez, ‘Dolores políticos: Reacciones cinematográficas’, Aisthesis: Revista Chilena de Investigaciones Estéticas 47 (July 2010), p. 16.
Greg M. Smith, Film Structure and the Emotion System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
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Jung, N. (2015). History, Fiction and the Politics of Corporeality in Pablo Larraín’s Dictatorship Trilogy. In: Carlsten, J.M., McGarry, F. (eds) Film, History and Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137468956_8
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