Argentina’s past aches in Calles de la memoria
“The theme of memory and its many ways of representation it’s a theme I’ve tackled in almost all my films. For us, Argentines, it’s been a very painful topic for quite some time. Every now and then, events in our recent history — and in our not-so-recent, too — trigger a much-needed reactivation of memory. In tune, the strength of the prevailing human rights movements has been expressed by different means, encompassing both ethical and aesthetic issues,” says Argentine documentary-maker Carmen Guarini about her new outing Calles de la memoria (Streets of Memory). And she adds: “This film not only recuperates the experience and knowledge of groups of anonymous men and women who fight against forgetting so many deaths and disappearances, but it also poses questions as to how memory is represented.”
In Calles de la memoria, a group of foreign students attending a documentary workshop in Buenos Aires is asked to explore one of the most recent and visible ways of publicly representing memory: flagstones on the sidewalks of many neighbourhoods in the city with names of men and women who were disappeared during the infamous 1976-1983 military dictatorship. None of the students is knowledgeable about the subject, and thus the stories and situations they begin to learn about are very foreign to them. So they first get to know the people who make the flagstones, that is to say who they are, where they come from, and what their particular stories are.
At the same time, the process of making the tiles is also being recorded. This way, the documentary also becomes a film essay on how images are protagonists in the reconstruction of the past.
But it’s not only about the representational nature of images. Images — in this case the coloured flagstones — are also excuses to conduct brief, assorted interviews with neighbours and passers-by.
Their diverse opinions about the laying of the tiles on the sidewalks where victims of the dictatorship lived are, in fact, representative of how Argentine society at large has been dealing with those dark years up to the present. At first, you’d think that most people would want to remember so much carnage just to make sure it won’t happen again. But you’d be dead wrong: in too many cases, the opinions and ideological points of view tend to favour oblivion and comfortable numbness.
Some just don’t care, because it’s something that happened too long ago. Others don’t know much about it all, and couldn’t care less — which is even worse. Indifference can be deadlier than anything else. Others certainly do know, but would rather not make any comments. They just won’t talk. And there are some, of course, who don’t want to see any flagstones at all — least of all near their buildings.
On the other hand, there are some who not only truly care, but also want to do as much as they can do to keep memory alive. That’s the case of the people of Barrios por la memoria, who have been doing a tremendous, most significant work by having found yet another way to represent through images — flagstones are indeed images — a part of the Argentine story that has healed only in part.
Because behind each flagstone there’s a story and remembering that one story is doing justice to every single disappeared. Fortunately, there are many who feel the same way. There’s a middle-aged man interviewed who says that memory is pain, and so it’s better to forget. But he promptly adds that, in cases like these, it’s mandatory to remember. Even if it is painful.
There’s a young man who believes that the worst you can do is to forget. He says you have to remember things because otherwise you won’t learn from your mistakes. Or from the history of your own country. If you don’t know your past, how can you understand your present and think of a possible future?
There are also many other anonymous men and women who support the project, even if they don’t have any friends or relatives disappeared, or if it all happened long ago when they weren’t even born. There are, in fact, many people who won’t settle for oblivion.
So in their quest to keep memory alive, Barrios de la memoria and the documentary Calles de la memoria surely take more than important steps in the right direction. In the hands of a lesser talented filmmaker, a documentary of this type would have probably been sentimental, manipulative or simplistic. But Carmen Guarini smartly eschews these potential problems, and instead goes for a reflexive approach where emotions and feelings do matter, but they are somewhat restrained as not to go over the top. The tone is assured, but needs no stridence to reach viewers. Calles de la memoria is a documentary that certainly knows what it wants to say, but better yet, it knows exactly how to say it as to make a real difference.
