Conclusion

Through attention to the specific properties of the medium and the socio-historical context in which films have been made, this book has examined four modes of cinematic remembering that emerged in dialectical relationship with the wider memory frameworks present in South American societies since their transition to democratic rule. This book has shown that documentary filmmaking—in the broadest sense of the term—is, like memory itself, an inherently dynamic practice, strongly attuned to the values and needs of the present. An informative mode of remembering through film prevailed in the early stages of democratic transition when the central concern was to establish and disseminate the truth about past atrocities. By the mid-2000s, the proliferation of testimonial discourses of various kinds encouraged filmmakers to develop new perspectives and approaches, more attuned to global tendencies in filmmaking. Since then, there has been a progressive and constant move away from the imperative to present a clear picture of what had happened or why, and towards new questions raised by the ‘unsatisfied memory’ framework. Rather than approach the memory of witnesses as a reliable gateway to the past, filmmakers have increasingly questioned the workings of memory and focused on the continued traces of the past in the present. The temporal focus shifted from the ‘there and then’ to the ‘here and now’ and with it, a growing interest in embodied aspects of lived experience, including trauma.