Latin American Critical and Cultural Studies Working Group Meeting

"¡Desobedientes! Implicated Subjects, Memory, and Responsibility in Postdictatorship Chilean Documentaries"

Professor Michael Lazzara from the University of California, Davis

To date, the study of "postmemory" within the field of Latin American memory studies has centered almost exclusively on the voices of children of victims of political violence. However, since 2017, new voices have emerged that offer nuanced perspectives on the dictatorships and civil conflicts of Cold War Latin America: the voices of children of collaborators with or perpetrators of political violence. This talk contrasts two recent films by Chilean directors whose relatives aided and abetted the Chilean dictatorial state during the Pinochet regime (1973-1990): El color del camaleón (2017), by Andres Lubbert, and El pacto de Adriana (2017), by Lissette Orozco. It analyzes the political, ethical, and aesthetic approaches that "implicated" filmmakers are taking to address ethically fraught pasts.