Counter-Narratives in the Void: Memory in Los rubios, its aesthetic heritage and its reverberations

Abstract

I study Albertina Carri’s audio-visual production of resistance in memory, as a reaction to officially funded mainstream post-dictatorial films, produced during the transition, after the 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship. Combined as the Los rubios project, this corpus includes a documentary, three experimental short films and a book. Carri’s project is studied as part of a tradition of resistance outside mainstream film. For that purpose, I trace Carri’s heritage throughout a constellations of marginal audio-visual production since the 1930’s. The artifacts brought to dialogue use fragmentation, and particularly the void in-between fragments, as an opportunity to resist traditional storytelling. Specifically, I contend that the Los rubios project includes fragmentary storytelling to make memory narratives flexible and fluid as well as to invite the spectator to play an active role in memory.