2023-06-05 19:26:59
to vanish is the story of a girl recovered from the Chilean dictatorship. The presence and existence of the archive is considered as an anchor point between a social and collective reality and an individual reality built from the conception of the family photographic album. Tamara tries to reconstruct her life from a few photos that came into her hands. And she turns over and over again to what she was and that her memory cannot remember.
The co-star of the documentary, Nora Cortiñas (Mother Plaza de Mayo, Línea Fundadora) carries on her chest the photograph of her disappeared son. An entire family life documented in family and domestic photographs up to the time of her disappearance is taken for granted. This joint image, a mother from Plaza de Mayo with her son or daughter on her chest, has become an iconic image.
What happens when the photographs do not exist? Who composes the file? Does the file order the memory? Do you build it? Does the file modify the feeling?
The journey in this case, a migratory journey, is part of the reconstruction of a being. Tamara, literally expresses: “Traveling to Argentina was meeting my peers and discovering that I was not crazy.”
Traveling to Cuba for Tamara (something she dreams of all the time) means delving into the steps taken by her father in his military training as a future member of the GAP, President Allende’s personal guard corps. Perhaps archives will be found… I hope I can come to Havana…
And another woman, the Spanish filmmaker Isadora Guardia, rummages through the archives and the feelings of these women. Her research career is distinguished by combining practice and theory. She began in 2002 with the production of documentaries of a social and political nature. Her doctoral thesis investigates the aesthetic and historical relationship between the militant documentary of the 1960s and the present time. It focuses on new languages and artistic expressions in the audiovisual and militant documentary film and video.
Face to face, in Havana:
Maribel Acosta Damas- How did you arrive at the theme that leads you to this documentary?
Isadora Guardia- In the summer of 2022 I had to take a trip to Argentina as part of an archival research project at the University of Valencia and I always carry my camera with me and once I arrive in Buenos Aires the first visit I make is to the Plaza de Mayo, I learned then that Thursday is the day mothers do the rounds. There I contact Tamara Callejas, who is the protagonist of the documentary. This was the first contact I had no idea what it was going to mean.
Maribel Acosta Damas- And what happened next?
Isadora Guardia- Well, later Tamara Callejas tells me that she is Chilean, that she has lived in La Plata, Argentina for a few years and that she is the first official daughter of the Chilean dictatorship to be recovered; and so far the only recognized daughter recovered from a murdered father and a missing mother.
Maribel Acosta Damas- What impact did it have on you? Well, the children recovered from the Argentine dictatorship reached 132 in the year 2023. However, there is no knowledge of children recovered from the Chilean dictatorship…
Isadora Guardia- This is the first time I have interviewed, in this case, a daughter of the disappeared. He had not interviewed grandchildren recovered from the Argentine dictatorship either. Of course he knew about the systematic theft of the girls and boys of the mothers they murdered, but he had never had a close talk with any of them. So when Tamara starts to tell me her story, she hits me like when you discover everything for the first time. In the case of Tamara, it really struck me that she was the only one of hers and I ask her how is it possible that she was like that. She explains to me the differences in the repression process of the Argentine and Chilean dictatorships and how in the case of Chile there has not been a memory repair policy. That is one of the reasons why Tamara decides to emigrate from Chile to Argentina because she cannot live in that society that she denies and does not try to recover that memory and that truth.
Maribel Acosta Damas- What is the story of Tamara Callejas that you later reflect on in the documentary?
Isadora Guardia- Tamara’s father was part of President Salvador Allende’s personal guard between 1970 and 1973. He trained in Cuba to later be part of that team. Her mother and her father are from a working-class background. When she is two years old, the blow occurs. First they arrest her father, torture him and kill him; and some time later they capture her mother and make her disappear. So she stays with her grandmother, and at the same time she goes out to look for her missing daughter. Then they arrest her and subject her to torture for three months. During that time, they create the legend that she was abandoned by her maternal grandmother and is eventually given up for adoption to an upper-middle-class family. This is how her life goes until she is 25 years old, when she ends up discovering the truth.
Maribel Acosta Damas- How was that process of discovering the truth for Tamara Callejas?
Isadora Guardia- She tells me that it was in adolescence that her suspicions began… She says that she felt that there was something in her life that did not fit, physically she did not look alike. Her Mapuche features did not match those of her supposed family. She has a Mapuche physique, different from all those around her. And in her search for identity she felt that she did not belong in that place. She asked her adoptive parents, but they lied to her every time. In fact, she tells me that one of the things that shocked her the most after discovering the truth was when she saw a photo of her biological mother with her as a baby for the first time. He saw that it was very similar to her as an adult. Today she continues to manage and process her grief and her identity reconstruction. That is why she leaves for Argentina, to feel accompanied among her equals.
Maribel Acosta Damas- The documentary is supported by two testimonies, in the manner of a mother and a daughter: Nora Cortiñas, the social psychologist and human rights activist from Argentina, co-founder of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, and Tamara Callejas, the Chilean woman journalist , recovered from the Pinochet dictatorship. And a sort of recurring dialogue occurs between a mother looking for her daughter and a daughter looking for her mother…
Maribel Acosta Damas- How did you achieve such a visceral testimony, in Tamara’s case, because of the unprecedented, the profound…?
Isadora Guardia- I think it’s part of an experience that makes documentaries about social and human conflicts. One approaches people who have within themselves great pain and hope at the same time. I approach topics from memory and they always take me down those paths. Then I try to establish a trust agreement with those people and the interview disappears to jump to the conversation between human beings, which is where people tell the truth. I do not agree with those myths that subscribe to the so-called post-truth era that you cannot trust anyone, that people lie. It isn’t true. People don’t lie through life. The media lie. But when people of flesh and blood tell you their life, they tell it from the truth and when that person feels that they care about you and that they can talk to you, then each story becomes a torrent of words and emotions that are the basis of any story. Tamara in particular has several traits that make her an excellent communicator: she is a trained journalist, she is very strong and vital and she conveys that exceptionally. She has an organized and essential speech. Interviewing her was so natural for me that I had the feeling of not having to do anything, just conversing with a woman that life had placed in front of her.
Maribel Acosta Damas- From that human bond and from that testimony, how was the documentary born?
Isadora Guardia- In reality, I recorded everything but the documentary I saw when I returned to Spain when reviewing the recorded testimonies on memory and repression, which were many and different. That’s when Tamara’s story jumps out at me, the only Chilean interviewee, the only daughter officially recovered, the woman who is still completing her story… And then I understood that the first piece of this recorded material was Tamara… without a doubt… The fact Nora Cortiñas appears in the documentary, it is about the relationship between them, very close, mother and daughter… a legacy of battles and struggles… And that determined the editing of the documentary: women in two voices…
Maribel Acosta Damas- Is this conception of yours related to what many women creators and researchers from all over the world are engaged in today, and which is to make women visible as places of memory, which has a very active reference in Spain?
Isadora Guardia- Women have always been in the historical transformations and have been the engine and support of them; sometimes in direct action and in other cases as the support of the family, of the children, of the house, of memory. In fact, there is something that impressed me in Nora Cortiñas’ narration, and it is how they organize themselves for the first time in the search for their sons and daughters and why they decide that Thursday is the day they agree to go out: And it is that you are Women, who were primarily breadwinners for their families, had Monday designated as laundry day, and each day a chore. So Thursdays were the days when they had the fewest domestic demands. And that’s how they became social fighters and transformed their lives and continued to support their homes and the lives of those in their care. In the case of the mothers of Plaza de Mayo, they became the leaders, but in many other political and social conflicts they sustained homes, life, and treasured the stories that later have been essential to recover historical memory, since they did not. they forgot, kept it and transmitted it to other women, mainly.
Maribel Acosta Damas- The documentary was presented at the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana before journalism students, which by the way aroused a lot of interest among young people. Have you submitted it before?
Isadora Guardia- The documentary has not been officially released anywhere. It has only been seen by Tamara, some colleagues… So it has been released for the first time here in Havana. And the experience with young people has been very emotional. Tamara wanted to come, but it was not possible. She then sent a short video that was also screened after the documentary. I felt very moved, the young audience was very proactive and became very involved in the story of the documentary and in the history of this Latin American section that must continue to be made visible to this day. They were also interested in the aesthetics of production… I am very happy!!!!
Maribel Acosta Damas- And what are the next steps for the documentary?
Isadora Guardia- Well, since this is an independent production, right now I’m trying to make the documentary grow. I talk to Tamara often and new things come out. And I am interested in continuing to explore more about the Chilean dictatorship and its links to Francoism, from a methodological point of view we could say… And now I want to continue documenting, investigating… seeing it grow and making creative decisions.
Maribel Acosta Damas- successes. Happy return!
Taken from Cuba in Summary
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