Evidence and Absence: Documenting the Desaparecidos of Argentina.

Thousands of people were secretly kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Argentina's military dictatorship from 1976–1983. Since concrete information about this period of repression remains scarce, history must be cobbled together from fragments: photos, memories, and stories. In the period since the dictatorship, filmmakers have contributed to this fractured history by telling stories of the Desaparecidos through documentaries. This essay analyzes several specific types of visual representation utilized in these films. These include testimonial interviews, personal photographs, visual evidence of events, visual documentation of pilgrimages to significant places, and symbolic representations of family legacy. Using these techniques, the films under consideration become part of a process towards the creation and transmission of social memory about the traumatic and contested past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]