Paper short abstract:

Chilean post-authoritarian cinema allegorizes a fragmented nation facing its own displaced affects and traumas, as well as its longing for recovery. Moreover, it has taken up the task of filling the gaps created by years of terror by imagining a possible continuation of socio-cultural projects forced to disappear.

Paper long abstract:

In Chile, the return to “the democracy of agreements” settled between the military and the political elite, entailed not only the enforcement of the Amnesty Laws set up by the authoritarian regime, but also the imposition of strategies for reconciliation that attempted to regulate cultural memory through political means. The suppression of anti-capitalist cultural projects and individuals carried out by state-sponsored terrorism since September 11, 1973 has been continued by the four democratic administrations since 1990. Instead of resorting to political violence, however, these administrations have checked these endeavours by displacing or burying communal memory. Chilean popular art articulates this void and allegorizes a fragmented nation facing its own displaced affects and traumas, as well as its longing for recovery. Moreover, aesthetic languages, in particular film, has taken up the monumental task of filling the gaps created by 17 years of terror by imagining a possible continuation and evolution of socio-cultural projects previously forced, suddenly and violently, to disappear.