Repositorium für die Medienwissenschaft Delia González de Reufels Image Migration and History: The End of the Chilean Military Dictatorship in Pablo Larraín's Feature Film NO! 2018 https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/14793 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: González de Reufels, Delia: Image Migration and History: The End of the Chilean Military Dictatorship in Pablo Larraín's Feature Film NO!. In: Research in Film and History. The Long Path to Audio-visual History (2018), Nr. 1, S. 1– 12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/14793. Erstmalig hier erschienen / Initial publication here: https://film-history.org/issues/text/image-migration-and-history Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Creative Commons - This document is made available under a creative commons - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0/ Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives 4.0/ License. For Lizenz zur Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu dieser Lizenz more information see: finden Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 1 Image Migration and History: The End of the Chilean Military Dictatorship in Pablo Larraín's Feature Film NO! Delia González de Reufels Published: November 23, 2018 Figure 1.NO, DVD Sony Pictures Home Entertainment © original copyright holders Introduction Almost twenty-five years after the end of the Chilean military dictatorship had 1. They were discussed already been initiated with a national referendum, the feature film NO/NO! (CHL/ immediately after the transition to democracy and then again at USA/ F 2012) by the Chilean director Pablo Larraín re-opened the discussion the beginning of the new about the referendum and its long-term consequences.1 Like all the feature millennium, for example on the films that addressed the issue of the military dictatorship, which lasted sixteen basis of the memories of the Junta general Matthei. See, for years under Augusto Pinochet, NO! also had to confront numerous existing example, Isabel De la Maza and media images and the memories of that time, which are coded acoustically. Patricia Arancibia Clavel, And indeed, Larraín, who based his film on an unpublished play Matthei. Mi testimonio (Santiago by the de Chile 2003). Research in Film and History ‣ Issue 1 2018 ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Research in Film and History. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons BY–NC–ND 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 2 Chilean author Antonio Skármeta, found a way to deal with these images, which, in keeping with academic art and film studies on the “migration of images”, will be termed 'image migration' for the purpose of this article and made fruitful for historical analysis.2 2. See Dennis Vidal, “La migration des images. Historire de l’art et cinéma documentaire,” in The process of image migration plays an outstanding role in the feature film L’Homme, 165 (2003): 249–266, NO!, for it characterises the narrative flow, determines the aesthetic style and esp.: 249ff. is indispensable for the message conveyed, which is why this feature film will be examined in detail here as an example of the migration of images and its effects. This process, which is being used more frequently now, and not only by Chilean directors, has photographs and archival footage “migrate” from the time presented into feature films, in other words they are integrated specifically as historical images and sounds. It is one of the basic assumptions of this essay that this is done in order to arouse associations with existing images of 3. See Tobias Ebbrecht, “Sekundäre Erinnerungsbilder. Visuelle 3 recollection and to give the films greater credibility or authenticity, and, at the Stereotypen in Filmen über same time, with the intention of placing the shown historical events and Holocaust und Nationalsozialismus seit den 1990er Jahren,” in Medien- processes in new contexts by using historical media images and films or Zeit-Zeichen. Beiträge des 19. Film- excerpts from them. In this way they are not only narrated differently but also und Fernsehwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums, ed. Christian differently evaluated. This occurs inevitably, due to the feature film’s presence, Hissnauer and Andreas Jahn- illuminating past events and processes and at the same time making a statement Sudmann (Marburg 2007), 37–44, about the time in which the film itself was made and the political and social esp.: 40f. contexts in which it was made. As—at least potentially—a new historical narration or even a counter-narration, the films about the Chilean dictatorship that are realised with the means of image migration are of particular interest, for, according to the interpretation followed here, image migration serves not only to reprocess the past in the media in greater proximity to the images of collective memory but also to comment critically on the most recent history and the ways it is understood. 4. On this concept see: Ana Ros, The Post-Dictatorship-Generation in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (New Significantly, in many cases the directors who make use of image migration are York 2012). those who have little or no personal experience of the military dictatorship 5. Julian Paul Smith, “At the Edge of because they were too young to do so. They are the Chilean 'post-dictatorship' History,” in Film Quarterly 64:2 generation,4 which can in fact no longer include the director Pablo Larraín, (2010): 12. who was born in 1976, but for whom the years of dictatorship are 6. Larraín’s tryptich of the military dictatorship includes the movies similarly a “puzzle” and whose “silent, strange atmosphere” he wants to TONY MANERO (2008), POST capture in his films in order to better understand it.5 Until now this approach MORTEM (2010), NO! (2012). 6 has led to three works on the subject, which rank among the series of recent 7. Since 2000 about 17 films on this films about the dictatorship in Chile7 and make a contribution to memory theme have been premiered, including those by Pablo Larraín and the work of recollection. The political scientist Alison Brysk insists already named and the following: that the latter is necessary in order to overcome the experience of MACHUCA (Andrés Wood, 2004); MI MEJOR ENEMIGO (Alex dictatorship or for society as a whole to recover from it, for: “Recovery Bowen, 2005); DAWSON. ISLA10 begins with memory […]”.8 This regeneration through memory with the (Miguel Littín, 2009); LA PASSION DE MICHELANGELO (Esteban employment of familiar images of recollection or through the provision of Larraín, 2013). historical media images in new contexts is one of the characteristic qualities of 8. Alison Brysk, “Recovering from recent films about the Chilean military dictatorship. In the case of NO!, in State Terror. The Morning After in calling for a debate on the present, this memory work goes beyond that, Latin America,” in Latin American Research Review 38:1 (2003): 238– because here—as is to be shown later— a double image migration comes 247, here: 239. into view. The appeal to a critical revaluation of the present by means of an 9. See for example Burton’s historical feature film also reveals the political dimension of NO!, which statement in: Julianne Burton, suggests the political attitude of Latin American films in general.9 This Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with political attitude is underlined by image migration here; however, it has Filmmakers (Austin 1986): ix. Research in Film and History 1 2018 ‣ Delia González de Reufels ‣ Image Migration and History 3 also caused the director to be accused of distorting the historical processes in 10. One spoke of “historical half- an ahistorical way.10 truths in the movie”, for example: Olga Khazan, “Four Things the Movie NO left out about Real-Life Chile,” in The Atlantic, March 4, 2013, accessed March 4, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/ international/archive/2013/03/4- things-the-movie-no-left-out- about-real-life-chile/274491 11. Cf., for example: Marc Ferro, “Gibt es eine filmische Sicht der Geschichte?,” in Bilder schreiben Geschichte: der Historiker im Kino, ed. Rainer Rother (Berlin 1991), 17–36; Figure 2. Historical footage and the election campaign in NO! Günter Riederer, “Film und Geschichtswissenschaft. Zum aktuellen Verhältnis einer And yet NO!, on the one hand, uses historical footage to convey the history of schwierigen Beziehung,” in the campaign that was to bring Chileans into the voting booth and lead to a Visual History. Ein Studienbuch, rejection of any continuation of the dictatorship in the plebiscite of 5 October ed. Gerhard Paul (Göttingen 1988. Its images and sounds are consequently at the centre of the film. On the 2006), 96–113. other hand, the history of the campaign is rewritten with the use of pictures that 12. Gertrud Koch, have been little noticed until now and a statement is made on the character and “Nachstellungen- Film und historischer Moment,” in Die consequences of the referendum. How image migration can help to bring Gegenwart der Vergangenheit. Chilean past and present into contact with each other and why this process is Dokumentarfilm, Fernsehen und important from the point of view of historical study is at the centre of the Geschichte, ed. Eva Hohenberger and Judith present essay, which is deliberately located at the intersection of history and Keilbach