Democratising memory: intersections of past and present temporalities in Chilean documentary cinema and their impact on political memory

Recent social protests in Chile invite us to examine the diverse narratives of memory present in the cinematic documentation of the uprising and their relationship to Chilean historical memory. The article seeks to reflect on the following questions: How do the temporalities of the past and present intersect in the documentaries studied, and what implications does this have for political memory in Chile?. In order to address this discussion, three key documentaries will be analysed that allow us to explore this temporal intersection and its relationship to political memory: Mi país imaginario/My Imaginary Country (Patricio Guzmán, 2023), Resistencia, Voz y Voto/Resistance, Voice and Vote (Nosotras Audiovisuales, 2022), and Punto de encuentro/Meeting Point (Roberto Baeza, 2020). Through these films, the article aims to investigate three main axes: how the 2019 uprising is portrayed, the role of women as political subjects through which memory is narrated, and how this memory contributes to the construction of social memory in Chile.
These cinematic narratives will be examined to consider whether the memory constructed in these documentaries can possess an intersectional quality that democratises history. Recognising that a singular memory cannot exist and that there are, instead, multiple memories (Jelin 2002, 2011; Cruz and Ramírez 2018), this study seeks to create space for different voices that offer interpretations of the past shaped by the interests of the present.