Acts of Memory in the Jewish Argentine Cinematic Present

Abstract

is always problematic, usually deceptive, sometimes treacherous.-Yosef Hayim YerushalmiIn her text Family Secrets: Acts of and Imagination, Annette Kuhn claims: we take stories of childhood and family literally, I think our recourse to this past is a way of reaching for myth, for the story that is deep enough to express the profound feelings we have in the present.1 Gabriel Lichtmann (b. 1974, Buenos Aires) and Ariel Winograd (b. 1977, Buenos Aires) launched their first feature films in 2006: Jews in Space and Cheese Head-My First Ghetto, respectively. Both Jewish Argentine directors and screenplay writers place their childhood and family memory within a fictional space where, as Kuhn explains, remembering takes place in the present. They are storytellers who utilize memory as their main muse: they shape and reshape this malleable substance until they develop what they recall-not the truth (or what truth represents), but a form of it that embodies the memory. Walter Benjamin states: Memory creates a chain of tradition which passes a happening on from generation to generation. It is the Muse-derived element of the epic art in a broader sense and encompasses its varieties. In the first place among these is the one practiced by the storyteller. It starts the web which all stories together form in the end. One ties on to the next, as the great storytellers, particularly the Oriental ones, have always readily shown.2 Both Winograd and Lichtmann weave their stories based on their own accounts, as well as on those of their families'. They echo events from the past that have made it through different generations and reformulate them in their own storytelling experiences. These experiences are linked to feelings in order to be stored and recalled (and put into language)-eventually becoming a representation of memory.This essay focuses on a younger generation of Jewish Argentine artists who present a type of collective memory removed from storylines based on the traditional narrative within the Jewish community: the Shoah and the most recent military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). Although referring to both major events, Jews in Space and Cheese Head-My First Ghetto seek a space to tell stories related to the memory and identity of this younger generation: as Argentines, they tap into their (and their families') Jewish memory to connect to their Argentine present. Lichtmann's and Winograd's approach showcases the intermingling of their culture/faith with their nationality-both intrinsic and undisputed features of the films' main characters' lives-as a natural consequence of their families' choices.3 These filmmakers' platforms contain versions of past events that involve the usage of remembrance as a connection to the present. Their works contrast with Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida in that Barthes does not want to show us a photograph of his mother as a child, claiming we, as readers, could not grasp the picture's piercing quality.4 In contrast, Lichtmann and Winograd deliberately recreate and display memory, as their films flirt with being part of the archive yet concern themselves with connecting with the present.The articulation of memory begins with the aesthetic proposed in each film. Cheese Head concerns itself with a dose of accuracy, as Winograd transfers details of his own past, such as the brand and color of the family's car and the members of his family's gated community's soccer club (utilizing his own father and uncle in the film), while providing an inner look at the protagonist's puberty issues. Accurately recreating a Jewish gated community in the 1990s in Argentina could make the spectators feel estranged, but the coming-of-age story works as a universal connection to a wider audience. As Tzvi Tal notes, [T]he protagonists are faced directly with the social control mechanism, with discourse, and with ideology, ascribing to them at once an assumed standpoint of innocence. …