“ARE YOU READY TO BEAR WITNESS?": MEMORY OF CINEMA IN THE SILENCE OF OTHERS

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Since their first screenings, motion pictures have also functioned as documents. This recording of life is also an emphasis on the witnessing feature of cinema. Through movies, societies are witnessed to events that they usually do not witness through scenarios or documentary images. And documentaries are one of the film genres that enable witnessing in this way. The documentary film “The Silence of Others” (Carracedo and Bahar, 2018) tells the story of people who witnessed the social traumas during the Franco era in Spain and their struggle against the “Pact of Forgetting” in the country. The director is also involved in this process. This situation is important in showing how social traumas are represented in cinema and how films turn into a tool of remembrance. As a result of the research, important conclusions were reached about how cinema as a means of documentation witnesses societies to narratives about the past. One of the most important things that can be suggested based on this study is that narratives of the past should be examined not only as narratives of the past but also as narratives of the future.