Lisandro Alonso’s La Libertad and Los Muertos: The Dual Forest

Abstract

In the films La Libertad and Los Muertos directed by Lisandro Alonso, the forest stands as a production site. In La Libertad, a young woodcutter walks around a wooded area that appears on screen as a resource to be exploited. The temporal breadth of the shots shows the work progressing and depicts the bleak life of the woodcutter, who fells trees, transports them and sells the lumber. This chapter shows that in La Libertad, the forest is a resource, but, in Los Muertos, however, it is a predatory and ungenerous place. The analysis emphasizes that those two films represent forests in radically different ways. It is a hinterland, in Los Muertos, an alcove in the landscape, the site of a double homicide; in La Libertad, the forest is exploited for its natural resources, a place of work and life.