Abstract
The 1985 film Tangos: el exilio de Gardel portrays the complex processes of identity rearticulation experienced by Southern Cone exiles who left their countries in the 1970s, as military dictatorships were taking power. The analysis presented in this article focuses on the materiality of this cultural production. It stresses how the film both embodies the memory of the exilic experience and shapes the perception and practice of that memory in society. The article identifies three layers of materiality in the film – the film itself, the cultural production the characters try to stage, and the objects and places in the exiles’ everyday lives and proposes that these layers constitute an alternative form of communicating ideas. The emphasis is placed on how objects and places can become the guardians of memory but can also be resignified in new iterations, when transposed to new contexts. From this perspective, the article seeks to contribute to ongoing efforts to bring the voice of exiles into current debates about the reconstruction of the memory of the dictatorships in Southern Cone countries. By bringing back the memories as they were materialised in the film, the article stresses the contradictions and the resistance aspects of the exilic experience and offers an alternative to the highly polarised positions that characterise these debates in the region.
Highlights
‘desligado de todo, fuera del tiempo, un extranjero, tejido por la trama del destierro. ¿Cómo será la patria dentro de cien años? ¿Quién nos recordará? A nosotros ¿quién nos recordará?’1
Perón died only a year after this election, and the differences between these groups, which ranged from trades unions to urban guerrillas, were aggravated by disputes regarding the legitimate inheritance of the movement and the direction the country’s politics should take
The film’s main character, Juan Dos (Miguel Angel Solá) is writing a play defined as Tanguedia – a mix of tango, comedy and tragedy – which reflects the experience of exile and what precedes it
Summary
The film, as an object, embodies social relations because it is an effect of the experience of exile. The film’s main character, Juan Dos (Miguel Angel Solá) is writing a play defined as Tanguedia – a mix of tango, comedy and tragedy – which reflects the experience of exile and what precedes it It is not he, who tells us the story in the film, but María (Gabriela Toscano), the daughter of an exiled woman who is the main actress in the Tanguedia and the partner of Juan Dos – Mariana (Marie Laforêt). The film evolves in sequences and events, separated by numbered parts and introductory titles These constant interruptions in the storyline, a format which Solanas had already used in his film La Hora de los Hornos and only later became common in post-exilic cinema (Naficy, 2010: 15), seeks to keep the audience’s attention and prevent them from being passive somnolent observers (François, 2005). Especially after positive reviews by specialised local and international critics, Tangos started to be regarded as a key contribution towards the reconstruction of the memory of the dictatorships and became a cult movie of the transition decade (Andermann, 2012: 3)
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