Trace and Defamiliarization in Contemporary Documentary (Víctor Erice and Eloy Enciso Cachafeiro)

Abstract

Through the concept of Critical Regionalism and its relation to image and temporality, this chapter examines the cinematic genre of “false documentary” by analyzing the work of filmmakers Eloy Enciso Cachafeiro (Arraianos) and Victor Erice (Vidros Rotos). It attempts to rethink the notion of regional cultural memory and its relation to forms of temporality. By drawing upon the formal specificities of these two films, one on the daily lives of the inhabitants of the border region between Galicia and Portugal, and the other on the worker testimonies of the closing of a Portuguese factory in 2002, the essay examines the formal tensions underlying the construction of national critical regionalisms through the aesthetic expression of space, time, voice, distance, proximity, and historicity. The films I work with construct a mark of historicity that emerges in the interstice between documentary form (ethnography, cinema verite, social space, historical archive, etc.) and aesthetic form (language, the use of light, sound, and movement), and converge to orient an ultimate significance that will be unveiled, through interpretative collaboration, by the spectator.