Mediated collective memories: films

Imagining Argentina (2003): the film takes place during the ‘Dirty War’ in the 1970s Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the military regime is abducting those opposed to its rule. Cecilia, a dissident journalist, is kidnapped by the police to join the ranks of the ‘disappeared’. As her husband Carlos, a theatre director, begins to search frantically for her, he realises that he has acquired psychic power that enables him to predict the future. This not only puts him in high demand by those who have also lost a loved one, it helps Carlos to forsee what happens to his wife and other detainess.

Director: Christopher Hampton

Cast

Carlos - Antonio Banderas

Cecilia - Emma Thompson

Victor Madrid - Horacio Flash

Teresa - Leticia Dolera

Gustavo Santos - Kuno Becker

In remembering there are external facts which makes a significant to the process. Features of the environment may trigger this internal cognitive process. These features can play a key role in driving cognitive processes. They not only activate our memories, but also contribute to their making.

Films are an important cultural tool not only to reproduce what was said about the past, but also to produce new discourses based on another perspectives. Due to its massive circulation, historical films may shape social representations of the past which can be incorporated into personal narrations. Numeroues studies in the field of memory have shown, that in several cases, it’s quite difficult to distinguish which details of autobiographical memories are based on events that we really experienced and which are acquired through interaction. Thus, films can play a key role in constructing memories, in those cases they need to be more accurate for the sake of the story we present to others.