Quand les souvenirs affleurent : mémoire de la répression franquiste dans le film Santaella (2008) de Daniel Touati

Abstract

Realized in 2008, Santaella, is the first documentary of the French film maker Daniel Touati. The film relates the process of opening of the common grave of Santaella, where about thirty men victims of the Franco’s repression were buried at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Led by the association Foro por la Memoria, the work of excavations and exhumation of the bodies leads the relatives of the victims to entrust their memories of the repression to the camera. The evocation of the past since the present of narration is based on these testimonies, which occupy a central place in the film. By not using any archive footage, Daniel Touati rejects any element that could objectify the sensitive approach of the past he defends, and contributes to strengthen the memory discourse which his film carries.