Estela Bravo's "Quién Soy Yo?" ("Who am I?" US/Argentina/UK, 2007) had its U.S. premiere at the 9th annual Havana Film Festival in New York on April 12, 2008. This documentary traces the struggle of the families of those who disappeared during the infamous Argentine "Dirty War" of 1976-1983 to discover the fate of their loved ones and to recover the kidnapped children of those who perished. The film's organizational core is the women's group known as the "Mothers (later the Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo," who became world famous for their weekly demonstrations in the center of Buenas Aires. The group puts the total of the disappeared at 30,000 and estimates that at least 500 children were taken from their murdered mothers and given or sold for adoption by military officers and by families loyal to the military dictatorship. As the result of their relentless, decades-long campaigns -- which included the widespread posting of photos of mothers and babies, emotional presentations to school classes and modern DNA analysis -- the Grandmothers were able to restore their proper identities to nearly 90 young adults, most of whom have reestablished connections with their biological relatives. Interviews with these young people, with those who knew their lost parents and visits to the sites of the concentration camps constitute the bulk of the film.
Bravo is a skilled interviewer and elicits many touching comments from her subjects, including the grandmother-leaders of the movement. Other compelling footage includes the end of the trial and sentencing of the junta leaders (Videla and most of the other Generals got life imprisonment; Galtieri -- who launched the Falklands War -- inexplicably got only 15 years) and the final statements and sentencing in trials of two particularly notorious torturer- murderers: a police official and a prison guard. A surprisingly poignant moment in the film came during a speech delivered to a huge crowd by recent President Néstor Kirchner: he apologized for ignoring the issue of the disappeared during the previous 20 years of his political life.
It is hard to imagine that anyone but the most hardened reactionary could come away from this film without being touched. Nevertheless, as the film progressed, this reviewer experienced a rising sense of outrage at the filmmaker. Whatever Bravo's interior politics, her external posture is that of liberal political naiveté. Why (you may ask) were 30,000 people subjected to illegal arrest and imprisonment and -- many -- to the most brutal of tortures and deaths? As the bereaved are heard to say throughout: "for their unconventional ideas," "because they struggled for a better world" etc. etc. The words "socialism," "communism," "revolution" and the like are steadfastly avoided, as if using them would somehow taint or demean the victims, some of whom were not highly political. The filmmaker certainly could have found people qualified to speak about the ideologies and affiliations of the most political of the victims but she evidently believed this aspect of the "Dirty War" was best not talked about. Thus, the ideals held by many of these martyrs -- that for which they lived and died -- were not a subject fit for presentation in a film about their martyrdom!
No socially-aware viewer can fail to notice that many of the victims had Jewish-sounding names. Several survivors describe jailers who were openly pro-Nazi. Anti-Jewish bigotry is nothing new in Argentina. For example, the massive government suppression of organized labor in Buenas Aires in 1919 was the occasion of an officially-sanctioned pogrom (the "Semana Tragica" -- Tragic Week). Toward the end of the film, several speakers, including the Grandmothers' leader, use the word "genocide" to describe the mass slaughter. What does this mean? Was the "Dirty War" intended to annihilate a specific ethnic group? No doubt many fascistic elements in the Argentine military and police were keen to kill Jews but the main purpose of the "Dirty War" was POLITICAL: the extermination of the LEFT. The erroneous use of the term "genocide" in the film only serves to obscure this fact.
In keeping with her pretended agnosticism of the political nature of the "Dirty War," Estela Bravo also does not bother to inform her audience of either of the following:
1. The Argentine "Dirty War" was but one component of "Operation Condor," the 1970s CIA- sponsored program of eradicating leftists carried out by SIX right-wing regimes in the "Southern Cone."
2. The film notes repeatedly that democratic rule was restored in Argentina in 1983. What caused that restoration? Although there was significant public opposition all during the rule of the Generals, the public turned against them massively and decisively only after their insane 1982 military adventure in the Falklands/Malvinas ended in ignominious defeat at the hands of British Imperialism.
Bravo's "Who Am I?" succeeds well enough within the self-imposed confines of an apolitical human-interest story combining tragedy and triumph. Those desiring political and historical enlightenment, however, will have to look elsewhere.
Barry Freed
Bravo is a skilled interviewer and elicits many touching comments from her subjects, including the grandmother-leaders of the movement. Other compelling footage includes the end of the trial and sentencing of the junta leaders (Videla and most of the other Generals got life imprisonment; Galtieri -- who launched the Falklands War -- inexplicably got only 15 years) and the final statements and sentencing in trials of two particularly notorious torturer- murderers: a police official and a prison guard. A surprisingly poignant moment in the film came during a speech delivered to a huge crowd by recent President Néstor Kirchner: he apologized for ignoring the issue of the disappeared during the previous 20 years of his political life.
It is hard to imagine that anyone but the most hardened reactionary could come away from this film without being touched. Nevertheless, as the film progressed, this reviewer experienced a rising sense of outrage at the filmmaker. Whatever Bravo's interior politics, her external posture is that of liberal political naiveté. Why (you may ask) were 30,000 people subjected to illegal arrest and imprisonment and -- many -- to the most brutal of tortures and deaths? As the bereaved are heard to say throughout: "for their unconventional ideas," "because they struggled for a better world" etc. etc. The words "socialism," "communism," "revolution" and the like are steadfastly avoided, as if using them would somehow taint or demean the victims, some of whom were not highly political. The filmmaker certainly could have found people qualified to speak about the ideologies and affiliations of the most political of the victims but she evidently believed this aspect of the "Dirty War" was best not talked about. Thus, the ideals held by many of these martyrs -- that for which they lived and died -- were not a subject fit for presentation in a film about their martyrdom!
No socially-aware viewer can fail to notice that many of the victims had Jewish-sounding names. Several survivors describe jailers who were openly pro-Nazi. Anti-Jewish bigotry is nothing new in Argentina. For example, the massive government suppression of organized labor in Buenas Aires in 1919 was the occasion of an officially-sanctioned pogrom (the "Semana Tragica" -- Tragic Week). Toward the end of the film, several speakers, including the Grandmothers' leader, use the word "genocide" to describe the mass slaughter. What does this mean? Was the "Dirty War" intended to annihilate a specific ethnic group? No doubt many fascistic elements in the Argentine military and police were keen to kill Jews but the main purpose of the "Dirty War" was POLITICAL: the extermination of the LEFT. The erroneous use of the term "genocide" in the film only serves to obscure this fact.
In keeping with her pretended agnosticism of the political nature of the "Dirty War," Estela Bravo also does not bother to inform her audience of either of the following:
1. The Argentine "Dirty War" was but one component of "Operation Condor," the 1970s CIA- sponsored program of eradicating leftists carried out by SIX right-wing regimes in the "Southern Cone."
2. The film notes repeatedly that democratic rule was restored in Argentina in 1983. What caused that restoration? Although there was significant public opposition all during the rule of the Generals, the public turned against them massively and decisively only after their insane 1982 military adventure in the Falklands/Malvinas ended in ignominious defeat at the hands of British Imperialism.
Bravo's "Who Am I?" succeeds well enough within the self-imposed confines of an apolitical human-interest story combining tragedy and triumph. Those desiring political and historical enlightenment, however, will have to look elsewhere.
Barry Freed
