Film constitutes a powerful cultural tool that operates in multiple ways in the rescue of memories, as well as in the collective reparation and interdisciplinary conceptualization of traumatic experiences in communities devastated by systematic violations of their fundamental rights. It reviews and makes perceptible the prolongations of silenced or legitimized political violence both in the individual and in the social fabric disrupted by disturbing traces that disrupt existence and coexistence. Cinematographic works do not only refer to the past but, above all, question the conventional patterns used to articulate past, present and future in order to explore possible horizons. As detonators of memory and generators of consciousness, they strengthen different modi memorandi that deal with the still too active violent past.

 
Bruno López Petzoldt holds a doctorate in philology and film studies from the University of Hamburg in Germany. His areas of expertise include theories of film and literature, memory studies and intermediality. He was a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Romance Philologies and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Hamburg. He was also a visiting professor at the Hamburg Film and Media Academy and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholar in Argentina and Brazil. He is currently a research professor at the Latin American Institute of Art, Culture and History of the Federal University of Latin American Integration in Brazil.