The Hope in Memory in A Twelve-Year Night, By Álvaro Brechner
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Authors
Coleman, Maile
Date of Issue
2024
Type
Presentation
Language
en_US
Subject Keywords
Other Titles
Abstract
The film A Twelve-Year Night, by the Uruguayan director Álvaro Brechner, narrates the real story of the captivity of three revolutionaries of the Tupamaros guerilla. These rebels, one of whom would be the future president of Uruguay, were imprisoned by the regime of Juan María Bordaberry’s civic-military dictatorship, and kept in uncommunicated confinement for twelve years. These three men lived in a manner in which no human should ever live, but they visited their memories in order to survive with hope. According to Jorge Majfud in “The Memories of Oblivion'', “[la] mayor virtud [del cine Latinoamericano] es la interrogación, la trascendencia más allá del hecho cinematográfico: el rescate de la memoria colectiva” (“[the] greatest virtue [of Latin American cinema] is the interrogation, the transcendence beyond the cinematographic fact: the rescue of the collective memory”). Taking into account that in this film we witness these men cling to their memories, as well as to the collective memories of their country before the civic-military dictatorship, we can ask how can the collective memory of life before captivity inspire these men in a time of oppression and corruption? In this essay I affirm that in A Twelve-Year Night we can explore how the hope that memory gave these three men influenced their resistance. Also, I will reveal how, through their collective memory, the men found hope in the midst of the statism of their stolen time. Finally, I will demonstrate that this hope then feeds resistance in an age of oppression and corruption.