The Representation of Vulnerable Sectors of Society in Argentinian Documentary Film: The Struggle for the Recovery of Jobs and Family Portraits

Abstract

The first years of the millennium proved to be one of the moments of greatest documentary film production in Argentina, because of technological, legal and especially social changes with the political-economic crisis that culminated in the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa in late 2001. The struggle for the recovery of factories on the verge of bankruptcy by workers and the portraits of the cartoneros were the privileged narratives during the period being portrayed immediately and insistently in a impressive number of documentaries. This article proposes an analysis of the argentinian documentary film production focused on these two social sectors formed during the neoliberalism of the nineties. The main objective is to investigate the ways in which the subjects are presented, the articulation of characters with collective features and the narratives articulated in two sets of films, addressed as “thematic series”, establishing a dialogue between them and their social representations.