Archive, Desire and Taming. A Reading from El silencio es un cuerpo que cae

Abstract

El silencio es un cuerpo que cae, by Agustina Comedi (2017), can be read as a question about the notion of the archive, which shifts towards the links between image, body and desire. The documentary essay delves into the gay past of the director’s late father, Jaime Comedi, a lawyer and a militant of the Vanguardia Comunista during the 1970s. The search is unleashed before the silence as per his daughter always surrounded his figure. First, she supposes that she will find something disturbing in his past: would he be an informer? However, a past erupts that unfolds in the gay scene of Córdoba from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. More than 100 hours of home videos found (found footage/home videos), are assembled and confronted with interviews the director conducts, photographs, the voice-over narrative that accompanies the images, and recreations inspired by this. The documentary essay slips from militancy and gay life in Córdoba, during the last military dictatorship, towards the materiality of the images in their link with desire, silence and gaze.