Among the political documentaries produced in Chile in the postauthoritarian era there
is a significant corpus of films that carry out a meticulous process of forensic memory. Both
documentaries that dig through skeletal remains and those that excavate the memories of
surviving victims or witnesses of state terror are carrying out similar archaeological forensic
work. They examine records that, rather than simply evidencing past violence, exhibit
the fractures (subjective and discursive) from which the past may be reconstructed. By
focusing on these tasks the films La ciudad de los fotógrafos (Sebastián Moreno, 2007),
El juez y el general (Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco, 2008), and El diario
de Agustín (Ignacio Agüero, 2008) become media for reflection that makes it possible for
viewers to confront their own history—in order to make ethical judgments that allow them
to assume personal and collective responsibility in the face of a history that they have lived
or have assimilated through a process of “post-memory.” To the question posed by Arendt—
whether thinking can help to correct and eradicate acts of radical evil—we could respond
that postauthoritarian Chilean documentary finds itself dealing precisely with this possibility
through accounts that, by means of personal experience and sifting through one’s
own biographical ruins, call on spectators to delve into their own fears and complicities.