René Ballesteros
La quemadura - Film - 2009
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 11
Film
René and Karin, the filmmaker and his sister, set off on the track of their mother who left Chile for venezuela in 1982. they haven't seen her since that time. the only physical trace she left was a collection of books published by "Quimantú" that were prohibited during the long Chilean military dictatorship. René makes telephone contact with his mother, records the conversations, and starts to shoot the film. Karin is a researcher specializing in censorship and the destruction of books. Structured around the progress of this brother and sister, in the film the subject of the censorship and destruction of the books in a narrow family circle intersects with the broader topic of cultural vandalism meted out by the dictatorship. In their search, sister and brother will scour public and private libraries, collections of archives, disused printing works, and swimming pools. they will meet retired printers, historians, an indigenous shaman, members of their family whom they had not seen for a long time, and others they will never see again. As they crisscross the country, the voice of their mother on the telephone both guides and misleads them. In their effort to understand, to recover fragments of a mutilated memory, to give body to their mother's ghostly voice on the telephone, to finally exorcise this phantom member of their family, the siblings will cross all Latin America. The piece is dedicated to the memory of Eduvina Bustamante (1923-2009).
