Dismantling the Conspiracy: Memory and Post-Documentary in Pequeño diccionario ilustrado de la electricidad

Abstract

This text addresses an analysis the Argentine film Little Illustrated Dictionary of Electricity (2015), by Gustavo Galuppo and Carolina Rimini, an exemplary case of what we will call post-documentary. The film by the Rosario filmmakers distances itself from the classic documentary, which is presented as a discourse of truth, especially due to the open and explicit incorporation of fictional elements. But it also distances itself from the so-called memoir documentary, since it does not evoke the past through resources such as testimony or the first person. Through a dizzying montage, which takes the form of a disassembly (in the style of so-called found footage), and a story starring a character who, from the shadows, participates in different fundamental events of the 20th century, the filmmakers inscribe an endless number of suspicions on the archival images with the aim of unraveling the supposed conspiracy that allowed the dominance of capitalism. In this way, it expresses a declarative perspective that investigates the surface of the images as if it were possible to access the underground river of History.