Toponimia

From toponymy, a branch of linguistics, to politics, the links can be quite unexpected. These are which are sought to be revealed in the new film by Jonathan Perel who uses his filmwork as a tool to explore and accurately document the marks left by previous dictators of Argentina. We are in the province of Tucuman, in the north of Argentina, an emblematic region where the fi rst Act of Independence in South America was signed in 1816 and where the “Operation Independence” took place in 1974, during which the guerillas’ insurgence was violently repressed. A repression which was even extended to the urban areas. How? By setting up a series of new villages built according to the same guidelines, and whose structures adher to a specific political project. Perel systematically unfolds these spaces, one after the other: the place, the inscription of its identity, the monument dedicated to the person whose name it bears, fighters who died during the struggles with the guerillas, the church, yet without ignorng its ordinary housing and streets. A disturbing repetition which reveals in four chapters identical to one another the harshness of the system, each one opening with the offi cial documents of the founding of these villages, filming the gloominess of the places today. A systematic approach that deafens the fearfulness of the project, from one place to the next, rhythmed like a metronome, drawing upon the layout of the landscape, its relics and exhaustion.
(Nicolas Féodoroff, FIDMarseille 2015)