(Dis)Appear, a film about memory, photography, and the Argentine dictatorship

Piotr Cieplak is an author, academic and award-winning filmmaker based in London Repurposed domestic photos of the disappeared have long been one of the main tools of resistance and commemoration in Argentina. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, marching with the portraits of their disappeared children, have become an iconic image associated with the dictatorship and its legacy. In 2023, I made a documentary exploring the relationship between photography, memory, and the forced disappearances and systematic murder in Argentina. In the wake of the 50th anniversary of the 1976 coup, we are thrilled to share (Dis)Appear with the Herald’s readers, especially at this critical juncture in Argentine memory politics. You will find the link to watch the film at the bottom of this story. (Dis)Appear tells the stories of Ana Iliovich, an author, psychologist, and survivor of clandestine detention center La Perla in Crdoba, and the photographer and artist Gabriel Orge. The latter is known for his large-scale projections of the photos of the disappeared in public spaces, carried out as part of his long-term project Apareciendo (Appearing). Together with the films co-writer, Mariana Tello Weiss, we didnt want to focus on the often-discussed foto-pancarta (usually a black-and-white portrait of a disappeared person) but decided to explore lesser-known and more unusual images connected to the dictatorship. Gabriel and Ana were both born and raised in the small city of Bell Ville. And thats where they return to in (Dis)Appear. Gabriel comes back to organize a commemorative projection of the photo of a local woman, Marta del Pilar Luque Depiante, murdered by the dictatorship. Ana and her brother, Lisandro, return to start a long-overdue conversation about a family photograph taken in 1977, when Ana was allowed to leave La Perla and visit her family for the first time since her kidnapping. Having been chosen by her captors and torturers to survive, Ana, after over a year of being kept in La Perla, was allowed to temporarily leave the concentration camp for short spells and visit Bell Ville.  During this period of monitored freedom, Anas family took many photographs to prove that Ana was alive and to try to prevent her from being killed. The photo we explore in (Dis)Appear was taken on her first visit home.  The other main storyline in (Dis)Appear is also connected to the complexity of appearing. We follow Gabriel Orge working on a projection of the photo of Marta del Pilar Luque Depiante. Just like Anas family portrait, the photo of Marta that Gabriel is using has a date printed on its wide border. It was something that used to happen in photographic laboratories at the time, the printing of the date on which the film was developed and the photograph produced.  This seemingly insignificant detail becomes powerfully poignant in both images: in Anas because she appears in the photo on the date when she was technically still disappeared and in Martas because the date on the photo is around three months after she was killed. In this way, (Dis)Appear became a film about two impossible photographs. Of course, its not the images that are impossible. Rather, they are made to appear so by the uncertainty, confusion, and lack of information that often accompany the crime of forced disappearance. (Dis)Appear was made with the support of the British Academy and the University of Sussex. It has screened widely in Argentina and internationally (including in Denmark, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, and the U.K.).