Arantza Santesteban

Este curso propone una aproximación al concepto de imagen superviviente de Georges Didi-Huberman desde experiencias de trabajo material con archivos cinematográficos a cargo de investigadores, comisarios, artistas y cineastas. Las siete sesiones exploran diferentes proyectos que entienden el archivo como una constelación de materiales abiertos al montaje y la resignificación histórica y política, liberando las imágenes supervivientes del encierro o el olvido de la memoria dominante. El objetivo es promover una nueva función del archivo que, en lugar de consolidar los poderes hegemónicos, ayude a dibujar nuevos marcos de pensamiento y acción política a través de imágenes ignoradas, malinterpretadas y enterradas pero, también, supervivientes.

This article deals with three works made in 1975 by the feminist video collectives Les Insoumuses and Vidéa: La Marche de Femmes à Hendaye, Manifestation à Hendaye and Les Mères Espagnoles. It explores how these Parisian feminist video collectives engaged with Basque political activism in the wake of the final assassinations of the Franco regime in 1975. We trace the genealogies of these video tapes as well as those of the activist collectives that they represent, firstly looking at the complex relationship between feminist, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist collectives. We then look at these works as particular, situated examples of videographic border-crossing, looking at the relationship between borders and the frame. Through an analysis of faces and faciality, we look at how the videos develop an aesthetics and politics of resistance, and we analyse how they ultimately offer an alternative, politicised vision of motherhood, echoing and reinforcing the vision of motherhood offered by the mothers who are interviewed on the tapes. Ultimately the article argues that the prism offered by these extraordinary examples of DIY, feminist video-activism give us new insights into the ways in which we might rethink solidarity, offering alternative forms of genealogy through which to approach collective activism, echoing video genealogies, with their complex relationship to other forms of activist film, and feminist genealogies, with their sometimes fraught relationship with anti-fascist and leftist political activism in the context of the Long Sixties.

KEYWORDS:
Feminist genealogies, French feminist video activism, Anti-Francoist activism, Les Insoumuses, Vidéa