The Contemporary in the Film My Imaginary Country

Dittus R.

Keywords: social outbreak, documentary cinema, Patricio Guzmán, being contemporary

Abstract

. For the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, contemporaneity moves away from what is untimely or extraordinarily current. To be contemporary would be to have a unique relationship with one's own time, which consists of accepting it and, at the same time, distancing oneself: something like a temporal consciousness, but that shares a voluntary and rational distancing. This work analyzes the application of this notion to the documentary My imaginary country (2022), by director Patricio Guzman. The film records the consequences of the citizen revolt that occurred in the weeks after October 2019, where one and a half million people demonstrated in the streets of Santiago, Chile, with demands that questioned the neoliberal economic model and Pinochet's Constitution. Through a semiotic reading of its story and politic discourse, a film that seeks to be more than a mere record is dissected, and where the death of the author appears highly improbable.

Más información

Título según WOS: The Contemporary in the Film My Imaginary Country
Título de la Revista: DESIGNIS
Número: 42
Editorial: FEDERACION LATINOAMERICANA SEMIOTICA
Fecha de publicación: 2025
Página de inicio: 89
Página final: 97
Idioma: English
DOI:

10.35659/designis.i42p89-97

Notas: ISI