Ebook: Legacies of the Past: Memory and Trauma in Mexican Visual and Screen Cultures

Examines how trauma haunts the spaces and places of Mexican film and visual culture

• Case studies include Flor en Otomi, El Atentado, Los Poquianchis and Ausencias
• Covers a neglected area in Mexican film and visual studies
• A decade-long period of commemoration in Mexico (2010-2020) makes it a timely moment for reflection on memory and traumas of the past
• Engages in an interdisciplinary investigation of space and the spectral

Riven with unresolved traumas and appropriated by successive governments, the past haunts spaces in Mexican film and visual culture. These events, without consensus or a singular/unifying narrative, act like spectres haunting the present. To comprehend how they manifest, Legacies of the Past considers how filmmakers and visual artists have found ways of understanding these haunted spaces.

With case studies of films like El atentado (2010), Flor en Otomí (2012) and the photography of Dulce Pinzón, this collection analyses the audio-visual representations of several heightened events in Mexican history. The conbtributors’ explorations, imaginings and counter-imaginings bring the past to the foreground, creating new narratives and proposing new histories in order to show the significance of storytelling and narrative for a shared understanding of ourselves.