Silence is a falling body: from Intimate Archive to the Construction of Collective Memory

Abstract

This article analyzes Agustina Comedi's El silencio es un cuerpo que cae (2017). It examines how the director uses family archives to reconstruct a queer memory that challenges inherited silence, opening it up to the present as a political force. The film explores the boundaries between the intimate, private, and public, as well as the distinctions between fiction and documentary, while also serving as a mediation tool between generations. It raises questions about identity, grief, desire, and filiation. The movie acts as a critical and dialogical device, successfully making visible dissident identities in past and present heteronormative contexts, transforming the (auto)biographical into a collective narrative. The article also addresses the fragmentary, conflictive, and perpetually unfinished nature of memorial work, alongside the ethical dimension of recovering hidden records. Images, music, and words allow for imagining alternative ways of inhabiting history and family relationships.