From the village to the living village: : elderly women and community cinema in rural Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article problematizes the notion of pueblo (community) and the forms of representation through the reflections of Georges Didi-Huberman, situating the analysis in the experience of a film workshop held at the Centro de Jubilados Virgen del Pilar in Agustín Roca, within the framework of the program Adultos Mayores con Derechos (Older Adults with Rights). In this context, women assume a central role as protagonists and producers of the audiovisual narrative, displacing the condition of figurants and generating a space of visibility, identity construction, and re-signification of collective memory. The pueblo thus appears as a backdrop that challenges: a stage of institutions, public spaces, and community ties, but also as a lived territory re-signified in the narration of older women.

In dialogue with the third edition of the contest Mayores con Derechos, which promotes reflection on the struggle and conquest of the rights of Older Adults, the article shows that analyzing the representation of the pueblo and of figurants is fundamental to understanding cinema as a tool for social transformation. Through the interpellation of affects, audiovisual practice is configured as a device of memory and agency, capable of making historically marginalized subjectivities visible and opening a critical horizon in which Older Adults, and particularly women, recognize themselves as active subjects of rights and narration.