Hijos guerrilleros: Childhood Militancy and Cinematic Memory

Abstract

This Chapter engages with debates over creativity and subjectivity in postmemorial cinematic representations of violence. Through an analysis of Benjamín Ávila’s Infancia clandestina (2011) and Paula Markovitch’s El premio (2011), the chapter examines how these directors rehistoricize and repoliticize of the figure of the 1970s left-wing revolutionary. The chapter argues that, rather than assuming the role of innocent victims, the child protagonists in these films are invested with social and political agency, which manifests itself principally through their critical attitudes towards their parents’ revolutionary politics and through their awareness of the danger it poses to their own domestic safety. The chapter ultimately argues that both films subvert and complicate any straightforward idea of victimhood, denying any heightened spectatorial identification by visually distancing the viewer from the child victim.