Enjuto Rangel, CeciliaPlescia, Mariko2021-09-132021-09-132021-09-13https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26688Time, Memory, and Justice in Chilean and Ecuadorian Documentary Film studies the relationship between a shift in temporality and emerging forms of political agency in Latin American documentary film. What became of the leftist New Latin American Cinema (1950s-80s) when repressive dictatorships, and then neoliberal politics, foreclosed the path to their alternative visions of the future? In this dissertation, I argue that for the generations of filmmakers working over the last 20 years, reassessment of the past—and the telling of the past—has become strategic ground to reclaim a sense of identity and the possibility of a future not over determined by earlier philosophical questions. While institutional measures paint the dictatorial past as distant, as if it had been replaced by neoliberal governments, documentary films Nostalgia de la luz (2010), Abuelos (2010), La muerte de Jaime Roldós (2013) and Con mi corazón en Yambo (2011) invite the spectator to see the disappeared, and the legacy of the dictatorships, as still very much present on ethical, emotional and material levels. Through cinematic reflexivity, archival remediation, embodied aesthetics, a focus on the material world, an appeal to affect, non-linear montage, and the incorporation of intimate family archives, these historical memory films move beyond the desire to prove the human rights violations. Instead, they question a concept of history based on the event and offer a subjective perspective that engages the spectator in an ethical relationship with collective history. By bringing into conversation the Pinochet Dictatorship in Chile and the Cold War period in Ecuador, and by focusing on alternative constructions of time (cosmic, geologic and biological), this research provokes a rereading of the shift toward neoliberalism through repressive governments. In addition to contributing to an emerging environmental humanities discourse, engaging these narratives of time destabilizes the Cold War narratives of democracy as synonymous with justice, and dictatorship as justified by the threat of communism. In their place, these films, and my analysis of them, foregrounds the push for market society as a historic impetus for violence in the region.en-USAll Rights Reserved.dictatorshipdocumentary filmeco-criticismLatin AmericamemorytimeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation