Some reviews of
“Memoria desmemoriada” (Paraguay Remembered)
by Dominique Dubosc
In “Memoria desmemoriada” (Paraguay Remembered), the French filmmaker Dominique Dubosc presents his intimate and political memories of Paraguay at the end of the 60’s, in the middle of General Stroessner’s dictatorship. Fleeting images of a loved woman in Buenos Aires in 1969 also return, as does the terrible dénouement in 1976 when General Videla took power in order to lead the “Process of National Re-Organisation“, that is, the physical elimination of 30,000 people considered political opponents (…) A film of terrifying beauty.
Mario Casartelli (Ultima Hora, Asuncion)
For Dominique Dubosc, cinema is not a spectacle but a form of writing, a living text that, in “Memoria desmemoriada” (Paraguay Remembered), displays the landscapes of the past in the present instant. The film is an involuntary return to the 70’s when the Condor Plan spread over South America and the Stroessner dictatorship continued in Paraguay. Dubosc succeeds in creating an “exquisite” construction that integrates historical facts, personal feelings, visual esthetics and poetical discourse. Entirely shot in Asuncion and its whereabouts, the film advances with the hazardous speed of memory surging forth in daily details, fortuitous happenings, and desired encounters. In an hour and a half of first person narration, the text flows along with images that are like symbols of Time: buses that come and go, filled with exhausted and half asleep bodies, the waters of an endless river, and a black & white full of melancholy, slightly sprinkled with a few touches of color.
Adriana Almada (Curator of the Bolivia Biennal 2016)
I was able to see last evening at the Alliance Française the documentary “Memoria desmemoriada” (Paraguay Remembered) by the French filmmaker Dominique Dubosc. It is a real poem, made of images that flow like a river, or that stretch out like a half asleep bay, or yet like the horizon that recedes or comes forward, seen from an undetermined location in Time. It is also a story that is sometimes too real, but that is always related simply, without vanity or pretensions, with an accuracy and a poetic quality that moves our very depths. (…) An immersion into poetry.
Eulo García