Docuseek | Awakening from Sorrow: Buenos Aires 1997

AWAKENING FROM SORROW is about a crucial moment in history when the grief of young Argentines - whose parents disappeared and were tortured and killed during the 'Dirty War' (Argentina's dictatorship organized mass killings of civilian dissidents during the 1970s until 1983) erupts into public action, and becomes a cornerstone for social movements from South America to Serbia. Until these young people began to organize and demand explanations from their government, the predominant coping strategy has been to pretend that the missing are still alive. This film documents the power to transform pain into action to lift the veil of repression that has gripped a generation of young people.

The film's voices are woven into a 'tapestry of remembrance' questioning and pushing for justice, accountability and resolution from all angles. They include: Nobel Prize- winner Perez Esquivel, history professor Wolfgang Bayer, death camp survivor Graciela Deleo, and the infamous Captain Adolpho Scilingo who admits to having ordered the dropping of dissidents from a naval cargo plane into the Atlantic Ocean.

When a dictatorship ends and democracy takes over many people are left with not just physical but emotional scars. The expressionistic and moving drawings of the 'HIJOS' (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence) together with original music by cellist Beth Vandervennet help to highlight a universal story. The atrocities committed by the state against its own people take a long time to heal and the young people's courage gives hope to us all.

'Chilling in scope and effect.' -San Francisco Chronicle

'...a commendable documentary. This film is slightly unique in the sense that the story is being told from the perspective of the children of the Disappeared. ...achieves its mission by giving the voiceless a voice to expose the atrocities of the Dirty War.' -Educational Media Reviews Online

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Main credits

Knoop, John (film producer)
Knoop, John (film director)
Knoop, John (editor of moving image work)
Knoop, John (narrator)
Epperlein, Karina (film producer)
Epperlein, Karina (film director)
Epperlein, Karina (editor of moving image work)
Muñoz, Susana (film producer)

Other credits

Cinematography, Andrew Black; music, Beth Vendervennet.

MARC Record See Worldcat record

Keywords

Argentina,; dissidents, Dirty War, HIJOS; "Awakening from Sorrow: Buenos Aires 1997"; The Fanlight Collection

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[music]

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What happens in Argentina

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in 1976 suddenly changes the
destiny of thousands of

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families. A military coup.

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Over the next seven years

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30,000, most of them young
and politically engaged

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are killed. During torture, machine
gunned, and thrown into mass

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burial pits. Or heavily
sedated and dropped, still

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living from Naval cargo planes
into the South Atlantic.

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[music]

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In response, a group calling itself, \"The Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo\" began pressuring the Junta

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for the release of their
disappeared children.

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Who in many cases were parents themselves
to their own still young children.

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Thus, the disappeared,
are both lost children

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and lost parents.

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They are a missing generation.

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20 years

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later the sons and daughters of the
disappeared formed an activist

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organization called \"Echoes\". With the
goal of educating Argentinian citizens

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about what happened during the dirty war

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to their disappeared parents

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and to their country.

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Awakening from Sorrow: Buenos Aires 1997

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