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"Perhaps one of the most crucial voices in Paraguayan and Latin American Cinema, Paz Encina‘s films are haunting mementos of a nation’s past, often told through the perspective of voices often marginalized or oppressed. Born during the height of Alfredo Stroessner’ brutal dictatorship, the longest in Latin America, Encina combines poetic visuals with complex sounds to create documents that evoke that oppressive time. Her protagonists are often dealing with some kind of trauma, often relating to a certain moment in Paraguayan history and thus excavating the complex way in which a nation remembers. Add to that the inclusion of Guarani, an indigenous language spoken by a majority of the people in Paraguay, in her work and it adds another element in which language can evoke national ties. In recent years, Encina’s work has been informed by the Archives of Terror, which documented the activities of Stroessner’s secret police and the various other dictatorships in Latin America. All this combined calls for the need to remember, both the way in which nations form their histories, and the people who were forgotten, to ensure that the painful moments of the past are not repeated.
"Programmed in collaboration with Anthony Chassi."