We seek our own paths in discoveries (or rediscoveries) of our memories. Any reasonable person would search for the paths most gentle and kind, most understanding of our deepest convictions. Or the paths most interesting and revealing, most honest. Objective accuracy is not sought after, but emotional accuracy is. An animated experimental short film explores the idea through a play of digital photogrammetry. All My Scars Vanish in the Wind (Todas Mis Cicatrices se Desvanecen en el Viento) (Angélica Restrepo & Carlos Velandia, Columbia, 2022) aims to make a form of memories truthfully. Not accurately, not factually, but honestly.
Through the 14-minute film, filmmakers Angélica Restrepo & Carlos Velandia are reaching through the memories of Restrepo’s mother they describe as her “childhood years of pain.” With the single internal monologues written only in subtitles and the visuals a result of artistic digital cartography, the film’s framing is limited to one person’s subjective perspective.
When I write this article, I’m involved in the program, Minikino Hybrid Internship for Film Festival Writers. One of the guest speakers for this year, Andrés Suárez (head of programming for Bogotá Short Film Festival-BOGOSHORTS) spoke with us about short films which offer another view of stories in Latin America. Where a continent is normally represented by their tragedy-infused films for the West’s film audiences which Andrés mentions as exploitative. He aims for more nuanced and intimate aspects of Latin America portrayed in short film. One film in particular that delves deep into the Intimate is All My Scars Vanish in the Wind.
The short film is a gentle journey of a woman into her childhood in rural Columbia, where the machista culture reigns to bring anguish to the women in its society. The over-glorified masculinity or machismo upheld at the reign of patriarchy has created a painful and uncomfortable environment for girls and women to be. All My Scars Vanish in the Wind explores the depths of one woman’s mind into this very pain. It maps out the process of trying to remember and retrospect in a poetic, empowering hypnosis that could only be made possible through the unique medium of experimental film. As you sit before the blank screen, expect to be guided through the three steps of remembering:
Step one of remembering: close your eyes
Personally, I think remembering requires a blank slate of mind to welcome the memories recalled. Just as visualized in the film, everything begins in darkness, nothingness. Specks of dust fly centered on the frame, green and white and brown and yellow; the colors you think you see when closing your eyes as undefined objects flow on the lids of your eyes. The animated grains swim together like neurons connecting to form a shape, a memory. The film does the remembering for you as if an omniscient entity is guiding you to remember only certain parts of your life. It might feel confrontational and uncomfortable. At most, it feels spiritual.
Step two of remembering: form the shape of your memory
These glowing grains in the dark take shapes: trees, a dress on barbed wires, and an empty bed. Only the bearer of these memories know the significance of these objects. In the film’s case, they are signifiers of moments of the past that scarred you with wounds you still suffer. You remember the feelings of the past, but not the solid form of the event it houses. You might question whether the constructions of the memory before you are merely imitations, some silly trick of the mind. And while these shapes feel tangible, as you come near them, grains of these shapes dance around to form other new objects. Restrepo and Velandia craft these memories as if they are in front of us, yet always out of reach; exist in the same plane of existence as us, yet other-worldly, just like the past.
Step three of remembering: reflect
You realize these memories are not entirely factual, yet not mere interpretations as well. Inner musings of the woman whose memories are reimagined on frame just initiate more questions than answers. Reflections of the present-self cannot explain the objective details of memory (they do not matter). The quietness and mystery of the memories constructed by these grains give the impression that memories may not be easy to face. Yet, there they are: sought for after all the years that have passed in between its subject and object—the subject searches for its objects in a way most compassionate to the past wounded self. The past becomes less of a memory to be understood, but a piece of yourself to be given compassion.
Subjectivity to an experience is advantageous here, as it is in the medium of the ever-expanding experimental film. All My Scars Vanish in the Wind serves as a reminder to be gentle with oneself when confronted with painful memories. The short film is Restrepo & Velandia’s portrait of an intimate journey toward acceptance and healing of a woman subjected to an overly masculine society. To me, the strength it takes for the subject of these memories to seek these past could have come from compassion alone, or perhaps also from the peace of nostalgia, of home—of the culture that had equally betrayed her, had never been on her side; always at the gringo’s, at the machista’s, always at the men’s. It was never objectivity the subject needed to breathe truth to her memory, but courage, as it was never the truth she was after, but peace.
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