(Dis)Appear

(Dis)Appear follows Gabriel and Ana as they return to their hometown and explore what role photography can play when faced with personal and collective traumas of the past. It is a documentary about the powerful relationship between photography, memory and the forced disappearances and systematic murderer perpetrated by Argentina’s most recent civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983).

Gabriel Orge is a photographer known for his large-scale projections of the photos of the disappeared in public spaces. Ana Iliovich is an author and survivor of La Perla, a clandestine torture and detention centre; in many ways, a concentration camp. They were both born and raised in Bell Ville, and that’s where they return to in (Dis)Appear. Gabriel comes back to organise a commemorative projection of the photo of a local woman murdered by the dictatorship. Ana, and her brother Lisandro, return to start a long-overdue conversation about a family photograph taken in 1977, when Ana was allowed to leave the concentration camp and visit her family for the first time since her kidnapping. During this period of monitored “freedom” – in which she had to return to La Perla after weekends at home – Ana’s family took many photographs, to prove that Ana was alive and to try to stop her from being killed.

(Dis)Appear is a film about the personal becoming political and about the important part private, family photography can play in the ongoing memory work related to survival, grief and the search for justice.

​