The educational memory of documentaries as a confrontation to the totalitarianism past

Abstract

As the result of two research projects about documentaries and newsreels produced in Spain between 1914-1939 and 1939-1970, we discovered different silences and rumours which had an impact  un the memory and the history of education. We know that those silences and rumours were applied systematically as part of a national policy, affecting mainly the vulnerable population and stymieing any attempt at changing the situation. It is important that we understand why those silences and rumours persist nowadays and how the history and memory of education confront them. The silences, like the manipulations, make up a part of our past, yet they still have effects today. And this is true not only with Francoism; in different totalitarian systems, as well as during violent historical episodes, there has been a habit of imposing silence. The same thing has  occurred withnewsreels and documentaries. Different responses have attempted to address this problem and its effect on the recuperation of educational memories, and it ultimately depends on political, cultural and social contexts. In researching and disseminating one’s own past, the sensation of uneasiness is inherent to the process. The educational memory assumes this apprehension when it is developed as complex history which explains the lived educational experiences that are being related. In this article, we explore some of the premises and the potential of fragile memories and complex stories forming part of an intentional research program around audiovisual sources produced as propaganda in a totalitarian political framework. The different lines of research pursued in the aforementioned projects, but not exclusive to them, reinforced the need to advance in those methodologies that could bring together the different paths connecting the common elements and allowing for the possibility of narrating the silence with the perspective of a social history linked to justice and democracy.