The appropriation and construction of the film archive in Uruguay

This article explores the importance that using archival footage has for both film exhibition and questioning the truth behind images. It focuses on El dirigible/The Airship (Dotta, 1994) and C3M: Cinemateca del Tercer Mundo/Third World Cinematheque (Jacob, 2011), a fiction and a documentary, respectively, to suggest that the incorporation of archival footage invites us to reflect upon local film and sociopolitical history, while guiding us through the archive of Uruguayan cinema. This article argues that in the case of cinemas where there is no established filmmaking tradition and where access to the archive is restricted, incorporating sequences from past films fulfils an exhibition role that necessarily acknowledges and gives visibility to the work of previous practitioners. Moreover, it explores how this practice underscores the tensions between past and present, and questions the ability of audio-visual documents to provide trustworthy evidence to both reveal and challenge the narration of history.