A (re)turn to the past: Memory and movement in ¡Viva 16!

At a moment marked by death and displacement, the 1994 documentary film ¡Viva 16! (Long Live 16! [Aguirre and Robles, 1994]) re-imagined the present by turning towards the past. The film followed the development and growth of a queer Latinx community on and around 16th street in the Mission district of San Francisco, CA at a time when the twin devastation of gentrification and AIDS threatened to erase the community from the landscape. Paying attention to the movements of both the narrators and the film itself, this article highlights the usage of active nostalgia and hopeful imagination to craft narratives of belonging. The article reads the film within its historical context to suggest the strategies of narration it employed are useful for utilizing the past to take action in the present.