Collage is another technique that participates in the film’s construction of palimpsests. Defined as a collection of heterogeneous materials, collage has long played a role in the Latin American documentary tradition. In Familia tipo, however, the device is put to specific use. It permits Priego to reorder fragments and establish new relationships among them, thereby deconstructing an inherited family archive. Priego’s use of collage is not straightforward, but rather reflexive in nature. She exposes photographs’ imminent materiality and shatters their communicative transparency. In effect, she exposes the seams between images, the irregularities that result from cinematic cutting and pasting. She wants to show that family photo albums—like films—take shape through montage, through operations of ordering and suppression.
The director deploys …show more content…
Priego’s riff on the displacement motif is different from other common manifestations (trains, public transportation, airplanes) because of the privileged role the subject plays as the driver of the car. John Urry writes: “Auto-mobility thus involves the powerful combination of autonomous humans together with machines possessing the capacity for autonomous movement along the paths, lanes, streets, and routeways of each society.” Using the cinematographic procedures I have described, Cecilia Priego sets “in motion” different ways of remembering and constructing family history. By doing this, she hopes to create a different legacy for her own children. Although her starting point is personal experience, she problematizes a longstanding Hispanic cultural tradition in which hiding aspects of the past or omitting elements from the story was a way to “safeguard” history. Those who propagated such selective narratives, however, never stopped to think about the toxic effects they would have on their
The director deploys …show more content…
Priego’s riff on the displacement motif is different from other common manifestations (trains, public transportation, airplanes) because of the privileged role the subject plays as the driver of the car. John Urry writes: “Auto-mobility thus involves the powerful combination of autonomous humans together with machines possessing the capacity for autonomous movement along the paths, lanes, streets, and routeways of each society.” Using the cinematographic procedures I have described, Cecilia Priego sets “in motion” different ways of remembering and constructing family history. By doing this, she hopes to create a different legacy for her own children. Although her starting point is personal experience, she problematizes a longstanding Hispanic cultural tradition in which hiding aspects of the past or omitting elements from the story was a way to “safeguard” history. Those who propagated such selective narratives, however, never stopped to think about the toxic effects they would have on their