Introduction

In this chapter I shall present the theoretical and conceptual basis that underpins my research on the representation of the Dirty War in the Argentine cinema of the first ten years that followed the return to a democratic system in 1983. Considering that this investigation is particularly focused on the historical discourses that have been delivered by a group of selected films which, through different genres and narrative strategies, engage with this recent past, and given that this study aims to be inscribed in the field of film history, several issues concerning the relationship between film and history need to be addressed from the beginning. The study of the history of Argentine cinema has seldom been approached in relation to the principles and the categories that film history, as part of the broader discipline of film studies, builds on. Thus, the theoretical nature of this chapter is due to the need to position this research in the field of film history and, for that purpose, it seems opportune to begin by outlining the development of the discipline itself.

The mapping of the growth of, and changes in, film history over the last couple of decades will show how, in the search for the discipline's specificity, two main trends have developed, each building on the other's contributions. On one side are those scholars who have centred their work on the relationships between film history, its object of study and its methods, and the broader field of history. On the other are those academic studies which have concentrated on the relationships between film and history by considering how the latter is, has been, or can be represented in a film text; in other words, they question the possibilities and the limits of a historical discourse in cinematic terms. Central to these two main lines of research that very often overlap is the preoccupation with issues of historiography. They will not be absent here, for this work shall also be positioned in relation to them.

Some of the most influential and pioneering writings in the heterogeneous field of film history come from historians, their primary object of interest being history rather than film. Thus, this chapter will begin by introducing the different approaches to film proposed by historians, primarily from two different schools and traditions.