Un archivo posible
Director:
Rocío Llambí
Producer:
Eugenia Olascuaga
Production company:
Monarca Films
Production country:
Uruguay
Duration in minutes:
75
Contact:
Sinopsys:
In a forgotten archive, discarded footage from a documentary film unveils untold stories: testimonies from Paqui, Vicky, and Fátima; documents on the persecution of the LGBT community during the military dictatorship in Uruguay—the extraction of amethysts, a mineral that is now exhibited in a European natural science museum. The film is an essay that delves into catalogs as spaces of power and omission. What possible archives can we imagine today?
Long Sinopsys
In an empty, dark space lit by four lamps swaying from the ceiling, scattered objects appear and disappear: four VHS tapes, an amethyst engraved with the words “R.O.U URUGUAY,” a photograph of three girls embracing, and a shimmering dress folded upon itself. Two female voices list items from a film catalog and a mineral catalog.
A group of petrology researchers transports a large amethyst for study. The stone, labeled and coded “MGB-PR-13461,” is taken to the laboratory where they examine it with magnifiers and take samples. Later, they carry it into an exhibition room at a Natural Sciences museum in Spain, placing it behind glass beside other stones from various Latin American countries, under the motto: “CATALOG TO KNOW.”
Four VHS tapes are stored in Uruguay’s national film archive. They are the discarded reels of the documentary “Yo la Más Tremendo”, directed by Aldo Garay and filmed in Montevideo in the 1990s. The archivist plays the footage: political campaigns, street scenes, a collapsed house. Among the discarded footage are images of FÁTIMA (39), PAQUI (56), and VICKY (17) — three trans women celebrating with others. The archivist catalogs them under the code “ASM-MS-AG-C02-0054.”
A petrology researcher cuts a stone in half with a saw, revealing bright violet crystals inside. She explains that to know the truth about a territory, one must look into the interior of a rock. Through the microscope, the crystals move like a galaxy. A rupture in the image opens the narrative.
Diverse archives begin to intertwine: propaganda footage of mining extraction during the dictatorship, military documents of terror, and a police magazine from that same era that described homosexual and trans people as “inverts,” “exhibitionists,” “deviants.” Meanwhile, in the discarded footage, Fátima, Paqui, and Vicky recount how they had to hide, how they were treated as sick, and how they couldn’t gather during the day. Then, the girls dancing together, celebrating, finding companionship in community.
The director’s voice begins to weave these universes together, questioning what lies concealed within catalogs, organic matter, and archives.
From the present, Fátima (72) performs an invocation: she activates the four overhead spotlights and the objects as she speaks of each one. The archival spaces begin to fracture: military documents dissolve into unreadable stains, propaganda reels into decayed organic matter. The discarded images resurface with the girls speaking of the future they long for.
Fátima (72) is surrounded by a bright, violet darkness from an amethyst quarry. She walks toward the luminous exterior and alongside other women, begins to remember, to dance, and to build their own possible archive.
Creative Process
“To speculate safely about a livable future, we might do well to look for a crack in a rock and step back.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
VISUAL TREATMENT
“A Possible Archive” is an experimental documentary essay that explores filmic, scientific, and affective archives to interrogate the value of what is preserved, what is discarded, and what persists as bodily and political memory.
The film is sustained through editing that generates crossings of spaces, histories, and materialities, which find a shared narrative and are bound together through an essayistic voice. This voice is centered on my personal memory and on the poetic–political associations established among the elements.
The structure proposed by the film resembles an archaeological method: it begins with what is most macro—museums and archival institutions—and moves inward through those archives, arriving at their microscopy and at a narrative that is not concerned with remains, but with memory.
ARCHIVAL SPACES
The film traces a parallel between archives in petrology and film archives to find their correspondences in the preservation and classification criteria. Archival spaces are presented as cemeteries. Their interiors are intensified through the use of cold lighting and wide shots of these large, highly organized spaces. Shelves, corridors, lighting, and shadows are all part of the clinical atmospheres of the archives.
INSIDE THE ARCHIVES, THE FISSURE
The film explores how archival institutions begin to fissure to move us into the archive interiors. Here, discarded VHS materials appear, along with the rock that opens, exposing its microscopic interior.
There is a decision to retain those shots in which actions are repeated, or the shots in which Aldo asks questions or gives directions to the women in the discarded VHS footage, where Fátima, Paqui, and Vicky appear. An off-screen space begins to emerge, representing that context and suggesting a pre-existing, discarded image.
Historical documents linked to Uruguay’s military dictatorship are also presented through the deterioration of the filmic material support. For example, fungus on the celluloid, glitches inherent to VHS, and poor-quality digitization. In the same way, I am interested in exploring the fragmentation of documents of terror: the cutting, the isolated words, the microscopy of the documents, the condition of the ink, and the paper. Visual elements such as magnifying glasses help to focus, fragment, and deform those discourses within the documents of terror in which gender-dissident bodies are pathologized.
STAGING
The sequence of the lamps is a staging inspired by the installative and unfolds throughout the course of the film. It relates to an act of conjuring and evocation, in contrast to the ideal of rational science that orders and “illuminates” certain kinds of knowledge. This sequence is constructed within a large scenic space foregrounding the idea of staging, and it will be shot on 16mm, as this format reveals an image that is more aleatory and less controlled.
SOUND TREATMENT
Sound is a key narrative device: hums, mechanical sounds, glitches, tactile noises of celluloid or of a stone being cut. The whispered voices of the archivists, the petrology researcher, and Fátima’s voice intertwine with the sounds of the archives as if they were geological layers of a single time.
There are situations in which contact microphones are used to transmit the tactile sound of the materials, especially in the first part of the film. In these situations, the microphone device placed on a rock or on a strip of celluloid will be visible on screen, as yet another means of surrounding these archives.
Director's note
“To speculate safely about a livable future, we might do well to look for a crack in a rock and step back.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
VISUAL TREATMENT
“A Possible Archive” is an experimental documentary essay that explores filmic, scientific, and affective archives to interrogate the value of what is preserved, what is discarded, and what persists as bodily and political memory.
The film is sustained through editing that generates crossings of spaces, histories, and materialities, which find a shared narrative and are bound together through an essayistic voice. This voice is centered on my personal memory and on the poetic–political associations established among the elements.
The structure proposed by the film resembles an archaeological method: it begins with what is most macro—museums and archival institutions—and moves inward through those archives, arriving at their microscopy and at a narrative that is not concerned with remains, but with memory.
ARCHIVAL SPACES
The film traces a parallel between archives in petrology and film archives to find their correspondences in the preservation and classification criteria. Archival spaces are presented as cemeteries. Their interiors are intensified through the use of cold lighting and wide shots of these large, highly organized spaces. Shelves, corridors, lighting, and shadows are all part of the clinical atmospheres of the archives.
INSIDE THE ARCHIVES, THE FISSURE
The film explores how archival institutions begin to fissure to move us into the archive interiors. Here, discarded VHS materials appear, along with the rock that opens, exposing its microscopic interior.
There is a decision to retain those shots in which actions are repeated, or the shots in which Aldo asks questions or gives directions to the women in the discarded VHS footage, where Fátima, Paqui, and Vicky appear. An off-screen space begins to emerge, representing that context and suggesting a pre-existing, discarded image.
Historical documents linked to Uruguay’s military dictatorship are also presented through the deterioration of the filmic material support. For example, fungus on the celluloid, glitches inherent to VHS, and poor-quality digitization. In the same way, I am interested in exploring the fragmentation of documents of terror: the cutting, the isolated words, the microscopy of the documents, the condition of the ink, and the paper. Visual elements such as magnifying glasses help to focus, fragment, and deform those discourses within the documents of terror in which gender-dissident bodies are pathologized.
STAGING
The sequence of the lamps is a staging inspired by the installative and unfolds throughout the course of the film. It relates to an act of conjuring and evocation, in contrast to the ideal of rational science that orders and “illuminates” certain kinds of knowledge. This sequence is constructed within a large scenic space foregrounding the idea of staging, and it will be shot on 16mm, as this format reveals an image that is more aleatory and less controlled.
SOUND TREATMENT
Sound is a key narrative device: hums, mechanical sounds, glitches, tactile noises of celluloid or of a stone being cut. The whispered voices of the archivists, the petrology researcher, and Fátima’s voice intertwine with the sounds of the archives as if they were geological layers of a single time.
There are situations in which contact microphones are used to transmit the tactile sound of the materials, especially in the first part of the film. In these situations, the microphone device placed on a rock or on a strip of celluloid will be visible on screen, as yet another means of surrounding these archives.
Director
Rocío Llambí
Film editor graduated in Audiovisual Communication from Universidad ORT, Uruguay, and Postgraduate in Video Editing from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Her work focuses on the intersection between archival work and the process of re-signification, addressing themes related to sexuality and diversity. Worked as an editor on the documentary feature films: “No Todas las Niñas” (directed by Carolina Astudillo Muñoz, 2025); “Perkal, la Memoria de un Nombre” (directed by Paola Perkal, 2025). Worked as an editor in fictional and non-fictional shortfilms and documentary series.
outros trabalhos:
