On Debajo del mundo: An Early Representation of the Holocaust

Abstract

The return of democracy in Argentina at the end of 1983 had strong repercussions on its national cinema. A new cultural climate allowed for the revision of the past and (re)construction of memory, and as a consequence it facilitated the production of the film Debajo del mundo ([Under the Earth], dir. Juan Bautista Stagnaro and Beda Docampo Feijóo, 1987). Despite its relative lack of success with audiences at the time of its release and its marginal place in academic scholarship on Argentine cinema, this film constitutes an invaluable document that deserves to be revisited. The film explored the Holocaust unlike other pictures prevalent at the time in Argentina and can therefore be considered an early representation of the subject in world cinema and the first in Argentina. By reconstructing its production story and analyzing the cultural climate of the period it was made, Debajo del mundo emerges as an exemplary test piece to understand filmmaking as vector of historical memory.