Citation

Keller P. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 2014; 15(3): 299-321.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014)

DOI

10.1080/14636204.2014.972092

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

José Luis Guerin's short film Recuerdos de una mañana (2011) takes as its point of departure a haunting accidental shot of a seemingly ordinary neighborhood scene: a man alone in his apartment playing the violin. From this shot, Guerin constructs a powerful narrative about the violinist's life and embarks on an equally powerful contemplation of his unexpected and, for some, ineffable death. Perhaps most striking is the film's attention not to solving the mystery of the man's death by suicide, but rather turning toward how his life touched the lives of others - his neighbors, some of whom never knew him, but all of whom heard and remembered him by the sonic mark he left on the world through his music. This essay looks at some of the ways in which Recuerdos de una mañana offers us a cinematic space in which we, as spectators, are invited to contemplate the afterlife of this figure, and the way his memory has not only affected others but also remains with them as a dynamic force from the past that permeates and shapes the present. Bringing death and afterlife into dialog, this essay proposes too that a central component of Guerin's work has to do with absence, a poetics of loss, and the way that absence and loss serve as a basis for community. Through close readings of mise-en-scène, narrative, and audiovisual elements unique to Guerin's avant-garde style, this essay ultimately argues that the film begins from the place of memories and shifts into a space of address and mourning in order to work toward a new notion of community - exploring it not as something necessarily visible or collective, but as something whose very foundation, its very visibility and collectivity, is spectral. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

Language: en

Keywords

community; loss; mourning; music; Absence; the everyday