Portrait and archive. Displacements between the public and the private

Abstract

This work suggests analyzing the short film Babás (by Consuelo Lins,2010) based on two central questions: the particular use of the archive and the notion of portraiture (photographic, cinematographic, pictorial) that moves about supports and meanings. The director starts from a photograph found in a public archive and from there she will search within hers for the necessary material to pay homage to the nannies. In this search, the visit to the past and its relationship with memory becomes central, that is why the concept of the archive, from the redefinition indicated by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, will serve to address and reformulate writing, memory, bodies and their representations. Lins puts the images to the test and speculation, scrutinizes them so that they say what they did not say at first, and tries to reconstruct an absence through displacements (of time, space and support).