Camouflage

The work of Jonathan Perel can be read from the perspective of a place; in this film, the irresistible strength of a magnetic field operates that of Campo de Mayo. As the largest military base in Argentina, it served as an illegal detention and torture camp during the country’s former military dictatorship. In its surroundings lives and runs Felix Bruzzone, a young writer, whose mother and grandmother both died in Campo de Mayo: the former was assassinated by the military government in 1976, and the latter died in the nursing home inside the camp some years prior. While running, Bruzzone meets different neighbours; each one of them has a particular relationship with that immense space. One investigates its vegetation, another challenges the soldiers with his daily incursions into forbidden zones, a palaeontologist searches for dinosaur bones, a group of adolescent girls look for artistic inspiration around some abandoned buildings, etc. But none of them seems to be able to escape the gravitational force that keeps them tied to a place that carries the heavy turbulence of history, that nightmare from which Bruzzone and the others seem unable to awake.        

Violeta Bava