Virginia Martínez

Por Esos Ojos

Virginia Martínez, Gonzalo Arijón

We follow the efforts of Ester Gatti to find her missing granddaughter Mariana Zaffaroni. As a child, Mariana and her parents were kidnapped by a Uruguayan military team. The little girl was taken by an agent in the intelligence service who brought her up as his own daughter. Sixteen years later Ester found Mariana, but the girl chose to go on living with the people who had kidnapped her. This documentary raises questions about identity, memory and the value of truth.

Ácratas

Virginia Martínez

Armed based on photography, period films, archival materials and testimonies of survivors, family members and historians, the documentary accurately and exquisitely reconstructs the course of the “expropriating anarchists” in the Río de la Plata and specifically in Montevideo del First third of the 20th century.

Una de nosotras

Soledad Castro Lazaroff

Belela Herrera, Soledad Castro Lazaroff

For more than forty years, Belela Herrera has dedicated her life to saving that of others. The politically persecuted, those displaced by civil wars, and the world's refugees are her concern and vocation. Her story is also that of a woman who defined herself and twisted the destiny reserved for girls of her social class: marrying to a man from high society, having a large family and a comfortable and elegant existence . And it is also the story of a female legacy that is part and consequence of the invisible resistance of thousands of women.

Las manos en la tierra

Virginia Martínez

A group of archaeologists from the University of the Republic enters, for the first time in Uruguayan history, into a barracks to dig for the remains of persons imprisoned-disappeared during the military dictatorship. Only one year earlier, not even the boldest observer would have dared predict such a possibility. After one hundred days of digging, the earth reveals its secret: the first remains appear. The documentary reconstructs the process that cuts the country’s history in two: before and after.

Historias de Militantes

Virginia Martínez

Ana María Mizrahi

This documentary tells the story of a group of Uruguayan political and social activists who began or intensified their activities in the 1960s. What emerges is how diverse the Uruguayan left was in thought and action in fields like attitudes to armed struggle, the place of women and children, the historical significance of the Frente Amplio Party and the ways in which the old ideals have found expression - or not, as the case may be - under the first left wing national government in the history of the country. The documentary was made for Casa Bertolt Brecht, and is geared to stimulating debate and training new generations of activists.

Memorias de Mujeres

Virginia Martínez

The Punta de Rieles prison was where most female political prisoners were incarcerated during the dictatorship in Uruguay. The way up to the building led through “the meadow” where there were animals grazing, and the prison itself was surrounded with flowers. The place seemed eminently liveable, almost comfortable, and at first sight there was no sign of the silent struggle going on behind those walls. This documentary is an attempt to reconstruct life at the prison through the testimony of some of the hundreds of women who were there and who resisted the military regime's attempts to grind them down and destroy them.