Résumé

Based on the notion of counter-archive, this article reflects on how contemporary documentaries provide new readings of historical facts. We analyze two documentaries whose background are macrohistories, but whose narratives focus on the traumatic memories of people belonging to subalternized groups, shedding new light on the victims of the Holocaust and the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. Nelly & Nadine (2022), a documentary by Magnus Gertten, recovers the memory of the couple who met in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Sylvie faces her family’s silence regarding the years in which her grandmother Nelly was imprisoned by the Nazi regime and about her romantic relationship with Nadine. The film elaborates an archival mise en scéne. Nelly and Nadine recorded their private lives, combating the erasure of LGBTQ+ people during the period, creating memories in the form of home movies and a diary of wartime memories. Torre das Donzelas (2018), a documentary by Suzanna Lira, deals with the memories of former political prisoners from the now-defunct Tiradentes prison, located in São Paulo. Demolished in 1972, the documentary deals with this absence, materializing the memory of imprisonment, escaping from the official report and archive. In this way, the director creates the cinematic device: remaking the physical space to then activate the memories of the former prisoners. From a transnational perspective, the films connect to the dialectical notion of history proposed by Walter Benjamin, in which, brushed against the grain, historical facts reveal nuances that provide new readings of the history of subalternized groups.