In this short documentary, Marina Llorente, the granddaughter of a "looser" of the Spanish Civil War, confronts the knots of trauma that were left by the "Pact of Silence" when the Spanish dictatorship ended.
Marian is a Spanish Professor at an American university, and she has made her life's mission to study the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War, specifically focusing on the activist poets who combat the cultural amnesia that plagues Spanish society. One of these poets is David Gonzales, whose poem "El Nudo" (The Knot) weaves together the documentary.
The cultural memory of communities around the world is often obscured and hidden in traumatic silences. The Spanish Civil War is no exception. In this short documentary, the filmmakers created a visual portrait of the ancestral silences that surround Marina Llorente. These same silences plague all the descendants of the Spanish Civil War and armed conflicts around the world.
The filmmakers' intention in making this short documentary was to bring to light Marina's ancestral trauma, thus speaking for the violence that people have suffered and still suffer all over the world. War leaves deep scars, scars that never heal and that will haunt societies for centuries.
The short documentary, Knot of Silence, is currently being screened in national and international film festivals. Step by step, screening by screening, the silences are filling and memories, freeing memories and letting them fly.
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