Sound, suspense and phantasmagoria in Cristián Sánchez cinema

Abstract

This article has as its objective to navigate the films made by Cristián Sanchez during the chilean military dictatorship (1975-1990), as an approximation to the topic of the spectre from three directions. In the first place, from the dichotomy between inside and outside (of the visual field), thinking about the suspension producing mechanisms used by the filmmaker to flood the image with strangeness and indetermination. In the second place, we will focus on the traces left by the device, through the observation of the cinematographic image’s own materiality, which is perceived through the insertion of glazings and noise into the image. Finally, we will inspect the figures that surround the sequence, presented as ‘real’ ghosts, that cross the stories phantasmagorically.