"It was in September of 1976..." "I was with a friend on a bridge, filming the sunset." "Suddenly a man appeared." "He made us raise our hands and turn around slowly." "We saw two machine guns that were aimed right at us." "We didn't know that our camera was pointing at a police station, military camp or illegal detention centre." "All we wanted to film was the sunset." "They arrested us." "They questioned us for a full day." "They confiscated everything we had filmed, our camera, and told us to come back in a few days." "Then they let us go." "We never tried to get our things back." "Back in those days," "You could easily disappear for filming a sunset." "DESEMBARCOS WHEN MEMORY SPEAKS" "Buenos Aires towards the end of 1986." "A cinema workshop with students, who are going to make three shorts about the fear left behind by the dictatorship." "The fear that remains in the streets  and in the people." "This city, with its back to the harbour but which dreams of harbours, ships and travel." "A city looking away from a river wide as the ocean." "The river which brought our ancestors in the bellies of ships." "Just as Mexicans are descended from Aztecs, and Peruvians from Incas, many Argentinians descend from ships." "The poet Thiago de Mello wrote," ""Ships are born like pain," "They appear like birds in the sky, like flowers from the earth, messengers." "Their bows bear courage and hope  fear and perplexity fills their holds."" "I'm 27 years old, from Cordoba in Argentina." "Its my first year studying film, my first contact with it." "I'm 22 years old, I'm studying film, and that's what I'm doing now." "I began studying four years ago at a film school in Avellaneda." "I want to focus on documentaries." "I'm 28, and I'm a student at the National Film Institute." "I was born on the fifth of January 1967." "I'm 19 years old." "What I want to do is make films." "What type, I'm not sure." "Travel is my passion." "We're in the Goethe Institut in Calle Corrientes." "During the film workshop, we start discussing and rewriting the three chosen scripts." "Later, the actors arrive, and we start rehearsing scenes." "I was born in Barracas, a suburb of Buenos Aires." "I'm 22." "I've studied film for two years." "I like directing, set design and scriptwriting." "I'm 20, I was born in San Juan in Argentina." "I'm studying film now." "I try to grab every opportunity, like the workshop." "An old, dilapidated printworks, left abandoned." "Crumbling walls, with traces of the past." "Our location for filming." "First we're filming" ""Chamame", by Laura Couto." "Two young people are being held in an illegal prison." "Each time a guard comes, he plays a "chamame" on the harmonica." "When the prisoners hear this melody, they know that one of them is going to be tortured." "Years after the dictatorship, in the same place, renovated and painted," "the man, who survived and is now a teacher, happens to meet the girl, who also survived." "The melody is still the same." "My names Juan Orozco." "Today in Buenos Aires, people say:" ""We shouldn't dig up the past."" ""We must look to the future."" ""It was awful, but it's over."" ""No one is interested now."" "And during the dictatorship, when someone was kidnapped:" ""They must have had a reason."" "Action!" "Rats love eating little birds..." "Get up, you're being moved." "Who am I?" "Do you really want to know?" "Take a good look at me." "I'm God!" "Camera!" "Why did you want to make this short Chamame, Laura?" "The idea for Chamame came from a research project I did this year," "About the massacre of Margarita Belen, in 1976." "After conversations I had in Resistencia with ex-prisoners and with their families, what struck me most was the situation they were experiencing." "Their captors..." "Their captors have been identified but are still free." "The victims must live among these people who have never been punished." "What happened at Margarita Belen?" "There was a massacre, in which a group of prisoners was taken from prison in Resistencia and tortured viciously all through the night." "Then they were told they were being transferred." "But they were murdered on the way." "Why does this massacre interest you?" "I have always felt a strong need  to do something about our immediate past." "I don't want people to just forget all about it, or to behave as though nothing happened." "Its important to me because members of my family disappeared too." "Do you worry this could happen again?" " Yes, when I see the situation today." "Many people were never sentenced." "Like one of those responsible for Margarita Belen, who lives in Resistencia, and says when they are back in power, such things will happen every day." "Should one be prepared for it?" " I believe were better prepared." "Not in terms of resistance, I don't think." "The middle class, which I belong to, will just run away." "They'll get out of here." "You mean leaving the country?" " Yes." "I know its terrible, but..." "But I think that's how most people feel." "I think..." " Would you leave?" "I'm not sure, but its definitely a possibility." "I think I'm very frightened of repression." "Very scared." "Unbelievable things happened, concentration camps, it sounded like something you'd only get in Patagonia, but I passed one of them, the ESMA, every day." "Aren't you afraid of making this film?" "No, because my conscience has been troubling me for years." "Its my choice." "I might involve other people in it too, because its notjust ourselves who are involved." "We have realised that it went much further than we thought." "But we cant just ignore these things and get on with our lives." "They must be brought back to us alive, now!" "And the guilty must be punished!" "Good morning." "At the start of this month of December, all Argentina is wondering whether the "Full Stop Law" will come into force." "It is likely to be late in December when the Senate and the Parliament pass this law." "This means that from the date that the law is passed, all members of the military who have not been denounced within a period of 60 days by a human rights organisation or an individual will no longer be subject to prosecution in a court of law" "regardless of what they may have done." "We are filming the story of two of the Disappeared." "We learn that the sound man, Alcides Chiesa, who is recording these scenes, disappeared for ten months and was four years in jail without trial." "First a short film that he had made was confiscated, then he himself was kidnapped." "Were going to talk about the workshop and what point we are at now." "We began filming two days ago with Lauras Chamame." "But I think that at this point, we should stop and think about what were doing." "It so happens that when I was talking to Alcides yesterday, he told me that he got the scar that he has on his nose when he was in prison." "And we were wondering, whether we can show the situation were filming in Chamame like this, or not." "I asked Alcides his opinion, on how he would tell the story." "What I've noticed in this film, is that the good guys are just good, and the bad just bad." "Even when they laugh, they're bad." "We find it difficult to deal with this subject." "Because..." "Because it is a subject that is both emotionally and politically sensitive." "But the problem is that this dehumanises the characters." "You're right that its hard." "I was never held in prison myself, but I have relatives who disappeared." "I think this difficulty definitely exists, because I have great respect for those who disappeared." "I'm in two minds." "On the one hand is what I would like to show in a film, on the other I am influenced by the experiences I had." "There are those people who torture you, imprison you, but talk to you about their children and how much they love them." "This is based on someone who I met." "He was..." "He was a torturer, a criminal, but at the same time he was  devoted to his children and he even adopted other children too." "Someone everyone would normally like." "Someone who was well liked in his neighbourhood." "On the other hand are the prisoners who also did awful things, because they are human beings." "In extreme situations, the normal rules no longer apply." "There is nothing that is just good or bad." "They tortured us with food." "They gave us no food for two or three days, then they would leave food out of our reach." "Or they gave us food that was rotten." "In circumstances when things like that happened, sometimes, when we were eventually given something to eat, we would fight for it like animals." "Some tried to be friends with their torturers to get food." "You can criticise this behaviour as immoral, but you have to see it as human nature." "Something particularly moving for me happened at Christmas 1977." "We were being held in prison and at 11 o'clock at night, a man came who we called Uncle, because he was the nicest to us." "He was a good guy, he'd take notes for us with messages for prisoners in the other cells." "At Christmas, he bought nougat for us." "He divided it into 40 and gave us a sweet and a cigarette with it." "Its something..." "Its something so small and unimportant, but it meant a great deal to us at the time." "And this was a cop, a guy whose job it was to imprison people." "He was really poor, too." "These stories seem surreal, almost unbelievable." "Or there was the prisoner who told me that his only wish was to be locked up with his girlfriend, so that they could make love." "In that situation!" "When we were in prison and close to death!" "Then you're saying:" "Be hard on this guy because when he's dead, there'll be no more torturers left." "This is a lie!" "All this was possible in Argentina because the society that existed at the time did nothing about it." "It didn't carry out the torture, but it didn't react either." "Remember, in these situations, we could become any one of these people." "When I asked you your opinion on the scene we were filming, you said:" "You didn't want to interfere, but the reality was different." "Because my experience was different." "In my case we were squashed into a tiny cell together, where the main feature was total darkness, with absolutely no light." "We had to learn quickly how to communicate with our hands." "I would look for other elements." "For me, the most important element in the image would be a ray of light." "We dreamed of being transferred to a cell that the light reached." "I found what Alcides was saying pretty boring." "I suppose it must be a personal thing." "I don't know whether its a question of age or personal experience." "This and that happened, I was there..." "These are all just stories to me, nothing more." "It reminded me of friends of my parents who were in the International Brigades." "As a child they told me all about their heroic deeds." "For my generation, that's in the past." "Alcides is older than me," "I'm one of the last of the generation of the 70s, lets say." "Its over." "We have to draw a line under it and continue in our fight." "Because were at war, the enemy is still there." "Its not like Jorge Rivera Lopez said:" "Were not different." "Were doing okay." "They gave us freedom because we don't cause them any problems." "But the enemy is still among us." "Stories are no use to us now," "What we need is to fight." " But what exactly should we do?" "Keep working, not crying about it, keep fighting until the end." "I wanted to say that I don't think what were doing here is a matter of crying over the past." "That doesn't interest me." "For me, as someone working in culture, its about finding our own identity." "This isn't about mourning the past, or the Disappeared." "Its about finding our cultural identity." "Its about finding our language, our roots and our history." "Who we are." "Creating our own cinematic culture is a very difficult task and for me, it has nothing to do with crying over the past." "When we were filming with hoods, and we wear hoods most of the time, one of the strongest feelings I had was of the absence of reality." "All I knew was where the floor was, not what was going on around me." "This helped me to understand the absolute power of the repressor." "I have to say that, paradoxically," "I enjoyed the perversity of the character I was playing." "Which shows, among other things, that behaviour is linked to ideology." "We decide how to behave." "And we are all capable of extreme behaviour." "I was convinced intuitively that my character would survive, in spite of anything that might happen." "With the help of what was happening in the workshop," "I came rationally to a fairly similar conclusion." "I think what we must do first and foremost is to learn to live with fear." "We have to work with fear and accept it." "So that it can help us with our work." "I remember being on one of the first marches of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo." "One of the mothers took my arm and said:" "We need you alive, not dead." "And the guilty must be punished!" "They must be brought back to us alive, now!" "And the guilty must be punished!" "Fourth of December, 1986." "While we are filming in the old printworks, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are on the streets." "Alfonsin, you're the President!" "Command the military to return to us our people!" "Alfonsin, you are the President!" "Command the military to return to us our people!" "Bring the government here, so that they can see that the people don't want amnesty nor Punto Final!" "To this square, which now belongs to us, we have brought our children!" "We have brought them here living!" "Living, as they were when they were taken!" "We will work together and we will fight together until victory is ours!" "I would like to say that we and you, from inland and from the capital city, all the people of Latin America, are approaching that happy day, when man will no longer prey on his fellow man!" "For me, its as though I were not here." "All my strength is from my daughter and my son-in-law!" "They were with you and with all of Latin America." "All I can say to you is:" "Long live Latin America!" "We have to fight!" "We won't let them beat us!" "Mothers of the Plaza, the people embrace you!" "Mothers of the Plaza, the people embrace you!" "My brothers and sisters!" "Today, while in the courts they are taking their time adding the final full stop that will set Astiz free, we are united here in the same struggle." "Although many politicians who don't like us mothers to grow politically say that we are using politics, as though politics were a dirty word." "It is those pigs of politicians who are making it a dirty word!" "For us, the mothers, the struggle begins each morning when we open our eyes and start thinking of those children we brought into the world, those children we gave life and freedom when we cut the umbilical cord!" ""Ships are the dawn." "They set sail in springs of dark water, yet they always arrive in the morning light." "Some arrived sooner, others later." "Some arrive never, sinking in the infancy of the river."" "They're there, yes." "When she says that, they start laughing and look down, and we see what they're laughing at:" "He's wearing odd socks." "We took this one out." "It was too complicated to go from a close-up to a full shot." "This shows what's going on in front of the camera." "Two guys, one walks this way, one that way." "The film "Village Station", set in 1976, tells the story of a couple who want to secretly flee from Argentina." "They wait in a deserted station for a bus to take them across the border." "They face a long, tense wait." "Shots are heard." "A man they don't know appears." "The couple does not know if he is friend or foe." "Mistrust is rife in the country." "Questions remain unanswered." "A bus pulls up." "The couple and the man board the bus, without knowing if it is the right one." "There are three directors of the film "Village Station":" "Beatriz Couto, Julia Lopez and Eduardo Safigueroa." "Why did you want to make this film?" "I've been living with fear since 1970, when the first person I loved was forced to go into exile." "Others stayed here, and they taught me that survival is also possible here." "It is a tribute to all those people who did not have the option to stay here and had to leave it all behind." "The fear we show in Village Station is not autobiographical." "I did not have to leave." "I stayed here in Argentina." "In 1976 I was 15 years old." "I had no political history, so I was able to stay." "But its close to my heart, so in some ways its still autobiographical, because lots of people that I knew had to leave." "And it was a fear that I myself also felt during the dictatorship." "Action!" "Give me the address book." "Why?" " I'm going to burn it." "Burn it here?" " Give it to me." "We cant do that here!" " Give it to me." "We know that the mechanisms of repression are still intact." "The guilty are protected by their immunity in Argentina in 1986." "That is why this work is important." "I think the reconstruction of memory is very useful." "I think that fear... is something..." "... within us all, in our subconscious." "Every one of us suffered in some way because of what happened in 1976." "With house searches when they were looking for someone, or because of the extra police presence on the streets." "Directly or indirectly, we all suffered." "We have to consider what repression meant in Argentina." "We have to keep looking for reasons and reporting everything that happened." "It is fundamental for us to reconstruct our lives, our history, down to the everyday." "To do this we have to look for people and for their account of facts." "They'll die of old age while they're waiting for us to come back." "I hope someone will do the washing up." "When I found out that the screenplay had been chosen, at first I was very proud." "Its nice to win, or to have your work recognised." "Then I realised that being in this position was a major responsibility." "Suddenly all of those situations came to mind, where I'd thought that I had to keep going for those who died, those who are not with us." "And I wondered if I could do it." "I felt it was too much responsibility for me." "But now were here, we managed it, for all those who are not here now." "Who?" " My friends who have died." "Are you coming?" "Did you have to go into exile, Ana?" " Yes." "Why?" " Because of the military." "If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here today." "Just like my sister isn't here." "What I was thinking was, as Julia said before, we have to honour the dead." "The most important thing is to keep the memories alive." "So that it was not all for nothing." "I think its important that people know history." "That people know exactly how things were, what went on during the dictatorship." "Many people don't know." "I think people need to know about it so it cant happen again." "Or at least we can try and make sure it doesn't." "So that we can make sure we are not as naive as we were then." "Did your sister disappear?" " Yes, in February 1978." "She was 17 years old." "We know nothing, neither where she is now nor where she was." "She was kidnapped, along with her boyfriend." "If I had stayed, the same thing would have happened to me." "I'm certain of it." "My boxes have arrived from Italy." "My life, my home." "Its strange seeing it reduced to two cubic metres." "Nine years shouldn't fit into that space." "But there's lots there." "I saw them today, they're mine alright." "They arrived in a ship, a huge ship, it was incredible!" "When your things arrive, you know that its forever." "I'm coming back to Argentina." "I left Argentina in June 1977 for political reasons." "I knew that I was one of the many that they were looking for." "I had no passport, but I got out with a pass from the Italian embassy." "I spent three months in Brazil, then I was in Italy for nine years." "That's a long time." "Its a long time for someone leaving the country at 19 and coming back at 29." "I don't really know the place." "I have many memories that are much stronger than reality." "Many of these make me afraid, though there is no real reason for this." "If at any time I feel I'm in danger again, I will leave." "Would you leave again?" " Yes." "To save my life." "To save my life." ""Many boats are meant to travel to the roots of mystery, others bring with them decks lined with new legends."" "We do not want a law that will make us forget!" "We do not want an amnesty!" "What the people want, is for them to be brought back alive." "We're driving to "El Pozo de Quilmes", south of Buenos Aires." "One of the clandestine prisons in which Alcides was held." "What was El Pozo de Quilmes, Alcides?" "It was a clandestine prison that was used from about 1976 onwards." "They held prisoners there illegally." "They held them for a while then released them or else eliminated them." "I was expecting a place that was in ruins, not an operational police station." "Like the German concentration camps." "But were not in Germany." "How did you recognise it?" "I lived all my life in this neighbourhood." "I recognised the route and the door, because I fitted the windows here." "I fitted the window frames and shutters myself." "When I was imprisoned here," "I managed to untie myself and go to the window and I recognised the shutters I'd fitted." "In a way, I had built my own prison." "The team was shocked to be outside El Pozo." "How do you feel?" "The most afraid I have been was in 1983, when we had to identify the place for the CONADEP." "We had to travel in very similar police cars to the ones back then." "And we had to go back and see the places where we were imprisoned." "They'd changed the building." "The torture chamber had been bricked up." "We discovered the false wall." "Why did you survive, Alcides?" "I don't know." "All I can do is try and guess the reason." "I wonder whether it was because  people I know put in a good word for me." "Maybe they thought I wasn't important or dangerous." "But I really don't know." "What was your greatest fear?" "Contrary to what you might think in circumstances like these," "My greatest fear was not the fear of death." "In these situations you wish for death." "Death would be an end to the imprisonment and torture." "The greatest fear for me was that I would lose control of what I was saying when I was being tortured." "The type of torture  that I was most afraid of, was when they used the picana on my head." "They use it to give you an electric shock." "You black out and are unaware of what is going on around you." "I was really scared of that, because I didn't know what I might say." "I was also very afraid of what might happen to my father and my wife, who had also been imprisoned." "When I had been in prison for a while, my greatest fear was of going mad." "One comes very close to madness." "The other prisoners could go over the edge at any time." "So you've said you wanted to die." "Death is the solution." "You are not tortured any more." "Death is freedom." "People try to kill themselves." "They know that, so they watch you." "If you drink water after an electric shock, you can have a heart attack." "So I always asked for water, so that I would have a heart attack." "That would have ended the torture, the imprisonment and the interrogations." "What is the worst you can do?" " The worst thing is to accept defeat." "Because if you do that, you lose any moral and ideological values you have, which could help you to stay alive." "This was the point at which they tried hardest to break your spirit." "They wanted to break you." "They used pain." "Or petty bribes." "They said they would stop the torture if you told them anything." "What would have happened if you had given in?" "What?" " If you had played along." "I would not have come out the same person as I was when I went in." "And that was my aim." "You still live in Quilmes, the place they arrested you." "How can you do that?" "Are you not afraid?" "By choosing to live in the place from which I disappeared, on the one hand I'm trying to show them, to show my captors, that I have won." "These little things show that they could not break me." "I'm also trying to show myself that this is the way I should live." "If I didn't do it this way, if I was always afraid that they might come and take me away again, if I let that make me move away from here and change my way of life, then that would mean I was giving in." "There would be no point in staying in the country." "As a filmmaker, did you ever want to make a film about the experience?" "I promised those who were imprisoned with me, that I would do it:" "Make a film about them." "I think it would be a fitting tribute  to them." "And I feel an obligation to try and show people what happened." "But at the moment it is very difficult for me to deal with the subject, it is still a bit too close to home for me to show it  objectively, in a way that is  further removed from my own emotions." "So I prefer not to try and make it yet." "Do you need time?" " Yes." "Time or courage, I'm not sure." "Give me some water, love." "They must be brought back alive!" "The guilty must be punished!" "They must be brought back alive, now!" "And the guilty must be punished!" "Bring the government here and we will show them, that the people will not change their mind!" "No to the amnesty and the Full Stop Law!" "Bring the government here and we will show them, that the people will not change their mind!" "No to the amnesty and the Full Stop Law!" "The 19th of December 1986." "The reaction of the people to the Full Stop Law." "Brothers and sisters!" "Please, try and move in together and make more space so that the people arriving now can fit into the square!" "There are areas that are still empty!" ""There are those boats that come to avenge sunken galleys, those that grow old, never setting sail." "The heart rules." "It rules and goes on." "The ships hear its voice and obey, with confidence they go on."" "Brothers and sisters!" "The streets are full of our comrades, who cannot fit into the square." "During filming, we were always near the river." "We kept going back to a ship in the port of Buenos Aires, that resembled a drawing by a child." "The ship seemed to embody every type of nostalgia, born of leaving and returning." "The anchored ship gave us hope that the journey had a destination." "We began talking about our own landings." "My first association is with the Malvinas War." "I associate it with disembarking, with contact with a specific reality." "I would always associate it with immigration, with  invasion." "With arrival, with disembarking." "With reaching the land." "I found it interesting that Mabel mentioned these two meanings of landing." "The older meaning of a ships first contact with land, and today, a military landing." "In the sense of invasion, or of endless colonisation." "I think that is closely related to the reality that we have experienced." "They landed on us in the military sense." "And there was a war, which we lost." "Its like coming home." "Landing is a way of getting ones things back." "For us it means being able to talk again about a lot of different things that we had locked away." "Its like coming home, all of us being together again." "Its like finding a new history." "Its as though we were emigrating, or immigrating, to our own country." "We are like survivors, or shipwrecks." "Eternal shipwrecks." "We live in a country where we always have to wear life jackets, for fear of drowning." "But the idea of the landing is more definite." "I see what you mean." "But the scene is stronger with the two of them, looking at the soldier..." "Pablo Nisenson's film shows the internal turmoil of a publicist, commissioned by a colonel of the army to make a film supporting the fight against subversion and the repression employed by the dictatorship." "The publicist is torn between his convictions and simply doing what is to his advantage." "At first he thinks he can rebel." "We must remember, that Argentina suffered the bloodiest state terrorism of all times." "There was no one who went too far." "It was all planned." "This is why all those responsible must be tried and punished." "Peace and a strong democracy can only be reached through justice." "Good, cut." "The film shows that the next day, the publicist betrays his dreams." "He goes to see the colonel with the finished video, just as he was asked." "When Nisenson was writing "Full Stop"" "no one could have imagined that as the film was being shot, there would be debates over the draft bill that would lead to the "Full Stop Law"." "When you shout at him..." "Well do it like this." "You go out." "Well follow you out of the picture." "Then you come back into the picture and look at the camera." "Action." "What are you saying, Levinsky?" "It was Levinsky, wasn't it?" "You must be crazy." "I have to present this film tomorrow." "Please understand, Colonel." "There simply isn't enough time." "I'm a professional..." "Why did you write this project, Pablo?" "Because the workshops theme was fear." "When I thought about what I'm afraid of, the first thing I thought was that I'm afraid many will go unpunished." "I'm afraid of the immunity of so many  so many degenerates who are still free to walk the streets." "And thanks to political pacts and social situations over which we have no influence," "they have escaped any form of punishment and it could recur at any time and we would be back in the same situation." "Sometimes I think that film alone is..." "... is not enough." "It seems almost cowardly." "I'm constantly wondering whether art itself is enough to solve problems and help in other ways." "Maybe there are better ways to overcome or to resist." "You didn't like the programme, Levinsky, did you?" "No, sir..." "Its not that." "Your generation is a difficult one." "Full of conflicts." "And then of course all the ideals..." "A generation that has suffered." "You seem like a decent guy." "You should think it over again." "What does it mean to you personally?" "You're very young." "In 1976 and during the dictatorship you were, of course, even younger." "So what does it mean to you personally?" "I think that maybe, having experienced the dictatorship as a child, is what caused me so much..." "I think if I could have been a militant," "I could perhaps see everything more objectively and approach it differently." "To me its a sort of, to put it in psychological terms, a sort of trauma." "I couldn't talk about it in the past, I was afraid of everything." "Notjust of repression, a fear of everything." "They did not let us have an identity." "Everything was forbidden to us." "And as a child, you experience everything much more intensely, even when you haven't been in problematic situations yourself, or difficulties, like so many other people have." "It was hard growing up in these times, too." "Retired Colonel Evaristo Medina." "Army Chief of Press." "If you ever need anything..." "I like to be able to return favours." "We should remember that Argentina was at war." "There is always abuse in wartime." "Today, all this is in the hands of justice." "There must therefore be forgiveness and reconciliation in every sector of society." "A full stop, that will allow us to move on to peace and a stronger democracy." "When I was at secondary school in 1976, the military coup happened." "I was 16." "My generation was probably not fully aware of what had happened." "We took some part in the student resistance movement, but without really knowing what we were doing." "When we realised, realised our friends were disappearing  I myself, and lots of other people, didn't know what to do, how to get out of the situation." "I had got into one of these movements because of a girl I liked." "We grafittied walls, put up posters." "Which was really dangerous." "I wasn't one of those who would fight the military openly." "Lots of people disappeared for much less than that." "What I did was important to me, but I think my personal motivation  had little to do with the real  importance of what we were doing." "There were no mistakes!" "There were no excesses!" "The military is full of murderers!" "There were no mistakes!" "There were no excesses!" "The military is full of murderers!" "The mass demonstration held to protest against the passing of the "Full Stop Law"" "was the largest to date." "Against this backdrop, General Rios Erenu," "Chief of Staff of the Army, voiced some very mild self-criticism, admitting that there may have been some excessive force during anti-subversion actions." "But he emphasised that it is thanks to this excessive force that Argentina can be a democracy today." "I was very unhappy with the draft Full Stop law." "I had been an unconditional..." "I'd supported what the government did because I'd voted for them." "But then they come up with this draft law to end the criminal proceedings against the military, who had totally abused their power, and I found it quite outrageous." "The type of crimes that these people committed can never be forgotten." "Up to then, everything the government had done seemed to be consistent." "I don't know why they decided to do it." "Maybe they're under pressure." "But for me, its a betrayal." "People have to realise they cant do this." "They should fight against it." "Even at the risk of destabilising the country." "They cant just rush through a new law." "I don't think that anyone who has committed crimes can be granted immunity." "Justice has to be done." "My father was in the army, I come from a military family." "Its very difficult, very serious." "Its painful." "They cant pass a law absolving all these criminals." "We have to learn from the mistakes of the past." "But we also have to look ahead and construct the future." "One of the difficulties that the legal process faced was finding witnesses who were prepared to testify." "Nobody was confident that they had sufficient legal support from the State." "I was a witness in the case against the Junta and in the Camps case." "But what was the point of all that, if they then pass a law that makes convictions unlawful?" "So might this Full Stop Law cause grave fear among the general population?" "Yes, by awarding privileges." "It means that some individuals may not be held responsible for crimes they have committed." "We do not want amnesty!" "We want them to be brought back alive!" "We do not want a law to make us forget!" "We do not want amnesty!" "We want them to be brought back alive!" ""The sails emerge from the masts." "They grow like a palm leaf, swinging in the gentle breeze."" "Mothers of the Plaza, the people embrace you!" "Mothers of the Plaza, the people embrace you!" "We are here and we are fighting, because we feel that defending life is the most important thing we can do." "Ten years of fighting, since, one Saturday, the 30th of April, 1977, we were called together by a woman who today lives within us all:" "Azucena Villaflor de Vincenti, who brought us together that first time." "May 1987." "From all over the world, headscarves were sent here in protest at the amnesty laws." "Lets think about the mothers who disappeared:" "Ester Balestrino de Carriaga!" "Mari Ponce!" " They are with us!" "The family members" " They are with us!" "The 30,000 of our sons and daughters who disappeared!" "Prison for all those responsible for our oppression!" "That is the demand of each headscarf, of each signature, of each voice that is sometimes choked by tears." "Sometimes silently, sometimes timidly, each and every signature on these headscarves is a committed signature." "A signature that is not seeking power or political might." "All that these signatures are asking, is that these people be subject to justice, justice that the government does not want to see done." "These men who are in power, in the courts and in Parliament, want to implement the law of Due Obedience and an Amnesty which are the ultimate betrayals of the people." "A people that is standing beside the rest of the world and crying for an end to corruption!" "And an end to betrayal!" "And an end to negotiation!" "And together, we say:" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because they seized power!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because they steeped this country in blood!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because they took the best of our youth away from us!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because they were torturers!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because they stole our children!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because there are still political prisoners in our jails!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because they betrayed this country!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Because they sent our youth to the Malvinas!" "We will not forget!" "And we will not forgive!" "Last night, Parliament finally passed the Statute of Limitations bill, commonly known as the Full Stop Law." "This approval came unusually quickly." "The passing of the bill naturally provoked a range of different reactions." "In the Senate, radical politician Adolfo Gass, whose son is still missing, voted in favour of the law, together with..." ""The sea knows the path of the ships." "But only the wind knows their destinations."" "WITH THANKS TO:" "THE OPUS ENSEMBLE FOR THE SUITE ARGENTINA" "EDUARDO ALIVERTI FOR THE RADIO REPORTS" "LAURA COUTO FOR THE SCENES FROM CHAMAME" "JULIA LOPEZ, BEATRIZ COUTO AND EDUARDO SAFIGUEROA" "FOR THE SCENES FROM VILLAGE STATION" "PABLO NISENSON FOR THE SCENES FROM FULL STOP ... AND THE CREW WHO FILMED THE SHORTS." "THE POEM THE SHIPS BY THIAGO DE MELLO" "WAS TRANSLATED INTO SPANISH BY PABLO NERUDA." "OTHER PARTICIPANTS IN THE WORKSHOP:" "THE IDEA FOR THIS FILM CAME FROM THE WORKSHOP" "RUN BY THE BUENOS AIRES GOETHE INSTITUT." "22.12.86:" "THE FULL STOP LAW IS PASSED 19.04.87:" "MILITARY UPRISING LED BY LT." "COL." "RICO 05.05.87:" "THE DUE OBEDIENCE LAW IS PASSED 18.01.88:" "MILITARY UPRISING LED BY LT." "COL." "RICO 03.12.88:" "MILITARY UPRISING" "LED BY COL." "SEINELDIN"