From individual memory to the portrait of an historical experience:

notes on the documentary How good is to see you alive, by Lúcia Murat

Abstract

Since a couple of years, the lives of women who have been victims of the forces of repression during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) have been a subject of memory and reflection in various formats. This paper studies a pioneering movie in such a theme, the film documentary How good is to see you alive, produced and directed by Lúcia Murat and released in the context of Brazilian redemocratization in 1989. Through eight testimonials and a monologue played by the famous actress Irene Ravache, the documentary discusses the speeches of women whose voices emerge on the screen and seeks to answer how that violent and traumatic experience can be, in their permanence in the memory of each interviewee, a witness from that present moment - thus evidencing that to talk about

of a traumatic experience is to show a social wound in the subject's body. After 35 years of its release, we remain, in addition, the question about what the film tells us or can say about a gift that, as a traumatic repetition, does not stop echoing fascination with the dictatorial violence that suppresses politics and even the subject. Just note that justice was never done, since none of those involved with torture paid for the crimes it committed. The film is presented with regard to its elements and montage, and then discuss its content around three axes: testimony, motherhood and female desire, since, to such women, it is not just concerned to have been survived, but also how to continue living as a subject of democratic reconstruction, reaffirming female desire, including the one of a sexual order. It is concluded that the guilt is inseparable from the witness and thus delineates the testimony as a possibility of removal from trauma by dissolving, precisely, the repetition of guilt.