Blue Silence

Off the coast of Manquemapu, Chile, buried beneath the indifferent waves, lies the wreck of the Janequeo. The ship capsized in 1965, and 51 people lost their lives. While the sea has swallowed the wreck, on land the memory of this disaster lives on—in the people and in the landscape.

In this remote corner of the Chilean lake district, which seems always to be shrouded in a mist of rain, hardly any recorded history exists. It survives in oral testimonies and songs.

This film does not attempt to reconstruct that history. With eerie sound design and analog footage in which the colors have faded or become saturated, the film probes the memories of the local residents—memories weathered and eroded by time and the salty sea.