Composed entirely of archival footage, the film opens before the first frame with a scraping, rattling and rumbling sound, like pebbles coming loose and starting to roll down a slope. The earth stirs before it starts to slide. What follows is a procession that runs through time and always takes a different form. A funeral procession, a protest march, a sea of fedoras, of uniformed men on horses. And the sound continues to swell.
Is history a movement forward or is it repetition? In this documentary it’s both. Color replaces black and white, the coffin moves from horse and cart to a car. But people still hold up signs with the names of those who have disappeared. Mourning follows resistance and resistance follows mourning.
By omitting clearly recognizable context, Landslide transcends the Colombian history from which the footage is drawn, and functions as a symbolic document of oppression and resilience.
Stills
