Image as a Machine Body, a Sensitive Artifact, in the Short Film Halahaches: the Affective Representation of the Latin American Territory through Animation

Abstract

This article addresses the stop motion animated audiovisual production Halahaches (2014), by the Chilean filmmaker Alejandra Jaramillo, where she poetically explores the selk'nam ritual of Hain, to suggest a counterpoint with contemporary social concerns in relation to gender and the occupation of private and collective space. This work seeks to observe the representation of the Latin American territory in articulation with a narrative dimension based on ancestral cultures, which allows us to think about the affective and sensory framework that the images elaborate through staging. Within this framework, the writing suggests a double question linked to the operation of these images in an ecosystem of digital technologies and streaming platforms; and to the possibilities of pointing out, through an archival gesture, an artistic trend in Latin American animation that looks towards its own cultural and historical experience as a response mechanism to a global context of cultural and technological convergences, and social and political tensions.