Tatiana Huezo: Trauma and the poetics of displacement

Is it possible to document trauma? How should one approach the disaster zone where the subject is torn to pieces? What narrative resources does Mexican-Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo utilize to map these pains in her documentaries El lugar más pequeño (‘The Tiniest Place’) (2011) and Tempestad (‘Tempest’) (2016) and in her fiction Noche de Fuego (‘Prayers for the Stolen’) (2021)? In developing my argument, I propose that Huezo employs a poetics of displacement in her approach to women who have experienced gender-based violence and forced disappearance of family members. Their suffering is explored through displacing their stories with respect to their bodies, sheltering their emotions in visual metaphors and letting their voices wander through the landscape. Her work assists me to explore Adam Ganz’s notes () on the relationship between writing for the screen and oral tradition, as well as Michel Chion’s reflections () on the effect that the displacement of voices has with respect to the body in cinema. It also helps me to inquire into the significance of spaces of trust in the construction of the ‘idea for the screen’ among participants who are not writers and, ultimately, to investigate the nature and the function of art in the context of violence.