Through the voices of women speak violence and death: Cinema, the jungle and the river as oral archives in two documentaries by Colombian filmmaker Nicolás Rincón Gille

In a context of extreme violence, the voices of women – the biggest victims of Colombia’s domestic armed conflict – are a precious source through which to understand the territorial tangle underlying any war. Taking two documentaries directed by the filmmaker Nicolás Rincón Gille, this article aims to highlight the power of the voices of Colombian women who have borne witness to their experience of violence. As well as armed violence, they talk about violence inside families. The hypothesis of this article is that the characters in Rincón Gille’s documentaries, facing both physical and cultural disappearance, express themselves principally through orality, something inherent to their sociocultural circumstances. In other words, they exist from ‘their place of enunciation’ (or social position) – a concept theorized, from Brazil, by the Afro-feminist philosopher Djamila Ribeiro. This article employs the subversive power of this key concept in thinking about oral expression as practised by Colombian women: as a tool for survival, creative transmission and preserving memory.