El tiempo de la experiencia. Archivos y testimonios en la construcción de la historia: Un abordaje a partir del filme Buenos Aires al Pacífico (Donoso, 2018)

In this article the use of archives and testimonies in their relationship with modes of representation and construction of History is approached by means of the analysis of the film Buenos Aires al Pacífico (Donoso, 2018). The history of railways in Argentina is narrated by referring it to the «Buenos Aires al Pacífico» railroad, a network of trains that ran between the end of the 19th Century and the end of the 20th Century connecting the cities of Buenos Aires and Valparaíso. The narration makes use of various resources to shape the representation of a Historical event such as the building and eventual dismantling of the railway line: old photographs and film footage from the moment the tracks were being laid; audiovisual fragments dating to the times when railways were nationalized, taken from official archives; interviews with a former railway employee and with an inhabitant of a smalltown in the Mendoza province that was crossed by the trains, among others. In this respect, the work is set within the framework of the expansion of studies on archive and testimony that seek to define their uses and operating modes when it comes to representing and configuring History.