Luz Obscura, Susana de Sousa Días, Portugal, 2017, 77'
On the one hand, the photographs taken by the political police during the Salazar dictatorship, a collection of faces looking at a camera. On the other, the testimony and memories of the children of a communist militant who has been killed. Now, the questions: How are the identity, memory and history of someone who has disappeared, reconstructed? How do that absence and void gnawingly slough direct relatives? Luz Obscura (Dark Light) reflects upon power, images, oppression, memory and the effects of an authoritative system on the intimacy of a family.
Taking as its starting point the photographs taken by the portuguese political police (1926-1974), Luz Obscura seeks to reveal how an authoritarian system operates within the family intimacy, simultaneously revealing areas of repression which mould the present.