“Maelström 2001” was institutionally released

In the Auditorium of the Cultural Center of Science (C3), the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) held the institutional premiere of “Maelström 2001”, a feature film by CONICET Documentary under the scope of the of the Institutional Relations Office with the technical team of the Council’s National Program for Science and Justice. The opening was led by the president of the Council, Ana Franchi, the CONICET researcher at the National Atomic Energy Commission, Rodolfo “Willy” Pregliasco and the director of the film, Juan Pollio.

The president of CONICET, Ana Franchi expressed: “The importance lies in the dissemination of the events that occurred almost 21 years ago and perhaps the younger generations have not had contact with these terrible events that occurred in a democratic government. The possibility of being able to project this film and to show it to young people is important because the idea is to avoid the repetition of these events that cost us 39 deaths of compañeros and compañeros. Disclosing this is essential.”

In addition, Franchi highlighted the participation of the scientists “Willy” Pregliasco and Lucas Micheletti: “Their contribution has been very important to be able to have those few convictions and that is where science and technology contribute to issues that seemed not to matter from science.” However, various researchers from CONICET’s National Program for Science and Justice are working on issues related to justice and they do it very well and this is very important for the expert part and the training of personnel, the possibility of interacting between scientists and scientists from different disciplines with the judiciary and forces is essential. Clearly what this shows is that CONICET has decided that one of its fundamental pillars is the defense of human rights as a decision of a 64-year-old national science and technology institution that has sometimes had complex participations as we showed on 24 of March where almost no investigation was carried out on the people who had been murdered or disappeared in our own organization, but which now has a policy that goes towards a total defense of human rights. A science and technology institution that is not committed to the life of the population makes no sense”.

During his speech, Pregliasco expressed: “Once the work was presented in the public hearings of the cause, the people from CONICET Documental came with the idea of ​​making a production. We argued that a documentary could not be made about what we did, because what happened on the 20th is much bigger. So, I think that an excellent interpretation was made, they went further and produced a feature film with added artistic and testimonial value. In the film they show our work as investigators which has to do with recovering the truth of the facts. The truth is not an objective truth, it is a truth that calls to be interpreted, that questions and calls to make a semiotics and this is the point that forces to interact with other people that arises from the interaction with the judicial system and with the rest of the society”

And he added: “The film is articulated by the relatives, somehow it is the exercise of memory that makes the trial possible and we are summoned. On the other hand, it is articulated with what the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) has been doing, which is the demand for justice but not only from the judiciary, but with the interpretation of the facts and what remains for us, as a society of what happened on December 20, 2001″. Finally, he said: “From this place we talk a lot about how to articulate science with society and the scientist is considered as a research subject on one side and society on the other. I think it is time to think about it in another way, that the scientist is also a social subject, that they have the predicate of investigating, yes, but that in some way they are part of a society that builds memory, investigates the truth and fights for Justice”.

For his part, the film’s director, Juan Pollio, expressed: “On behalf of CONICET Documentary, I want to thank the Council and the National Program for Science and Justice for having given us the privilege of working with these materials, for having supported this project, which is very important, new and different and that took a long time to develop and I especially want to thank those who gave their testimony and the relatives of the victims.”

“Maelström 2001” captures the process carried out by the CONICET researcher at the National Atomic Energy Commission, Rodolfo “Willy” Pregliasco, to reconstruct with images from various sources —such as photographs from chroniclers and videos from security cameras of the Federal Police, television channels and documentary filmmakers—the circumstances in which five murders took place and several people were injured during the social protest of December 20, 2001 that took place in the City of Buenos Aires.

In this way, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “A Descent into Maelström ”, the physicist created the panopticon, a program that spatially and temporally orders the chaos of images produced on that day. This tool allowed, throughout the trial, to locate the victims and witnesses and to relate the police orders transmitted by radio to reconstruct what happened.

The event was attended by authorities and members of CONICET, theNational Program for Science and Justice, the Cultural Center for Science, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the National Genetic Data Bank, the R+D+i Agency, the Innova-T Foundation, Human Rights organizations, Science and Technology Institutions and Defense and Security. Also, the team of CONICET Documentary, the scientific community, relatives of the victims of the repression, specialists who carried out the investigation process, workers and workers of the Scientific Pole and the general public.

The Council’s National Program for Science and Justice offers research, equipment and training capacities based on the specific needs of judges, prosecutors, defenders and defenders. Within this framework, the activity is proposed as an opportunity to access, through an audiovisual production, the contributions that are made and that could be made from CONICET to Justice.