Tarajal: Dismantling the Official Discourse through Participation

Abstract

In February 2016 the documentary film Tarajal. Desmuntant la impunitat a la frontera sud (Tarajal. Dismantling impunity at the southern border), written and directed by Xavier Artigas, Xapo Ortega and Marc Serra. The project aimed to shed light on events that occurred two years earlier, on February 6, 2014, when fifteen people from Africa lost their lives trying to swim across the border of Ceuta, Spanish territory, while the Spanish Civil Guard fired rubber balls. In the present study I am interested in exploring on the one hand, how Tarajal, mainly through montage and the use of interviews, brings to the surface a discourse opposed to the official discourse of the State and highlights its use of systemic violence. On the other hand, I also want to investigate the possibilities of Tarajal in particular, and of the documentary genre in general, as an alternative way of creating a collective and participatory discourse that involves a new form of spectator awareness.