Missionnaire,uncaminodeliberación

Directed by: Fernando NogueiraMontage: Gustavo CataldiProduced by: Maria CabrejasDate: 2004Country: ArgentinaLanguage: Spanish (Spanish subtitles)Running time: 49'Availability in the UK: Queen Mary, University of London, LibraryMissionnaire is a documentary about Sister Ivonne Pierron's ongoing missionarywork in a remote area in the Province of Misiones (Northeastern corner ofArgentina). Although the film is set in Pueblo Illia [Illia Village] (Misiones), itopens with panoramic views of the city of Buenos Aires, while a radio newsreadertells us about France's request for Captain Alfredo Astiz's extradition for thedisappearance and murder of two French nuns during the last Argentinedictatorship (1976-83). Then, the title sequence gives us the background forMissionnaire's story: 'Sister Ivonne Pierron, comrade during those years of AliceDomon and Léoni Duquet, the disappeared nuns, survived.'The film shows in detail the beautiful and colourful landscape – green soil andgreen vegetation – of this rural area, but also the deprivation of its inhabitants.Most of them have small farms, put their produce commands insufficient prices inthe market. That is why they find it so hard to survive and many children have towork. Within this context of poverty and deprivation, Sister Ivonne set up ashelter for children where they receive education, have their meals and pray. Thefilm presents interviews with these children, their parents and their teachers.Many of the children interviewed say that they would not be able to study ifIvonne was not there with her shelter, because they live too far from the schools.There are also sequences of classroom situations where the pupils learn about thehistory of human rights in Argentina under the last military dictatorship. It is thenwhen Sister Ivonne explains to the pupils what 'dictatorship' means, and how theconcept should not only be applied to the military regime of late 1970s and early1980s Argentina, but also to the 1990s because the government deprived peopleof the possibility of surviving, and thus many peasants and shanty-town dwellersdied in indigence. Ivonne affirms that only the survivors of a dictatorship can tellthe true story. Photographs of Videla and Astiz are inserted, and in some of themthey are in churches, while Ivonne says that the Catholic Church sinned duringthe last dictatorship because it did not take a position in relation to the ongoingviolation of Human Rights and did not condemn those responsible for them.Ivonne considers herself a revolutionary as Jesus Christ and Che Guevara were,and shows her photograph of Che – which was given to her by Che's father –while she tells us that the shelter's children know who he was. There are longinterviews with Ivonne, in the last of which she explains her concept of'liberation', drawing our attention to the fact that the poor are more liberatedfrom material wealth when they face death than the rich, and in this respect theydie freer than the rich. The film ends with the testimony of a mother who saysthat Ivonne 'is another peasant, another nurse, another teacher. Ivonnne iseverything.'