ABSTRACT
Milicianas is a 2019 documentary from the filmmakers Tania Balló, Gonzalo Berger, and Jaume Miró, who over the course of about fifty-two minutes reconstruct from a photograph the execution of five volunteer nurses for the Red Cross on the island of Mallorca. The film has the characteristics of a historical documentary and uses techniques of historical research. The documentary adapts its language to reach both specialized and non-specialized viewers and to open new perspectives on some historical facts. This chapter argues that Milicianas can be viewed as a documentary when considering its discursive form in approaching reality: the possibility of working with original images (photographs, cinematographic, and more recently videographic sources) and of relying on testimonial memory in written documents presented in direct sound and voice-over narration.
Milicianas belongs to a group of documentaries that recreate a part of recent history. Furthermore, it complements the work of historians and highlights the importance of both archival documentation and audiovisual documentation. As part of those untold stories of the Spanish Civil War, the film reconstructs identities and gives names and surnames to a group of women who were shot and buried as NN (No Name) in mass graves that were never re-opened.
