ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the importance of visual touch in recent Colombian cinema as a new path toward understanding the decades-long armed conflict and articulating practices of reconciliation. Drawing from the critical inquiry on the haptic image proposed by Laura Marks and Giuliana Bruno and theories of affect, the chapter delves into the visual devices deployed by contemporary Colombian filmmakers to trigger emotions through tactile experiences, bringing to the forefront the possibility of feeling the Colombian conflict through affective visualities instead of merely seeing it. Examples include Ciro Guerra’s La sombra del caminante (2004), William Vega’s La sirga (2012), César Acevedo’s La tierra y la sombra (2015), and Jorge Forero’s Violencia (2015). By challenging the ocular-centric scopic regime associated with realist depictions of conflict in Colombian cinema, these films foster communal filmic experiences that call for modes of active spectatorship informed by touch and contact with the other, privileging an affect-oriented approach to conflict and reconciliation.
