The filming of “Between the Stitches” takes place over a five-month period in Santiago, Chile, capturing the collaborative process behind a new textile piece created by the feminist collective Memorarte, with guidance from cultural researcher and founder Erika Silva. The project follows the members, in majority older women, through an extended period of shared making, documenting how historical memory and contemporary political realities are negotiated around the workshop table before the finished textile is carried into the public demonstrations of the city.
The documentary adopts a strictly observational approach, utilising a handheld camera to maintain close physical proximity without interfering with the unfolding room dynamics. Rather than imposing an outside narrative, the visual and sonic strategy relies on the unhurried rhythms of the workspace, paying careful attention to the tactile materialities of fabric, scissors, and thread. Ambient sounds of conversation, cutting, and stitching form the core texture of the film, allowing the quiet gestures of making to reveal how political resistance is lived and remembered through the hands.
The Film Synopsis
In a quiet workshop in Santiago, a group of older women sits around a table strewn with fabric, scissors, and thread, embarking on the collective creation of a new textile piece. As their hands work, stories emerge, moving between personal recollections of past political repression and contemporary struggles for bodily autonomy. When the camera reaches the limits of what can be recorded in the present, hand-crafted animation brings hidden memories to life, sprouting directly from the visual language of the fabrics. The project follows this creative journey over several weeks, culminating as the women carry their completed artwork from the intimacy of the workspace directly into the roaring crowds of the demonstration.