Memories of a buried past, indications of a disregarded present: interstices between past and present in Henri-François Imbert’s No pasarán, album souvenir

This article focuses on the interstices between past and present in Henri–François Imbert’s essay film No pasarán, album souvenir (2003). It examines Imbert’s strategies to reveal the largely unknown past of the Retirada, where nearly half a million Spanish Republicans fled to France after the victory of Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1939. In addition the article investigates Imbert’s approach to link this often overlooked event of the past with the current situation of refugees in France. The aim of this paper is to analyse how No pasarán, album souvenir oscillates between spatio-temporalities and to explore the ways in which Imbert’s method of filmmaking functions as a transport mechanism through which memory resurfaces in the present