The horrible night ceased: the documentary color of “El Bogotazo”

Abstract

This paper analyzes Ricardo Restrepo’s documentary Cesó la Horrible Noche (The Horrible Night ceased) -2013- and its impact as a work of Colombian audiovisual heritage, as it presents other moments of April 9 th 1948. The images of “El Bogotazo” will always have as main axis the figure of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán. Photography, documentary or fiction films, music, literary memoirs, and academic research add to a topic which has become an analysis genre that involves Colombian political history. Based on this important documentary about a personal vision of “El Bogotazo”, made through the home-made archives in color, the paper presents a balance of the historical fact inside the Colombian cinematographic context, and then to focus on the images, the staging and its representation in the memory and oblivion process bound to other points of analysis.