Reenactment as Social Action: The Making of Encierro

On 30 July 1984, 11 mercury miners locked down in the mines of Almadén (Ciudad Real, southern Spain) to protest against their precarious economic and social conditions. 650 meters deep inside oldest most productive world’s history, endured dark contaminated galleries for days nights until claims were addressed. As an emigrated local filmmaker, I come back post-industrial 2019 with idea making a documentary reenactment film about mining strike. The premise is find young locals willing live now-closed whole homage old recreate experience 35 years later. Apart from engaging our collective past, performing form duration previous workers strike, Encierro proposes underground as living symbolic space foster series conversations, encounters, political propositions reimagine Almadén, which rose mine shaft more than 2000 ago, ‘something else besides’ town. This article explores potential shooting take on different relationship normal life same or similar events would have “untransformed reality” (Goffman, 1974, p. 175) - strike versus – its activism transformation. will also explore use conditional tense documentary; speculative hypothetical approach reality sensitive ‘potentially’ real, ‘possible’, ‘what if’ modes documentation. What happens when forms ‘documentary’ ‘reenactment’ are exceeded, act upon world rather only represent it?