Activating and Performing Nostalgia at Places of Sorrowful Exile

This paper examines the emergence of different forms of nostalgia during the collaborative production of videos about exile among nine Chilean political refugees living in California.  It shows that nostalgia, a set of emotions and imaginary activities that yearns for the past, has evolved with time and has different manifestations throughout the different stages of life in exile.  It presents the medium of video as an ethnographic tool used in making nostalgia visible through most stages of its creation from the preproduction activities, to the taping, and editing. Five major forms of nostalgia are presented, giving particular importance to the forms of nostalgia that were performed in front of the camera by the exiles.