Directed by Leandro Katz • Documentary • 1999 • 30 minutes

Investigating death and the power of photography, EL DIA QUE ME QUIERAS is a meditation on the last picture taken of Che Guevara, as he lay dead on a table surrounded by his captors.

After Guevara was captured and killed, in 1967, a wire photograph was transmitted from Bolivia. Its publication on October 10, 1967, was the culmination of a legendary search that had lasted two years. The photograph shows the corpse in a room full of military men. Taken by Freddy Alborta, it has been compared to Mantegna's Dead Christ and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Tulp.

Katz has deconstructed this infamous photograph, approaching the work as an archaeologist sifting historical remnants. Using close-up photography and masking techniques, he re-photographs the image, and asks questions about its content, attempting to expose the indeterminate powers of photographic and cinematic representation. EL DIA QUE ME QUIERAS takes its title from a song by Argentine singer Carlos Gardel. Popular in Latin America since the 1930s, the song tells of a love that brings about an almost biblical transformation. Guevara has also been transformed into a myth. This film attempts a deconstruction of the myth, through the detailed examination of a photo depicting the figure on his deathbed.

"Visually exquisite and deeply moving… at once an elegy to the passing of the age of revolution in Latin America and an investigation into the history and mythos surrounding the infamous photograph of the beatific corpse of its central icon: Che Guevara."—Jeffrey Skoller, Afterimage