Léalo en español
The coup d’état led by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973 in Chile ultimately, after many years, ended with democracy, leaving in its wake countless deaths, thousands of people tortured, and around 1,500 persons missing. Among the 200,000 exiles (approximately 2% of the country’s population) were many filmmakers, who took on the mission of not letting the world forget about the coup and its trail of hardships and pain. A sample of their work is being shown at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in a special focus called Chile in the Heart.
The Focus includes renowned filmmakers like Raúl Ruiz, Patricio Guzmán, Helvio Soto and Miguel Littín, as well as a new generation raised in exile (Alvaro de la Barra, Luis Vera). The selection needs to be considered both for its historical and cinematographic value, since we can find everything from propaganda shorts (Name of War: Manuel Enriquez; To the Peoples of the World) to films nominated for Oscars (Letters from Marusia, Actas de Marusia) and Cannes (The Recourse to the Method, El recurso del método).
Most of these works started in Chile and all were finished in exile, thanks to international solidarity. The feature films and documentaries were shot in Finnish (Two Years in Finland), Russian (Night over Chile), Swedish (Främlingar), and Quebecois French (Il n’y a pas d’oubli), among other languages. They all begin with indignation, which is followed by nostalgia, and the directors speak of the need to adapt to their new country — something indispensable in view of the fact that Pinochet remained president of Chile for 17 years and then continued in a senatorial position, protected by amnesty, until his death in 2006.
Solidarity took many forms, from asylum for entire families to financing production. In Mexico, Miguel Littín filmed what may be his best work. In Actas de Marusia, Gian María Volonté starred and Mikis Theodorakis composed the music. El recurso del método has an exuberant and luxurious mise en scene rarely seen in Latin American cinema. For his Spanish production The Triple Death of the Third Character, Helvio Soto collaborated with the renowned cinematographer José Luis Alcaine and actor José Sacristán.
The best-known film of the section, and possibly of all exile cinema, is The Battle of Chile, the Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie by Patricio Guzmán. It is the first part of a trilogy essential to understand what happened in Chile. The canisters with filmed material left the country thanks to the Swedish Ambassador in Chile. To finish the work, Guzmán had the collaboration of Chris Marker, Julio García Espinoza, the Cuban Film Institute and the MacArthur Foundation.
In a scene from Dialogues of Exiles, filmed in France, an exiled intellectual tells an exiled worker “from now on we will see little of each other, because here things are different.” With bitterness the worker answers, “See you at the next revolution.” In other scenes, there are groups of exiles who spend their afternoons in cafes and hold assemblies to make any decision. Today, almost fifty years later, the film sparkles with the irony and genius of Raúl Ruiz, but in 1975 it was unanimously rejected by the exiled Chileans who considered the director a traitor to the cause, and was ignored by the rest of the world.
The gaze of women is present in the exhibition, Angelina Salazar will be in Rotterdam giving a talk and her documentary-essays Two Years in Finland and Fragments of an Unfinished Diary will be screened. Valeria Sarmiento in La femme au foyer presents the vision of a group of right-wing housewives locked up while the coup occurs. In two short semi-documentaries, Marilú Mallet presents the problems of living in exile while longing for one’s motherland.
Screening great documentaries, propaganda films, cautionary tales, nostalgic stories, views from afar, closed feelings, the IFFR Focus ensures we understand Chile better and remember the day when a coup changed its citizens’ lives.
