Guzmán?s new flick on Pinoshit

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

{2 things: his big Battle documentary was shown, but not on
publicly broadcast TV.  Nevertheless, when it was shown it
broke viewing records.  The problem may have more to do
with the ownership of the big TV outlets in Chile. One is the
Catholic Church. Another is that Venezuelan guy who plays
golf with George Bush. The recent critique of Venezuelan
media applies quite well to Chile, as well as most other
countries. Our question is why isn't there a Film Forum in
every US city ?  --cb}

Telling Chile's Story, Even if Chile Has Little Interest

By ALAN RIDING
New York Times, October 3, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/arts/03ARTS.html

 PARIS, Oct. 2 ? Five days after the Chilean army overthrew the elected
Socialist government of President Salvador Allende Gossens on Sept. 11,
1973, Patricio Guzmán was arrested by military intelligence officers. He
was then interrogated in the national stadium in Santiago for two weeks
before he was released and fled the country. He was lucky. While many
Allende supporters were being jailed, tortured and killed, he escaped
because he was "only" a documentary filmmaker.

Yet in the nearly three decades since the coup, Mr. Guzmán, a
gentle-mannered man of 61, has earned a significant place in the history
of Chile's failed experiment in nonviolent revolution. Through a series
of documentary films, notably his monumental 270-minute "Battle of
Chile," he has become a chronicler of Allende's three years in office
and a collector of the bitter memories of the dictatorship of Gen.
Augusto Pinochet, which lasted until 1990.

His latest film, "The Pinochet Case," which is showing at the Film Forum
in New York, recounts the story of General Pinochet's unexpected arrest
in London on Oct. 16, 1998, at the request of the Spanish authorities,
who had charged him with genocide, terrorism and murder. It then records
the 16-month legal fight until a British court approved his extradition
to Spain and the British government ordered his release on grounds of
ill health.

Accompanying this reporting, however, Mr. Guzmán uses the testimony of
nine women ? some torture victims, others relatives of murdered or
missing people ? to tell of the dictatorship. "Instead of using a
voice-over to provide the background, they do that," Mr. Guzmán
explained in an interview in his Paris apartment. "They provide the
counterpoint to the story. From journalism to memory to journalism."

The stories they tell are heart-rending. Among them were Victoria, whose
son disappeared; Nelly, whose husband disappeared; Luisa, whose two sons
were murdered in 1985; Cecilia, who was detained from 1981 to 1992;
Ofelia, who survived torture in a house of horrors known as the Villa
Grimaldi. The counterpoint of their memories are recent images of the
disinterment of some of the thousands who died during the dictatorship.

At the end of the film, General Pinochet is back in Chile and, newly
vulnerable after the humiliation of his experience in London, his
immunity from prosecution as a senator for life is lifted and he is
charged with torture and other crimes. Deemed by government doctors to
be unfit to face trial, he remains under house arrest. And as if
completing the circle, the movie's final image is a statue of Allende
being erected in front of Moneda Palace, where he died.

But for Mr. Guzmán the story is not over and perhaps never will be. It
is a story fed by memories that he feels committed to keep telling even
though Chile is now governed by its third elected civilian government
since General Pinochet stepped down and many Chileans prefer not to look
back.

"What shocks me is the lack of space for memory in Latin America," he
said. "There is no great literature on repression. In Chile great
writers have not spoken out with the exception of Ariel Dorfman. Movie
directors turn away from the topic. Most artists feel it is a tired
theme. They want to move on, to write about or cover other things. I
think we'll have to wait for those who are 15 now to address this past."

Yet for the next generation, Mr. Guzmán's movies will stand as a record.
Indeed, when he returned to Chile in March 1971 after six years of
studying cinema in Spain, his immediate thought was to record what he
saw. "I sensed a different climate the moment I arrived," he recalled.
"The look on people's faces, the music, the middle classes, peasants and
workers in the streets, something I had never seen before in my life, a
sense of fiesta so unlike Chile."

The result was a 100-minute documentary called "The First Year." But as
economic conditions deteriorated in Chile, Mr. Guzmán was paralyzed
until he received the gift of 30 hours' worth of film stock from the
French documentary maker Chris Marker. With that he resumed work with
his cameraman, Jorge Muller, later murdered by the dictatorship, this
time going into factories and union meetings to record what he calls
"the invisible reality."

They were still at work on the morning of the coup, but Mr. Guzmán had
the foresight to hide everything he had filmed. And thanks to the
Swedish Embassy in Santiago, he recovered his historical record four
months later in Stockholm. He spent the next five years in Cuba turning
it into "The Battle for Chile." "For me, the real coup was in 1979 when
I finished the film," he recalled. "I suddenly had no mission and fell
into a terrible crisis."

He was rescued by the search for memory, first when he made
"Pre-Columbian Mexico," a television series around a Mexican village,
and then in 1986 when he visited Chile for the first time since the coup
to make "In the Name of God," about liberation theology under the
Pinochet regime. Six years later, he returned to the subject of
liberation theology, this time across Latin America, in "The Southern
Cross."

"The Mexican film made me understand how a documentary can play a role
in the preservation of memory," he said. "A country without documentary
films is like a family without a photo album. When you see the photo,
you remember your past, but the same photo also redefines your past. So
there is a to and fro with memory. You return to a forgotten story, and
in the process you rewrite that story."

With that in mind, then, for a film called "Chile, Obstinate Memory,"
Mr. Guzmán returned to Chile in 1996 to trace those whom he could
identify from "The Battle for Chile." "The Pinochet Case" produced a
similarly powerful record. While only 9 of his 40 witnesses appear in
the film, a French cable channel, Histoire, plans to broadcast the
testimony of all 40 in 10 one-hour programs. Their accounts will also be
published in a book.

Mr. Guzmán's next project, a biography of Allende for the 30th
anniversary of his death, next year, also dwells on memory. He said: "I
want the memories not of political leaders, but of old people who have
different memories, of people whom no one knows exist, people who retain
the collective popular memory. What did Allende mean to them?"

His frustration is that Chile seems less interested in his work than the
rest of the world is. His movies have never been shown on Chilean
television and stay only three or four weeks in theaters. " 'Obstinate
Memory' ran for four weeks in Santiago and for four months in Buenos
Aires," he said. "In Santiago `The Pinochet Case' was taken off after
three weeks to make room for `Harry Potter.' "

But his own energy seems unaffected. "I do what I do because the
subjects fascinate me," he said. "I may be in a furrow, but it's not
claustrophobic. Memory is a concept, but it is also an animal that
enters your body. Remembering can be very powerful. It's an animal that
you also have to dominate."



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