{"id":123348,"date":"2024-05-24T15:41:55","date_gmt":"2024-05-24T13:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iffr.com\/en\/?p=123348"},"modified":"2024-08-07T15:54:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T13:54:13","slug":"blog-at-home-among-strangers-strangers-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iffr.com\/en\/blog-at-home-among-strangers-strangers-at-home","title":{"rendered":"At Home Among Strangers, Strangers at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Accompanying the IFFR 2024 Focus: Chile in the Heart programme, which looks at the Chilean exile cinema phenomenon instigated by the 1973 coup by Augusto Pinochet, IFFR programmer Olaf M\u00f6ller puts the selected films into context.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

On 11 September 1973, rogue units of the Chilean Armed Forces led by General Augusto Pinochet stormed La Moneda and murdered the nation’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. In the months that followed, some 200,000 Chileans were forced to flee the country \u2013 about 2% of the total population. Amongst those who went into exile were many major young directors \u2013 led by Miguel Littin, Helvio Soto and Ra\u00fal Ruiz \u2013 as well as vast groups of filmmakers at the very beginnings of their careers, like Angelina V\u00e1zquez, Sebasti\u00e1n Alarc\u00f3n, Orlando L\u00fcbbert, Claudio Sapia\u00edn, Jorge Fajardo, Valeria Sarmiento, Pablo de la Barra, Sergio M. Castilla, Gast\u00f3n Ancelovici and Maril\u00fa Mallet, with Patricio Guzm\u00e1n as this group’s leading light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though not all key figures left: Catholic Marxist Aldo Francia, founder of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Vi\u00f1a del Mar and director of two seminal pre-putsch masterpieces, for example, remained but stopped making films, call this interior exile. Mark also, that not all who left would make films denouncing the crimes of the junta or chronicling Chilean exile life. \u00c1lvaro J. Covacevich, whose sole work abroad and final film, La odisea de los Andes<\/strong> (1976), relates the story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 \u2013 which, of course, one can also read as a paean to endurance and the undying will to resist what seems inevitable… But this is only as parenthesis. For the vast majority of those who left did indeed dedicate their filmmaking activities to denouncing the fascism at home, leading to a truly unique phenomenon: spread out over some twenty countries on three continents with no coordination among them whatsoever, there was a Chilean cinema speaking as one \u2013 a culture that kept the spirit, ideas and ideals of the Unidad Popular alive long after the government had been destroyed. There’s nothing in the history of cinema that is even remotely comparable with this phenomenon, never before and never since did such a huge group of artists go into exile and create as one \u2013 it\u2019s something to be cherished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we decided to dedicate a programme to the 50th anniversary of Chilean cinema in exile (1974 saw the release of the first films made entirely abroad, with Ra\u00fal Ruiz’s Dialogue d’exil\u00e9s<\/strong> as the first such feature), we first and foremost saw this programme as an act of remembrance. Doing so in the Netherlands feels particularly apt, as solidarity with Chile was important for Dutch politics in the 1960s and 1970s \u2013 and not only the Joop den Uyl government, as some now might believe, but also those preceding and following it. In fact, it’s astonishing that only one of the featured directors, Leo Mendoza, settled for a while in the Netherlands, but that might have more to do with the production possibilities here, than basic political sympathies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendoza is a name probably very few have ever heard, like that of so many others connected to this moment, even if in recent years one could note a growing interest in the female filmmakers, Angelina V\u00e1zquez and Maril\u00fa Mallet in particular. Though filmmakers like Ra\u00fal Ruiz and Patricio Guzm\u00e1n who could consistently make feature-length works and remain popular with tastemakers continue to be remembered and celebrated, others whose careers are full of gaps or whose styles fell out of fashion got lost into the cracks of film history, at least on the international stage. All those who never made feature-length works and therefore never saw commercial distribution or whose feature-length period began only after the dictatorship’s end stood no chance against the industry-rooted habits of historicisation. It’s our duty to keep these artists’ voices alive \u2013 make them matter again, anew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a certain way, Patricio Guzm\u00e1n’s three-part La batalla de Chile. La lucha de un pueblo sin armas<\/strong> (1975\u201379) has come to represent this phenomenon \u2013 a behemoth of a film that was also kept constantly in physically good shape and circulation, in contrast to, say, Gast\u00f3n Ancelovici and Orlando L\u00fcbbert’s Die F\u00e4uste vor der Kanone<\/strong> (1975) or Pablo de la Barra’s Queridos compa\u00f1eros<\/strong> (1978), which were barely seen for decades and now exist only in copies of dubious quality. The particularities of this cinema, that it is spiritually of one country but physically anchored in many others, doesn’t make matters easier and trying to track down these prints made that blatantly obvious. Often one had to try out several titles in an archive’s register to find a film \u2013 would it be recorded as En un lugar\u2026 no muy lejano<\/strong> \/ N\u00e5gonstans… inte s\u00e5 l\u00e5ngt borta<\/strong> (Luis Roberto Vera, 1980), or, say, Ardiente paciencia<\/strong> \/ Mit brennender Geduld<\/strong> (Antonio Sk\u00e1rmeta, 1983)? To which national cinema do these films belong? Who is supposed to take care of them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waves of  concentrated remembrance are usually triggered by a sense of contemporary urgency. Looking back at a moment when artists spread out all over the world could feel so strongly connected by an idea that they were able to create a vast, diverse and multi-faceted, while ideologically coherent body of work certainly serves as a good example for our times, when ever more people are forced to leave their homes. Being united in the face of oppression and subjugation does not depend on technological means of communication but a shared sense of ideas, principles and aims. Agit-gems like Sergio Castilla’s Pinochet: fascista, asesino, traidor, agente del imperialismo<\/strong> (1974) and La piedra crece donde cae la gota <\/strong>(1977), Patricio Castilla’s Nombre de Guerra: Miguel Enr\u00edquez<\/strong> (1975), Juan Forch and J\u00f6rg Herrmann’s Chile-Filmplakat 2: Hitlerpinochet<\/strong> (1975) and Rodrigo Gon\u00e7alves’s Rebeli\u00f3n ahora<\/strong> (1983) impress upon us now maybe more than ever with their seriousness and dedication, but also their formal inventiveness, artistry and craft, as well as will for a very real political change. The grandeur and splendour of masterpieces like Miguel Littin’s Actas de Marusia<\/strong> (1976) and El recurso del m\u00e9todo<\/strong> (1978) celebrates cinema as a popular art that can talk in no uncertain terms about the political situation \u2013 back then, even before, but also today and tomorrow, for the enemies remain the same. Times may have changed, and in many ways this cinema is the product of a very specific moment in time when left-wing ideals and practices had better traction and rigour, and were perhaps more widely acceptable. But who says that there can’t be this moment again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Olaf M\u00f6ller<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t

A list with articles<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t