Politics

  • Patricio Guzmán – Chile, la memoria obstinada AKA Chile, the Obstinate Memory (1997)

    1991-2000ChileDocumentaryPatricio GuzmánPolitics

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    (Chicago reader capsule ) :
    “Released in three parts, Patricio Guzman’s epic documentary The Battle of Chile (1975-’79) captured such critical events as the bombing of the presidential palace during the 1973 military coup, but it wasn’t screened in Chile until the 1990s. That belated premiere inspired Guzman to make this 1997 documentary, in which clips from the earlier film are threaded among interviews and powerful sequences showing the reactions of Chilean viewers. Whereas The Battle of Chile uses voice-over narration to summarize its on-the-spot footage, manipulated only minimally by editing, Chile, Obstinate Memory is more expansive. Without ignoring or hyperbolizing the way politics affects our sense of the past, it presents many galvanizing moments; at one point a viewer who was a child during the coup shamefacedly recalls his pleasure at being allowed to stay home from school”Read More »

  • Patricio Guzmán – The Battle of Chile (3): The Power of the People (1978)

    1971-1980ChileDocumentaryPatricio GuzmánPolitics

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    Synopsis of Part 3:
    THE BATTLE OF CHILE (3): The Power of the People (1978) deals with the creation by ordinary workers and peasants of thousands of local groups of “popular power” to distribute food, occupy, guard and run factories and farms, oppose black market profiteering, and link together neighborhood social service organizations. First these local groups of “popular power” acted as a defense against strikes and lock-outs by factory owners, tradesmen and professional bodies opposed to the Allende government, then increasingly as Soviet-type bodies demanding more resolute action by the government against the right.Read More »

  • Patricio Guzmán – The Battle of Chile (2): The Coup d’Etat (1976)

    1971-1980ChileDocumentaryPatricio GuzmánPolitics

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    Synopsis of Part 2:
    THE BATTLE OF CHILE (2): The Coup d’Etat (1976) opens with the attempted military coup of June, 1973 which is put down by troops loyal to the government. It serves as a useful dry run, however, for the final showdown, that everyone now realizes is coming. The film shows a left divided over strategy, while the right methodically lays the groundwork for the military seizure of power. The film’s dramatic concluding sequence documents the coup d’etat, including Allende’s last radio messages to the people of Chile, footage of the military assault on the presidential palace, and that evening’s televised presentation of the new military junta.Read More »

  • Patricio Guzmán – The Battle of Chile (1): The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (1975)

    1971-1980ChileDocumentaryPatricio GuzmánPolitics

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    Synopsis of Part 1:
    THE BATTLE OF CHILE: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (1975) examines the escalation of rightist opposition following the left’s unexpected victory in Congressional elections held in March, 1973. Finding that democracy would not stop Allende’s socialist policies, the right-wing shifted its tactics from the polls to the streets. The film follows months of activity as a variety of increasingly violent tactics are used by the right to weaken the government and provoke a crisis.Read More »

  • Various – Loin Du Vietnam AKA Far From Vietnam (1967)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtFrancePoliticsVarious

    Synopsis by Dan Pavlides
    Six directors combined efforts for this 1967 documentary, a searing anti-American indictment of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Alain Resnais, William Klein, Joris Ivens, Agnes Varda, Claude Lelouch, and Jean-Luc Goddard all direct segments. They are quick to point out that the U.S. is radically divided about their country’s policy to stop the threat of communism.Read More »

  • Errol Morris – The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara [+Extras] (2003)

    2001-2010DocumentaryErrol MorrisPoliticsUSA

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    Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader wrote:
    In The Fog of War, Errol Morris interviews an 84-year-old Robert S. McNamara, who served as secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson and is widely regarded as the architect of the American war in Vietnam. There’s something undeniably masterful about the film, which also includes archival footage, but that mastery is what sticks in my craw: it’s a capacity to say as little as possible while giving the impression of saying a great deal, a skill shared by McNamara and Morris. I’m not sure what we have to gain from this — the satisfaction that we’re somehow taking care of business when we’re actually fast asleep?Read More »

  • Nezahat Gündogan – Iki tutam saç: Dersim’in kayip kizlari AKA Two Locks of Hair: The Missing Girls of Dersim (2010)

    2001-2010DocumentaryNezahat GündoganPoliticsTurkey

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    Quote:
    Under the pretext of “bringing civilization”, the Turkish state launched a series of violent military operations against the city of Dersim in Kurdistan between 1937-38. Thousands of people were killed and thousands more exiled. During the massacre and banishment, hundreds of girls were given to the families of high-ranking soldiers in order to be “Turkified”. Told through the story of those missing girls, this film exposes that destructive practice, only recently acknowledged.Read More »

  • Ben Russell – ATLANTIS (2014)

    2011-2020Ben RussellExperimentalMaltaPolitics

    We Utopians are happy / This will last forever”

    Loosely framed by Plato’s invocation of the lost continent of Atlantis in 360 BC and its re-re-resurrection via a 1970s science fiction pulp novel, Atlantis is a documentary portrait of Utopia — an island that has never / forever existed beneath our too-mortal feet. Herein is folk song and pagan rite, religious march and reflected temple, the sea that surrounds us all. Even though we are slowly sinking, we are happy and content.

    “Atlantis interrogates this space of fabulation without ever leaving the real island behind, finding itself caught between a portrait of place and the conjuring of a drowned paradise.”

    –Erika Balsom, ArtforumRead More »

  • Ken Loach – The Wind That Shakes the Barley [+ Commentary] (2006)

    2001-2010DramaKen LoachPoliticsUnited Kingdom

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    The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a 2006 British-Irish war drama film directed by Ken Loach, set during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1922) and the Irish Civil War (1922-1923). Written by long-time Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, this drama tells the fictional story of two County Cork brothers, Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy) and Teddy O’Donovan (Pádraic Delaney), who join the Irish Republican Army to fight for Irish independence from the United Kingdom. It takes its title from the Robert Dwyer Joyce song “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” a song set during the 1798 rebellion in Ireland and featured early in the film.

    Widely praised, the film won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Loach’s biggest box office success to date,[4] the film did well around the world and set a record in Ireland as the highest-grossing Irish-made independent film ever.Read More »

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