Chile

A drama centered on a maid trying to hold on to her position after having served a family for 23 years.Read More »

A taxi driver meets Marlene, a girl from the provinces who´s lost in a brothel. He immediately decides to protect her and let´s her stay in his house. Slowly his fatherly instincts give way to a strange hidden passion. Finally he gives up living in the trunk of his taxi while Marlene states that she wants to live with him forever.
El zapato chino is the first long feature by Christian Sanchez. It was made during the Pinochet dictatorship and tries to capture the surreal and confusing atmosphere of that period. It was realized i in a clandestine way, but it is said that Pinochet himself wanted to see the film after it´s completion.Read More »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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Chile, 1976. Carmen heads off to her beach house. When the family priest asks her to take care of a young man he is sheltering in secret, Carmen steps onto unexplored territories, away from the quiet life she is used to.Read More »

A group of young writers sell their soul to the devil. ‘It is a film about the meaning of isolation and a certain megalomania that developed in Chile during the government of Eduardo Frei. The version RAI originally broadcast [black and white, 45 minutes shorter and until now the only one in circulation] was made by cutting everything out that makes allusion to the political context and makes the characters real. […] The story was not the most important thing: the most important thing was the speeches that were around the story, which is one of the themes of modern cinema”. (Raúl Ruiz)Read More »

Protests that exploded onto the streets of Chile’s capital of Santiago in 2019 as the population demanded more democracy and social equality around education, healthcare and job opportunities.Read More »