Chile, Obstinate Memory

On September 11, 1973, the dream was shattered in Chile. On that day, the military junta supporting the ascendancy of Augusto Pinochet's right wing coalition brutally steamrollered into the presidential palace at Santiago, overthrowing the popularly-elected Marxist government of President Salvador Allende, and effectively ending the longest period of democratic rule in Latin American history. In the course of this siege, Allende committed suicide, and massive numbers of his Popular Union supporters (and supposed supporters) were either executed, imprisoned, or "disappeared." A young filmmaker and Allende loyalist, Patricio Guzman, was on the spot, dodging bullets and capturing these events in a remarkable documentary--The Battle of Chile (also available from First Run/Icarus Films)--which was banned in Chile for 23 years. In Chile, Obstinate Memory, Guzman returns to Chile with his film in hand, in search of ghosts and memories, interviewing comrades-in-arms, ordinary citizens, Allende's widow and staff, and young people about the terrible events of 1973. An enormous sense of sadness and loss are displayed, as we watch the interviewees pick out the faces of long-dead friends and family in documentary photographs and film clips from the time. Perhaps most moving are scenes of young students watching and discussing Guzman's earlier film: much of this history has been hidden from them or censored, and they discuss the work in a kind of historical shell shock. Above all, however, this film is about the significance of remembering. One of Guzman's friends puts it most eloquently: "We are like a cemetery, a sacred camp where all those we were are asleep...but those we were are not dead...they will awake at the slightest evocation." Here, Guzman has given us a superb and fitting way of evoking those ghosts. Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)