Revolution

Screened for the first time in September 1970, the month of the Chilean elections that brought the Popular Unity and it’s presidential candidate Salvador Allende into power, Venceremos (Pedro Chaskel and Hector Ríos, Chile, 1970) could be considered part of the campaign. It is a collage film denouncing the grotesque inequalities that the “revolution without arms” seeks to address. It celebrates a new era, that of the triumph of the people, the “new man” and a new horizon. The film itself is a song celebrating the social change to come. It counterpoints shantytowns with the estates of the bourgeoisie, the slick cars with the long lines of workers dangling from buses at the crack of dawn. The film ends to the notes and lyrics of the song “Gallo de amanecida” (Rooster of Dawn) by Angel Parra, celebrates  and names the peasants, miners, weavers, carpenters, students, musicians, electricians, seamstresses, unemployed, fisherman,  who will all dance together to the new “song of life”.

Amuhuelai-mi (Marilú Mallet, Chile,1971) also creates a counterpoint between the discourse of the “huinca” (white) landowners and the life conditions of the Mapuche people, the largest indigenous population inhabiting Chile, their exile into the urban centres fleeing poverty and forced dispossession of their land. A beautifully composed essay of denunciation, that brings together delicately shot images of everyday life, and a rhythmic weaving of the structural violence of racism and the dignity and power of the Mapuche peoples land struggles and their stakes in the Revolution.

Both films open up the contradictions of forging revolutionary transformation, underlining the structural violence as well as the “beautiful chaos”

Resistance and Solidarity

As described by the little girl narrator of Quisiera tener un hijo (I long for a child) (Sweden, 1974), on the September 11 1973 coup, the Chilean military bombed the government house with president Allende and his closest collaborators still inside. Thousands were disappeared and forced into exile. International campaigns of solidarity with the people of Chile spread all over the world, many enclaves of resistance and dissemination of what was happening inside the country were set up all over the world where the Chilean political refugees joined those fleeing the wave of authoritarian regimes that spread all over the Southern Cone. The film works by Juan Forch and Sergio Castilla were made as exile cinema of intergenerational solidarity to spread the word of what was happening in Chile, works such as these were an active part of international resistance campaigns.  

In his animations Sergio Castilla used drawings made by “children who in 1973 witnessed the military coup in Chile”, as stated by the spoken-word credits. The little girl’s voice is in dialogue with a song by Violeta Parra where the artist describes her wish for a child who will grow up to fight injustice. The little girl replies: “We will remember what happened in Chile, just because we are little we do not forget”. Pinochet: fascista, asesino, traidor, agente del imperialismo (Pinochet: Fascist, murderer, traitor, imperialist agent) (Sweden, 1974) intercalates the children’s with a famous “imperialist propaganda” image of dictator Augusto Pinochet, images of repression drawn by the children beat to the march of military boots and the sound of gunshots ending with a black screen accompanied by the firm voice of a woman assuring that: “The Chilean people will smash fascism!”

Among the many artists and intellectuals who ended up in the GDR, Juan Forch, who studied film in Dresden, made several short collage films. In Chile (GDR, 1975) he used footage from the Popular Unity (1970-1973) mashed up with imagery relating to imperialist intervention. As in Chile Lives (GDR, 1976) Forch’s work frequently incorporated details of the muralist brigades famous for their painted campaigns during the revolution. Reborn in exile, displaced artists came together with international colleagues and friends, in Forch’s films their imagery alternates with still images of popular political graphic art, are animated are to the rhythm of the Nueva Cancion.

Exile and Survivance

In the essay film Diario Inacabado (Unfinished Diary) (Canada, 1982) Marilú Mallet uses the sphere of reproductive work and everyday life to reflect on the limits of documentary filmmaking, feminist cinema, and the politics and language of exile and solidarity. Throughout the film her voice becomes a body that cannot be objectified, but that is simultaneously performative. In her adopted home in Quebec, Canada, we overhear her conversations with her mother, her son, her partner, also a filmmaker, who questions and is critical of her “subjective” way of filmmaking. Many scenes occur in her kitchen, on her couch, in her bedroom.

She also engages in open conversations with many other exiled Chileans, including her childhood friend Isabel Allende an important figure of the international solidarity campaigns. Bending the confessional documentary, she reflects in conversations on the fact that her young son does not speak Spanish and cannot really engage with the Chilean exile community, she observes in that a kind of transgenerational exile of perpetual displacement, in a family where the language spoken was not either of the parent’s mother tongues. How the country and the activism left behind became a place one could never return to. Questioning the revolutionary radicalism of the over-confident macho voice, Mallet creates a film of vulnerable solidarity. An exploration on the experience of exile, through feminist filmmaking that is delicate, intimate and at the same time fiercely political.

Revolution

Screened for the first time in September 1970, the month of the Chilean elections that brought the Popular Unity and it’s presidential candidate Salvador Allende into power, Venceremos (Pedro Chaskel and Hector Ríos, Chile, 1970) could be considered part of the campaign. It is a collage film denouncing the grotesque inequalities that the “revolution without arms” seeks to address. It celebrates a new era, that of the triumph of the people, the “new man” and a new horizon. The film itself is a song celebrating the social change to come. It counterpoints shantytowns with the estates of the bourgeoisie, the slick cars with the long lines of workers dangling from buses at the crack of dawn. The film ends to the notes and lyrics of the song “Gallo de amanecida” (Rooster of Dawn) by Angel Parra, celebrates  and names the peasants, miners, weavers, carpenters, students, musicians, electricians, seamstresses, unemployed, fisherman,  who will all dance together to the new “song of life”.

Amuhuelai-mi (Marilú Mallet, Chile,1971) also creates a counterpoint between the discourse of the “huinca” (white) landowners and the life conditions of the Mapuche people, the largest indigenous population inhabiting Chile, their exile into the urban centres fleeing poverty and forced dispossession of their land. A beautifully composed essay of denunciation, that brings together delicately shot images of everyday life, and a rhythmic weaving of the structural violence of racism and the dignity and power of the Mapuche peoples land struggles and their stakes in the Revolution.

Both films open up the contradictions of forging revolutionary transformation, underlining the structural violence as well as the “beautiful chaos”

Resistance and Solidarity

As described by the little girl narrator of Quisiera tener un hijo (I long for a child) (Sweden, 1974), on the September 11 1973 coup, the Chilean military bombed the government house with president Allende and his closest collaborators still inside. Thousands were disappeared and forced into exile. International campaigns of solidarity with the people of Chile spread all over the world, many enclaves of resistance and dissemination of what was happening inside the country were set up all over the world where the Chilean political refugees joined those fleeing the wave of authoritarian regimes that spread all over the Southern Cone. The film works by Juan Forch and Sergio Castilla were made as exile cinema of intergenerational solidarity to spread the word of what was happening in Chile, works such as these were an active part of international resistance campaigns.  

In his animations Sergio Castilla used drawings made by “children who in 1973 witnessed the military coup in Chile”, as stated by the spoken-word credits. The little girl’s voice is in dialogue with a song by Violeta Parra where the artist describes her wish for a child who will grow up to fight injustice. The little girl replies: “We will remember what happened in Chile, just because we are little we do not forget”. Pinochet: fascista, asesino, traidor, agente del imperialismo (Pinochet: Fascist, murderer, traitor, imperialist agent) (Sweden, 1974) intercalates the children’s with a famous “imperialist propaganda” image of dictator Augusto Pinochet, images of repression drawn by the children beat to the march of military boots and the sound of gunshots ending with a black screen accompanied by the firm voice of a woman assuring that: “The Chilean people will smash fascism!”

Among the many artists and intellectuals who ended up in the GDR, Juan Forch, who studied film in Dresden, made several short collage films. In Chile (GDR, 1975) he used footage from the Popular Unity (1970-1973) mashed up with imagery relating to imperialist intervention. As in Chile Lives (GDR, 1976) Forch’s work frequently incorporated details of the muralist brigades famous for their painted campaigns during the revolution. Reborn in exile, displaced artists came together with international colleagues and friends, in Forch’s films their imagery alternates with still images of popular political graphic art, are animated are to the rhythm of the Nueva Cancion.

Exile and Survivance

In the essay film Diario Inacabado (Unfinished Diary) (Canada, 1982) Marilú Mallet uses the sphere of reproductive work and everyday life to reflect on the limits of documentary filmmaking, feminist cinema, and the politics and language of exile and solidarity. Throughout the film her voice becomes a body that cannot be objectified, but that is simultaneously performative. In her adopted home in Quebec, Canada, we overhear her conversations with her mother, her son, her partner, also a filmmaker, who questions and is critical of her “subjective” way of filmmaking. Many scenes occur in her kitchen, on her couch, in her bedroom.

She also engages in open conversations with many other exiled Chileans, including her childhood friend Isabel Allende an important figure of the international solidarity campaigns. Bending the confessional documentary, she reflects in conversations on the fact that her young son does not speak Spanish and cannot really engage with the Chilean exile community, she observes in that a kind of transgenerational exile of perpetual displacement, in a family where the language spoken was not either of the parent’s mother tongues. How the country and the activism left behind became a place one could never return to. Questioning the revolutionary radicalism of the over-confident macho voice, Mallet creates a film of vulnerable solidarity. An exploration on the experience of exile, through feminist filmmaking that is delicate, intimate and at the same time fiercely political.

Revolution

Screened for the first time in September 1970, the month of the Chilean elections that brought the Popular Unity and it’s presidential candidate Salvador Allende into power, Venceremos (Pedro Chaskel and Hector Ríos, Chile, 1970) could be considered part of the campaign. It is a collage film denouncing the grotesque inequalities that the “revolution without arms” seeks to address. It celebrates a new era, that of the triumph of the people, the “new man” and a new horizon. The film itself is a song celebrating the social change to come. It counterpoints shantytowns with the estates of the bourgeoisie, the slick cars with the long lines of workers dangling from buses at the crack of dawn. The film ends to the notes and lyrics of the song “Gallo de amanecida” (Rooster of Dawn) by Angel Parra, celebrates  and names the peasants, miners, weavers, carpenters, students, musicians, electricians, seamstresses, unemployed, fisherman,  who will all dance together to the new “song of life”.

Amuhuelai-mi (Marilú Mallet, Chile,1971) also creates a counterpoint between the discourse of the “huinca” (white) landowners and the life conditions of the Mapuche people, the largest indigenous population inhabiting Chile, their exile into the urban centres fleeing poverty and forced dispossession of their land. A beautifully composed essay of denunciation, that brings together delicately shot images of everyday life, and a rhythmic weaving of the structural violence of racism and the dignity and power of the Mapuche peoples land struggles and their stakes in the Revolution.

Both films open up the contradictions of forging revolutionary transformation, underlining the structural violence as well as the “beautiful chaos”

Resistance and Solidarity

As described by the little girl narrator of Quisiera tener un hijo (I long for a child) (Sweden, 1974), on the September 11 1973 coup, the Chilean military bombed the government house with president Allende and his closest collaborators still inside. Thousands were disappeared and forced into exile. International campaigns of solidarity with the people of Chile spread all over the world, many enclaves of resistance and dissemination of what was happening inside the country were set up all over the world where the Chilean political refugees joined those fleeing the wave of authoritarian regimes that spread all over the Southern Cone. The film works by Juan Forch and Sergio Castilla were made as exile cinema of intergenerational solidarity to spread the word of what was happening in Chile, works such as these were an active part of international resistance campaigns.  

In his animations Sergio Castilla used drawings made by “children who in 1973 witnessed the military coup in Chile”, as stated by the spoken-word credits. The little girl’s voice is in dialogue with a song by Violeta Parra where the artist describes her wish for a child who will grow up to fight injustice. The little girl replies: “We will remember what happened in Chile, just because we are little we do not forget”. Pinochet: fascista, asesino, traidor, agente del imperialismo (Pinochet: Fascist, murderer, traitor, imperialist agent) (Sweden, 1974) intercalates the children’s with a famous “imperialist propaganda” image of dictator Augusto Pinochet, images of repression drawn by the children beat to the march of military boots and the sound of gunshots ending with a black screen accompanied by the firm voice of a woman assuring that: “The Chilean people will smash fascism!”

Among the many artists and intellectuals who ended up in the GDR, Juan Forch, who studied film in Dresden, made several short collage films. In Chile (GDR, 1975) he used footage from the Popular Unity (1970-1973) mashed up with imagery relating to imperialist intervention. As in Chile Lives (GDR, 1976) Forch’s work frequently incorporated details of the muralist brigades famous for their painted campaigns during the revolution. Reborn in exile, displaced artists came together with international colleagues and friends, in Forch’s films their imagery alternates with still images of popular political graphic art, are animated are to the rhythm of the Nueva Cancion.

Exile and Survivance

In the essay film Diario Inacabado (Unfinished Diary) (Canada, 1982) Marilú Mallet uses the sphere of reproductive work and everyday life to reflect on the limits of documentary filmmaking, feminist cinema, and the politics and language of exile and solidarity. Throughout the film her voice becomes a body that cannot be objectified, but that is simultaneously performative. In her adopted home in Quebec, Canada, we overhear her conversations with her mother, her son, her partner, also a filmmaker, who questions and is critical of her “subjective” way of filmmaking. Many scenes occur in her kitchen, on her couch, in her bedroom.

She also engages in open conversations with many other exiled Chileans, including her childhood friend Isabel Allende an important figure of the international solidarity campaigns. Bending the confessional documentary, she reflects in conversations on the fact that her young son does not speak Spanish and cannot really engage with the Chilean exile community, she observes in that a kind of transgenerational exile of perpetual displacement, in a family where the language spoken was not either of the parent’s mother tongues. How the country and the activism left behind became a place one could never return to. Questioning the revolutionary radicalism of the over-confident macho voice, Mallet creates a film of vulnerable solidarity. An exploration on the experience of exile, through feminist filmmaking that is delicate, intimate and at the same time fiercely political.