Documentary Cinema in Chile

More than any other medium, the documentary cinema of Chile has confronted the atrocities of the military dictatorship under Pinochet and its aftermath. As part of a diverse and active culture of retaining and reviving collective memories of the events, these films have exposed state-sponsored terrorism and its perpetrators, recovered survivors’ memories of loss, suffering, and resilience, and posed questions that continue to unsettle the shared conscience of Chileans today. Film aficionados will know Patricio Guzmán’s epic La batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile) but this book looks beyond the familiar to address an extensive lineage of non-fiction cinema from the 1970s through to contemporary film, encompassing a wealth of women’s film-making as it does so. From the `direct’ style of film-making that witnesses events as they unfold, to the more belated, subjective or minimal meditations on trauma post-dictatorship, such as in Marcela Said’s El mocito (The Young Butler), chapters detail a diversity of responses to historical disaster and include `outsider’ perspectives such as Canadian film-maker Peter Raymont’s A Promise to the Dead. Situating its analysis in the wider context of theories on Latin American film and world cinema, this book forms an essential source for students, researchers and general readers interested in the history and legacy of political oppression and genocide in post-conflict societies, as it surfaces on the screen.