Film is a powerful medium that influences the
way we see and think about the world. From its beginnings cinema has always been
a window to travel in space and time; an opportunity to reflect on our history
and to experience realities that we might not encounter otherwise. As a moving language cinema has entertained us,
but simultaneously educated and enlightened us. It is through films that we
tell stories to pass on ideas and meaning (Eco & Carrière, 2011); a
privileged instrument to look at ourselves and a mirror of our society.
My invitation today is to take you to the
recent history of Chile and its cinematographic landscape; a journey to the
southern hemisphere where you will find a broad range of cinematographic
expressions. There, many acclaimed directors and film professionals are currently
enriching Chilean’s contemporary film culture in ways that our history has not
heard of for a long time. It is, I believe, an exciting period in Chile for
film industry executives and public screen agencies to be looking at. In what
follow, I will contextualize Chilean film culture under two different periods:
the Pre-Dictatorship filmmakers from the 1960s and 1970s who would go to Europe
into exile, and the Post-Dictatorship period. In the latter, I will focus on
the work of various acclaimed directors from the last fifteen years, a time when
cinematographic manifestations have started to proliferate exponentially.
During 1973 and 1990 Chile was under a
military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet and supported by the
CIA. Established three years after the democratically elected government of
socialist Salvador Allende, Chilean stimulating cultural milieu would be
violently suppressed and many artists persecuted. It was a time where filmmakers
would be politically committed to the socialist project and their camera became
a portal to introduce a Chilean reality in the form of faces, places,
situations and ways of speaking that usually were not found in other media. As
Raul Ruiz has suggested for his socialist realism movement: ‘cinema for us
should not be a matter of aesthetics; it is a matter of ethics rather than
aesthetics’ (Bandis et al, 2004:20).
By the end of 1973 Chilean’s cultural
landscape would lay in ruins and a whole generation of selected minds were
either death or thrown into exile. Many Chilean filmmakers of that period found
in Europe a new home to develop their cinema, but the allegory to the southern
hemisphere would never disappear. Patricio Guzman, who you might well know,
never stopped reflecting on his Chilean past. His two recent films Salvador Allende (2004) and Nostalgia de la luz (2010) -both
screened at Cannes Official Selection- are indicative of this period, where the
country of his youth remains up to now as the muse for his poetic documentary stamp
(B. Nichols, 2010). Raul Ruiz also
dwelled in France and Cannes favourite, has been described by film critics as
one of the most exciting and innovative filmmakers to emerge from 1960s world
cinema (Raoul Ruiz Biography, IMDB). His films –over a hundred in forty years-
provide a mix of surrealism, intellect and artistic experimentation that I can
only compare to the size and figure of Jean-Luc Godard. But if we are to talk
about surrealism and experimentation in cinema, I should not overpass the work
of Alejandro Jodorowsky, this strange avant-garde
film director whose film El Topo
(1970) became a hit at midnight showings in the neighbourhood of Manhattan or,
in the case you have recently seen Frank Pavich’s highly acclaimed documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), you might
recall his ambitions to look beyond our understanding of science fiction, a
genre in which I still see Jodorowsky’s fingerprints all over; from George
Lucas’ Star Wars (1977) to James
Cameron’s Avatar (2009).
The relevance of this generation of filmmakers
is crucial to understand why Chilean cinema has rapidly emerged in the last
decade, but not before. The natural resource if you like, has always been there
but all the violence applied in the past to culture; the general fear of the
population and the lack of public funds have blocked a whole generation’s
creativity. It will be not until this new century when the spell would definitely
break, when those kids born into dictatorship, thirsty to protest and confront
their parents’ fears would find through artistic manifestations a way to speak
up.
Today Chile has a renewed generation of
filmmakers seeking for fresh identities and themes. They have created an
original and varied cinematographic language that looks beyond the
Americanization of Chilean’s society. Evidence enough is their recognition in a
broad range of Film Festivals around the world. Pablo Larraín for
example, awarded in Cannes, Rotterdam and BAFICI -with films such as No (2012), Post Mortem (2010) and Tony
Manero (2008) has constantly explored Chilean recent political history as a
theme of his filmography. In addition, in the more industrial side, his
production company Fábula has revitalized the promotion and distribution of
local films, which rapid success expanding the national cinema in different festivals
-since its creation in 2003- is presumably another reason to keep an eye in this
growing market. Various other public and private endeavours have also contributed
in boosting national productions’ presence in the world’s markets and festivals,
such as CinemaChile, Consejo Nacional del Arte y la Industria Audiovisual and Film
Commission Chile. Also among the film professional community, the work of Bruno
Betatti has probably accelerated the expansion and decentralization of the
national product more than any person in the last decade. Based in Valdivia, as
executive director of Valdivia International Film Festival and through his
production company JirafaFilms, Betatti has managed to give more international
visibility to filmmakers that were mostly known regionally. Cristián Jiménez,
nominated at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard
with his film Bonsái (2011) or Betatti’s
more recent production with Alicia Scherson’s film Il Futuro (2013) -awarded in Rotterdam- are some examples of the
relevant role that film professionals have been playing lately in the general
success of the industry.
Chile’s natural richness and cultural geography
is probably the raw material for the various filmmakers’ sensitivities to
depict on the big canvas. It has not only inspired foreign features and
acclaimed directors to shot in the country, but most importantly it has been a
vehicle to develop a fresh stylistic national cinema embedded in the rituals, traditions
and curiosities of the territory. Thematic preoccupations regarding a Chilean ethos have accompanied the internationally
celebrated films of Andres Wood, such as Machuca
(2004) and La Buena Vida (2008); or
the applauded ethnographic documentaries of Ignacio Agüero whose camera has constantly
reflected on people’s memory and costumes. More recently, younger filmmakers
have also continued to explore Chile’s cultural landscape. Marcela Said’s film El Verano de los Peces Voladores (2013)
screened last year at TIFF’s official selection and Cannes’ quinzaine des realisateurs brought to
the wide audience the conflicts of Mapuches’[1]
clans and conservative landlords. But most probably, it is through the dark cinema
of Sebastian Lelio where Chilean geography has been appreciated worldwide in
the form of social taboos, class struggle, marginalized characters, earthquakes
and tsunamis. His first feature film La
Sagrada Familia (2005) described by some film critics as the Chilean
version of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema
(1968) would already find the recognition of the international audience,
winning ten awards from a variety of Film Festivals around the globe. His most
recent film Gloria (2013) somewhat
lighter than the others, not only was a Film Festival success –getting 3 prizes
at Berlinale and a total of seventeen awards-; but it was also a box office hit
in the indie circuit of the United States. Among the 2014’s twenty-five
grossing films tracked by Indiewire’s box office charts, by June this year Gloria
was ranked twelfth with a gross of $2,107,925 (Carol, 2014), on top of Jim
Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
or James Gray’s The Immigrant (2013).
The profitability and quick expansion of the
independent circuit in the last decade has also been visible in the work of
post-dictatorship Chilean filmmakers. As Mark Cousins suggests, the possibility
to shooting on videotape, the use of small crews, editing on home and dubbling
in the simplest suites, radically changed the world of film production, which opened
the doors to what he calls ‘the meritocratic epoch of cinema’ (2006:434). In
that line, I read Chilean cinema’s independent turn as a response to this wider
phenomenon in our contemporary film culture, but its healthy current moment -constantly
applauded in the international circuit- I could only compare it to those golden
days of cultural expansion abruptly cut for decades by military forces. Ladies
and gentlemen: Chilean cinematographic feast is back on the table for all of
you to relish.
No doubt. We are living in a time of
cinematic bounty where film goers have a greater variety of choices than at any
time in history. As one of them, I see the quality of contemporary cinema as
exciting as the quantity is intimidating. Thus, veiled by personal preferences,
anything that could help me to reduce complexity would be taken into account;
from film festival stamps to film critic’s recommendations. It is in such context
that rankings have also played an important role in suggesting what to watch
from this vast horizon of cinematographic alternatives, what the people in public
relation’s offices call free publicity.
Interestingly, the signatures of young Chilean filmmakers are also there. The influential newspaper The New York Times for example, has
recently created a list of twenty directors under forty years old to watch.
Among cinematographers such as Canadian Sarah Polley and Norwegian Joachim
Trier, the list is accompanied by the presence of three Latin American directors;
the Argentinean Matias Piñeiro and the two Chileans, Pablo Larraín –of whom I
have already spoken- and Sebastian Silva, whose film La Nana (2009) won more than thirty awards, including two prizes in
Sundance. Silva’s success in this last festival was also probably the key to
open the doors for a whole new bunch of Chilean features. Since then, the presence
of national films in Sundance has been constant: In 2011 Andres Wood’s Violeta se fue a los cielos (2011) obtained
Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize; in 2012 Marialy Rivas’ Joven y Alocada (2012) won the Sundance’s World Cinema
Screenwritting Award; in 2013 Sebastian Silva would get again the festival’s
recognition achieving a Directing Award by his film Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus (2013); and this year the
list increased with Alejandro Fernandez Almendras whose film Matar a un hombre (2014) has recently
obtained the Grand Jury Prize.
In hard numbers, as a way to sum up all these
particular examples that I have offered, the consolidation of Chilean cinema is
clear. In 2013, thirty-three films obtained more than seventy international awards;
national films are increasingly screened in the most important international
Film Festivals and traded in an ever wider range of world markets, including
Cannes, Berlinale, Locarno, TIFF, San Sebastian and Visions du Reel
(Cinemachile). The good evaluation of Festival’s directors and programmers is also
indicative of this success. Marché du Film de Cannes’ Executive Director Jerome
Paillard states that ‘the fast growing recognition and importance of Chilean cinema today has spread worldwide’
(CinemaChile). Or in Locarno’s Artistic Director opinion: ‘In the last years
Chile has been the South American country with the most prolific expansion of
its cinema, and definitely the most popular Latin American cinema among Cannes,
Berlin and Venice’ (Nadia Dresti, CinemaChile).
My proposition today would be to invite you to
engage and to be part of this remarkable moment that Chilean cinema is going
through. The political and economic stability of the country, its natural and
cultural richness, the enthusiasm of local professionals at the film industry and
most importantly, the prosperous vitality of its cinema; they are all good
reasons to seriously consider Chile as a strategic place to be looking at. You
are all welcome to explore and see the long cultural geography that Chile has
to offer through its cinema.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Cousins, Mark (2006). The Story of Film. Pavilion Books.
London: 512.
Nichols, Bill. (2010) Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film
Studies. Norton & Company Ltd. New York. Pp. 545. ISBN:
978-0-393-93491-5
Eco, Umberto. & Carrière, J.C.
(2011). This is not
the end of the book. Harvill Secker.
Bandis, Helen. Martin, Adrian. &
McDonald, Grant (2004) Raúl Ruiz: Images of Passage. Rouge Press &
International Film Festival Rotterdam ISBN:
0-97518-690-6.
ONLINE ARTICLES
Carol. (2014) Twin Lens. The 25
Highest Grossing Indies of 2014 (A Running List): IndieWire. www.twinlensfilm.com/?p=2568
Dargis, Manohla (2013) The New York
Times: 20 Directors to watch
Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB).
Raoul Ruiz Biography.
FILMS
Cameron, James (2009) Avatar United States: Lightstorm
Entertainment
Fernández Almendras, Alejandro
(2014) Matar a un hombre Chile:
Arizona Films
Gray, James (2013) The Immigrant (2013) United States:
Kingsgate Films & Keep Your Head
Guzman, Patricio (2004) Salvador Allende Chile: Alta Films
Guzman, Patricio (2010) Nostalgia de la luz Chile, France &
Germany: Blinker Filmproduktion, WDR, Cronomedia & Atacama Productions.
Jodorowsky,
Alejandro (1970) El Topo Mexico:
Producciones Panicas
Jarmusch, Jim. (2013) Only Lovers Left Alive United Kingdom:
Soda Pictures
Jiménez, Cristián (2011) Bonsái Chile: Jirafa
Larraín, Pablo (2008) Tony Manero Chile: Fábula
Larraín, Pablo (2010) Post
Mortem Chile: Fábula
Larraín, Pablo (2012)
No Chile: Fábula
Lelio, Sebastián (2005)
La Sagrada Familia Chile: Horamágica, Zoofilmes & Bixo
Lelio, Sebastián (2013)
Gloria Chile: Fábula
Lucas, George (1997) Star
Wars United States: LucasFilm
Pavich, Frank (2013) Jodorowsky’s
Dune (2013) United States: City Film
Rivas, Marialy (2012) Joven y Alocada Chile: Fábula
Said,
Marcela (2013) El verano de los peces
voladores Chile & France: Jirafa & Cinémadefacto
Scherson, Alicia (2013) Il Futuro Chile, Italy, Germany &
Spain: Jirafa
Silva, Sebastián (2009) La Nana Chile: Forastero
Silva, Sebastián (2013)
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus Chile: Fábula
Wood, Andrés (2004) Machuca
Chile: Wood Producciones
Wood, Andrés (2008) La Buena Vida Chile: Wood Producciones
Wood, Andrés (2011) Violeta se fue a los cielos Chile: Wood
Producciones
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