CHILE, OBSTINATE MEMORY

After twenty-three years in exile, filmmaker Patricio Guzman returns to his homeland to show his landmark film The Battle of Chile (1973-1979) for the first time, and to explore the political dynamics of contemporary Chile. Made more than two decades after General Pinochet's army toppled Salavador Allende's government in a bloody coup, Guzman's latest film follows a handful of survivors and Popular Unity movement supporters as they recall the events surrounding the coup and Allende's death. In a series of emotional interviews, several middle-aged Chileans talk about the struggle to come to terms with their country's past and with their grief for colleagues who were rounded up, tortured or "disappeared" during the wave of terror that washed over Chile in 1973. Guzm·n also shows The Battle of Chile to university students who grew up hearing an official, homogenized version of the events. For the young Chileans, the film provides a devastatingly emotional realization of their manipulation by mistruths. By using footage from his earlier documentary and juxtaposing an older generation's anguish with a younger generation's vigorous demands for political disclosure, Guzman has created powerful documentary that eloquently advocates the safeguarding of a country's historical memory and truth.