Chile, Obstinate Memory
On Cinema
•
56m
Directed by Patricio Guzmán • Documentary • 1998 • 58 minutes
Hearing only the official version, a generation of young Chileans has grown up with little knowledge of the historical facts surrounding the events of September 11, 1973. On that day Salvador Allende's democratically elected government was overthrown in a bloody coup by General Augusto Pinochet's army.
Patricio Guzmán's landmark film The Battle of Chile (1976) documented the "Popular Unity" period of Allende's government, the tumultuous events leading up to the coup, and Allende's death. But the memory of those times and events, captured so powerfully in The Battle of Chile, was largely barred from the collective consciousness of the Chilean people.
Now, in CHILE, OBSTINATE MEMORY, Guzmán has returned to show The Battle of Chile in his homeland for the first time, and to explore the terrain of the confiscated (but maybe reawakening) memories of the Chilean people.
"The disquieting juxtaposition of a past so indelibly etched in the minds of one generation and a youthful population oblivious to history lends the film a haunting quality. Pic's subtlety should earn it major accolades." —Variety
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