NEW YORK CITY is currently the site of a festival honoring Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán, initiated by the U.S. premiere of his debut feature length documentary El primer año (The First Year) at Anthology Film Archives. Guzmán is best known for his three-part masterpiece The Battle of Chile (which plays through September 21 at Brooklyn Academy of Music), the essential filmic testament to the U.S.-backed coup d'état of September 1973 which deposed Chilean president Salvador Allende - Latin America’s first democratically elected socialist president - and replaced him with General Augusto Pinochet. In the subsequent two decades, over two thousand Chileans were murdered (or “disappeared”) by the Armed Forces, over 27,000 interned and tortured, and approximately 200,000 exiled to other countries - including Guzmán, who relocated to France. (As always, the number of crimes officially accounted for is likely a magnitude lower than what really transpired.)
If you watch The First Year immediately before The Battle of Chile you’ll see it dovetails cleanly with the mobilization of discontent against Allende (among both bourgeoisie and reactionary military elements), but the film’s primary purpose is as a time capsule of Allende’s first twelve months as head of state. The First Year resonates as a moving (if not heartbreaking) straight-arrow document of a time of wild hope, offset by increasingly chaotic internecine political conflict. Guzmán - then in his early thirties - detailed sweeping reforms in education, literacy, food subsistence and intense mobilization of rural workforces which had been previously bound up in latifundism (effectively, indentured servitude on rural estates.) It’s critical to note many of these reforms were in the works years if not decades before the presidency of Allende, who won by a razor-thin margin and inherited an inflated economy.
Guzmán’s more recent documentary trilogy - The Pearl Button, Nostalgia for the Light and The Cordillera of Dreams - juxtaposes the legacy of Pinochet’s dictatorship with Latin America’s broader history of colonial exploitation, as well as meditations on time, land, and the cosmos; those docs are currently playing at IFC Center. For those not in New York, many of Guzmán’s works are available to watch via streaming service OVID1. I recommend making time for these films, as well as for my friend Nico Pedrero-Setzer’s writeup in Screen Slate, Sam Brodsky’s interview with Guzmán in Film Comment, as well as a discussion with him published by the leftist film-exhibiting collective Cine Móvil. Is that too many links? I doubt it. It’s Guzmán season. The same week it was announced he had been awarded Chile’s National Arts Prize (the only filmmaker to receive it after Raúl Ruiz), I had the pleasure of speaking with the 84-year-old documentary legend via ZOOM from his apartment in Paris. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
These screenings are timed to the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup in Chile in 1973 - the other 9/11. Can you describe the lives these films have had in your home country these last fifty years?
The Battle of Chile only screened on Chilean public television four years ago. It was prohibited, systematically; not just by the government but also by the heads of cable television, who wanted nothing to do with the film. The Battle of Chile has screened in over twenty countries - countries in Africa, the Middle East, France, Italy, the USA. I could make a book just of international recognitions received by the film.
Meanwhile, The First Year remained in total obscurity. There were only six copies which remained in Chile until after the coup, and they were lost or destroyed, nobody knows. It’s a miracle: one of them appeared in the north of France, found by the director of a cinema club, and he sent it to us. The negative was in excellent condition, and now it’s been beautifully restored. I’m very happy.
Now, the film itself is very loose: less mathematical, with a dialogue, with a narration closer to the spectator. It shows happy people in the hope of Allende, which I think is important. The First Year is also significant as a document of Castro’s visit to Chile in 1971.
Let’s talk about Castro’s criticisms of Allende. Castro was quoted by the New York Times almost a year before the coup, warning Allende that his revolution would fail if he didn’t get his political opponents under control. I also read a Times op-ed from 1974, written by the economist Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, which quoted Castro as saying “Marxism is a revolution of production; Allende's was a revolution of consumption.”
The Chilean political apparatus has always been governed by the bourgeoisie. It’s difficult to make the hypothetical: what if Allende had adopted a more Castro-like approach? The constitution of Chile could never have imagined that a Marxist-Leninist would become president. What gets lost is that Allende’s mission in that time was to keep faith in government: he admired Che, he admired the Cuban government, but to the end of his days he was always a social democrat. He did not plan a revolution and he did not fear the Left. He did want the Unidad Popular to launch an aggressive populist movement against the right, and The First Year attests that he succeeded. But of course the right responded with terrible measures. Before the coup they had done everything in their power to get him out of office. They alleged he was turning Chile into the Soviet Union, which was absurd.
Fidel Castro came to Chile and did a talk in the national stadium. Allende refused a gift from Fidel, which was a bunch of military weapons. They stayed in the basement at the presidential residence at La Moneda, and Pinochet exhibited those arms later in order to justify his coup. He was trying to demonstrate that Allende was more radical than he had presented himself as being. The problem is, Allende found Castro’s gift inopportune. Allende never accepted arms or force as an acceptable way to govern, and this is what led to his downfall. He refused to leave government as a prisoner. He did everything to stay faithful to his original plan until the final moment, when he committed a heroic and suicidal act2. It was unfathomably painful for him and it’s still painful fifty years later.
I’m obsessed with counterfactuals. I have always wondered what your work would look like if the coup had not taken place; if you had remained in Chile. Is it fair to say The First Year provides some glimpse of an answer?
Without the coup, Chile would have been drastically different today, and so would I. But in reality, I don’t think my filmmaking would have changed very much. I think it would have been a more perfect sort of style; I would have been more exact.
American viewers may not be aware how long Allende was pushing for a socialist government, running for president four times in sixteen years. It was only when I read Régis Debray’s Conversations with Allende that I realized Allende’s famous agrarian reforms expropriating rural estates bigger than 200 acres and so on, were not really “Allende’s” - they had been in development long before his presidency. Not just decades - generations.
You’re correct that the reforms were incomplete. But they were massive reforms aimed at helping people who had been exploited. It occurred in an intense way for the Mapuche people in the south of Chile; The First Year shows the force of the Mapuche farmers, their passion, their ability to influence politics and wage power. If the reforms had not happened under Allende they would have kept protesting. The problem is that Allende did not have the proper internal government to keep the laws in place.
Which is to say, his domestic agenda lacked support within the government.
Allende was always in the Unidad Popular, but within that party there was a huge range between moderate and radical groups. And also some very, very aggressive ones, especially the socialists. So it gets confusing; there was also the Communist Party itself which was, in fact, more moderate at that time than Unidad Popular. Even though Allende was within the socialist bloc in a UP-led government, he could not stop the groups wishing for more radical reforms. UP was divided years before the coup took place. I remember filming a meeting of the Cordón Industrial Recoleta in Santiago, a conversation between these different factions, which appeared in Part II of The Battle of Chile…
Let me quote from a detailed piece on The Battle of Chile, in Jump Cut, where Salome Svirsky broke that passage down as depicting…
the challenges of trying to achieve socialism in one country;
the constraints imposed by the legal road to socialism;
the difficulties of coordinating actions across parallel worker organizations (the unions, the CUT, the cordones) and party leadership, etc. (i.e. the question of democratic organizational and inter-organizational structures);
the independence and autonomy of the worker’s movement—that is, independence from even a friendly state like Allende’s (i.e. the instability of dual power).
Yes. The members wanted Allende’s government to be more aggressive and more revolutionary. I’m not saying Allende was timid, but he was always conscious of the political process into which he had been elected. He was very careful to respect the constitution and would never accept becoming a Castro-style leftist dictator. He was not a radical revolutionary in that sense.
Maybe a corny question but: do you have an overall feeling - positive, negative, neutral - about the ability of documentary filmmakers to effect political change today?
I think my outlook is optimistic. More critical documentaries are being made, but also it’s easier to make fiction films which question the political and economic structures of the world. So I do have optimism.
Did The Battle of Chile send you to a place of despair? Depression?
After finishing the second part, I had a breakdown. I’ve had several crises. Really, the stress of exile was a very violent thing; my first few months in Paris were really hard. Those years were really very difficult for me; the hardest. The only good thing was having Chris Marker around. After the death of my friend and cameraman Jorge Müller, mercilessly killed at the age of 27 with his wife Carmen Bueno, that was the darkest period for me. I haven’t had such difficulty since that period.
Thoughts on recent narrative films about these political struggles? I’m thinking of Manuela Martelli’s Chile ‘76, Santiago Mitre’s Argentina 1985, the films of Pablo Larraín…
I liked Chile ‘76 very much. Larraín’s movies as well. To be honest, many interesting fiction films have been made in Latin America, I just haven’t really been able to get close to them.
For many, the election of Gabriel Boric was a heartening sign, but any left-leaning administration in Latin America still faces enormous pressure both internally and internationally. Thoughts on the road ahead for Chile?
Unfortunately I cannot answer this for you. All I can say is, Chile is a complicated country: the right wing has taken the upper hand again, there’s a lot of ignorance and, to me, a great emptiness. I just don’t have enough contact with Chile as it is today to give you a real answer.
Back to The First Year - I had not expected the film to be narrated by Simone Signoret, nor for the credits to indicate it was distributed by SLON-ISKRA3, the organization founded by Chris Marker.
Chris was always very serious, a little reserved. He had an air of mystery about him which caused much admiration for me. When Chris Marker approached me and offered to help with The Battle of Chile, I just couldn’t believe it. Thanks to his wonderful donation of film we were actually able to finish it. So that was the relationship: yes, I was his disciple, but we were also friends. It lasted for years. Eventually I lost contact with Chris for many years. We ran into each other at a film festival in Canada, but he had changed; the revolutionary wave that we had all passed through was over. This was a different Chris. But the important thing was that we re-encountered.
I had been obsessed with La jetée well before I met him. To me this movie was magic, totally splendid. I always loved science fiction.
I didn’t know this about you. Which books? Or films? I’m actually wearing a Planet of the Apes t-shirt right now…
Science fiction has been a fascination for me since I was a teenager. Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury… I’ve basically seen every science fiction movie you can think of. I still look at movie showtimes in the chance there will be a science fiction movie. My favorite to revisit is probably The War of the Worlds.
I’m presuming you mean George Pal, not Spielberg.
Of course.
Special thanks to Sam Brodsky and Martin Lucas. ED. NOTE: wild discrepancies existed between the web and email version of this post - I think Substack got confused between draft histories. Hopefully all is fixed by now (1P EST September 13 2023.)
Current Mood: Somber
Current Music: GAS - POP 7
Check out the “In Theaters” section of Icarus’ website for non-NYC engagements of The First Year and other titles.
Famously, Allende committed suicide with an AK-47 that had been donated by Castro.
Société pour le lancement des oeuvres nouvelles ("Society for launching new works”), later amended to I.S.K.R.A. (“Images, Sons, Kinescope, Réalisations, Audiovisuelles”).