Film programme (Total running time: 75')

Héctor Ríos: Herminda de la victoria, Douglas Hübner, 1969, Chile,16mm, 16', Spanish with German subtitles

Testimonio, Pedro Chaskel, 1968, Chile, 16mm, 7', Spanish with German subtitles, 

Mijita, Sergio Castilla, 1970, Chile, 16mm, 9', Spanish with German subtitles

Nutuayin Mapu (We take over our land), Carlos Flores Delpino,1969, Chile, 16mm, 9', Spanish with German subtitles 

 Amuhuelai-mi, María Luisa Mallet, 1972, Chile, 16mm, 11', Spanish with German subtitles 

Aufenthaltserlaubnis, Antonio Skármeta, 1978, Federal Republic of Germany, 16mm, 12', German and Spanish

 Popsicles, Gloria Camiruaga, 1982, Chile, digital file, no dialogue, 5'

 Un nombre, un apellido, Ivan Arellano, 1985, Chile, digital file, no dialogue, 6'

 

Chilean film-makers affiliated with the Tercer Cine (Third Cinema) movement bore witness to  profound social and economic inequalities, a long history of workers’ struggles, and grassroots activism by employing an unconventional aesthetic language that often crossed the boundaries between the factual and the fictional. This short film programme presents lesser known films from the archives that give insights in the events surrounding the political upheaval in Chile, spanning the era before Salvador Allende’s presidency, the governance period of Unidad Popular, until the coup d’état on 11 September 1973 and the dictatorship and political exiles that followed.

Douglas Hübner’s documentary Herminda de la Victoria shows the harsh living conditions of the settlers who seized land on the outskirts of Santiago and were violently evicted by the carabineros (local police). The film is named in honour of Herminda, a baby who was crushed to death during a confrontation with police. Testimonio by Pedro Chaskel is a testimony of the miserable conditions of the psychiatric hospital located in Iquique, a city in the North of Chile, more akin to a prison than that of a hospital. In his experimental documentary Mijita, Sergio Castilla addresses the struggles of working women by combining their statements with a soundtrack that ranges from Violeta Parra to Iannis Xenakis. Nutuayin Mapu, meaning ‘We take over our land’ in Mapuche language, reflects the process of ancestral land recovery led by the Movimiento Campesino Revolucionario (Revolutionary Peasant Movement) and the inhabitants of Camp Lautaro. María Luisa Mallet’s Amuhuelai-Mi (You won’t go away) was shot in the urban settlements near Temuco inhabited by a migrant community of Mapuche and highlights the mistreatment they suffer at the hands of the huinca, a Mapuche exonym used to refer to white Chileans. The only film in the programme set in Berlin is  Aufenthaltserlaubnis [Residence Permit], directed by the well known writer Antonio Skármeta, which documents a get-together of political exiles from all over the world. Whether from Chile or Iran, people in exile dance and sing in Berlin’s Tiergarten park while they wait for their German residence permits. Popsicles, a film by Gloria Camiruaga, is a politically avant garde work notable for its strong feminist position that deals with the subjugation of women by both religion and the state. Closing the programme is Un Nombre, Un Apellido, a film inspired by Isabel Parra’s song of the same name dedicated to Beatriz Allende Bussi, president Allende’s daughter who took her own life in 1977. In her name, the work demands justice for all nameless victims of fascism in Chile.

Introduction in Spanish, German, and English. Films in Spanish are subtitled in German