la batalla de chile, segunda parte: el golpe de estado (w&d. patricio guzmán, w. pedro chaskel, jose bartolome)

The scary thing about watching Guzmán’s fabled documentary (albeit only part 2) is that it feels closer than ever. A brilliant exercise in both compiling material and editing it, The Battle of Chile acts as account of events and a warning. This could happen in your back yard. With the efficiency of a thriller, the film traces the lead up to September 11th, 1973, the first 911, when the military staged a coup against Allende’s government. We know what’s coming, and surely Allende knows it too, but history is remorseless and irreversible. The film is an act of courage, in the filming of it, in the conception of it and in the execution. As such it contains a moral authority which cinema can rarely aspire to. Who knows how much of that courage will be needed as the world lurches in the direction of the golpistas. 

nostalgia for the light (w&d patricio guzmán)

I was there on 911. When the Palace was  bombed and the President was killed. Or killed himself. Though no-one believes the official story because none of the official stories are credible. I did not fight in the trenches, because no-one did. I was not rounded up by the young men whose anger masked their confusion. I was not taken to the football stadium so I did not see Jara have his hands chopped off or the students shot or endure that strange time standing on the terraces as though waiting for the football match to start, knowing that when it started it only meant the end. Neither did I succeed in mythologizing my experiences when I fled, first to Mexico, then to Europe, then to the Stratosphere.

But I was there, one way or another. Or, rather, I have been there. I have even walked the Atacama desert, seen the stars like nowhere on earth, hunted for traces of lost civilisations as well as traces of the civilisation we have lost.

Because of this, Guzmán’s film, haunting though it is, did not tell me things I did not know. It is not a beautiful film and neither should it be. Neither is it a meditational film, as some say. It is an angry film, and that is at it should be. It has a quiet, hidden anger, with the energy of an exploding star, because Guzmán was on a star that exploded forty years ago and knows how it feels. Because anger is the offspring of pain which is the offspring of events which are what Guzmán lived through and felt and if you have seen his films then you too have lived through and felt these events and all that they then brought forth. Which is why I know I was there. Even if I wasn’t. Which is why his film tells me nothing new. Even though I am glad to have learnt nothing new.

Guzmán points his own telescope into the past. He points it at the desert floor. The light which hits the screen whilst we watch is light which was busy being born forty years ago, finally reaching our eyes.