February 3, 2022
¡We are starting 2022 with some amazing news! Outstanding Chilean documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzmán begins this new year competing for the Goya Award for Best Ibero-American Film with his latest documentary The Cordillera of Dreams and will also be the focus of a retrospective at the Toulouse Latin American Film Festival (France).
And since we couldn’t be more proud of this, we have prepared a special tribute to honor his career that continues to position Guzman as one of the world’s greatest documentary filmmakers of recent times.
5 big milestones of a wide-ranging career that define more than four decades around a chronicler guardian of memory, who since the rise to power of Salvador Allende has filmed great events through feature films, short films and television series that have left a mark in history.
Patricio Guzmán’s work marks a before and after in Chilean documentary history. His studies in theatre, history and philosophy during 1965-1966 give life to three short films: Viva la libertad (1965); Electro Show (1966) and Mimbre y greda (1966), which would be the beginning of a life dedicated to the documentary that has made him one of the most internationally recognized Chilean filmmakers.
His love for documentary film takes him to Spain, where he studies at the Official School of Cinematographic Art in Madrid (1969-1970).
His arrival in Chile submerges him into the first years of President Salvador Allende’s government, a political sphere that motivates them to shoot the first 12 months of this term in a film entitled El primer año (1972).
His career moves up and he is being consolidated as one of the most outstanding documentary filmmakers of the Popular Unity party period.
«Electro Show»
The tense political scene filmed by Guzman, in tapes that until a few years ago were banned, caused him to be arrested in 1973 after the start of the coup d’état, uncommunicated for two weeks inside the National Stadium.
From that moment on and after regaining his freedom, the fundamental motor of his career focused on saving those films that, with the help of Chris Marker, reached the Cuban Institute of Cinematography (ICAIC).
The footage of the 5-hour trilogy that made him world-famous, is thus achieved to end and give life to The Battle of Chile (1972-1979) that encompasses the triumph of President Salvador Allende until the uprising led by Augusto Pinochet. This film lays the foundations of his cinema.
The success of this documentary led him to win six grand prix in Europe and Latin America and also to be distributed in commercial theatres in 35 countries.
Several internationally recognized media outlets begin to comment on the enormous admiration for the talent of the documentary director:
“It’s undeniably an epic film” (The New York Times) / “An example of this valuable, and at the same time scarce, political cinema” (The Guardian) / “One of the 10 best political films from around the world” (Cineaste Magazine)
«The Battle of Chile filming crew, Chilean Memory archive»
Guzmán has built an iconic grid of stories and realities around documentary film, actions he confirms with his acknowledged statement: “A country without documentary film is like a family without a photo album”
Thus memory becomes the central pillar of his cinema. The exile lived in Cuba and Spain that finally led him to settle in Paris has been an opportunity and space to leave a signature on the national scene with films that recall the events of the coup d’état and its consequences in Chilean society.
«The Southern Cross»
The peak of his career does not stop: in 2010, Guzman fills us with pride when he begins a new cycle of documentaries with the film Nostalgia of the Light, where the Atacama desert becomes a “great open book of memory”, in addition to being widely awarded, with its international premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (François Chalais Award, 2010) and chosen as Best Documentary by the Europe Academy (2010).
The most remote and most recent history joins Chile’s geography, and they begin to circulate hand in hand in their cinema.
Years later we see him directing The Pearl Button (Silver Bear for Best Screenplay, Berlinale 2015) that brought to the big screen the landscapes of Patagonia with its double burden of victims: those of the original peoples and those murdered and disappeared by the Pinochet dictatorship.
The closing of this trilogy was integrated by The Cordillera of Dreams, which began its journey at the Cannes Film Festival (L’œil d’or for Best Documentary, 2019).
«Nostalgia of the Light»
“The past does not pass. It vibrates and moves within the laps of my own life”
His multiple roles as director and producer in the north and south of Chile motivate him to film the immense backbone of the country with The Cordillera of Dreams, a film that unveils the mysteries that are immersed in the past and recent history of its roots.
His grand career that has taken him to receive nearly 70 awards and to be a jury member of important international film festivals, founds him this 2022 as a nominee not only for the César Awards (France) but also for the Goya (Spain).
The living memory of Patricio Guzmán and his foreboding voice from the past to the future rises in The Cordillera of Dreams to leave us a desire, almost a premonition of the new times: “May Chile recover its childhood and its joy” (Patricio’s voice over in the end of The Cordillera of Dreams).
His cinema promises to remain as the root of a collective memory that continues to have the ability to surprise audiences without borders.
We are looking forward and excited to continue sharing to the whole world the successes of Patricio Guzmán.
From CinemaChile we will be telling you all about the Goya awards and the Toulouse retrospective.