INTERVIEW
Patricio Guzmán , memory or life
Nancy Berthier Professor at the Sorbonne University ( Chair of Visual Arts of the Hispanic World ) and director of Casa Velázquez
It is not an easy task to talk about Patricio Guzmán in just a few words ; nor would it be in a few pages , or even a book . Few filmmakers in the world have so powerfully made me feel the way that documentary film , more than any story , is capable of expressing the intense and dramatic heartbeat of history , or how two seemingly opposing dimensions such as historical transmission and poetry can be combined with such delicate balance . The Chilean filmmaker is today a notable figure in the history of film , widely recognised for how he has managed to preserve and transmit the history and collective memory of his homeland using a fully mastered cinematographic language , which blends historical rigor with powerful artistic sensitivity .
Born in 1941 in Santiago de Chile , Patricio Guzmán showed a true passion for film from a very early age and trained in Madrid at the former Madrid Film School . But the event that was to mark his life , and naturally the course of his cinematographic career , was the coup d ’ état of 11th September 1973 , in Santiago de Chile , which overthrew Salvador Allende ’ s democratically voted government and brought the military dictator Augusto Pinochet to power . What would his films have been without this tragic event , the imprint of which has been etched on the majority of his works ? The short films that the then young filmmaker had made prior to the fateful date were going in different directions , and did not reveal the way in which , tenaciously and obsessively , this event would become the core of his film work and of his life , by being examined , or rather , dissected by the precise scalpel of his lens . His famous documentary trilogy The Battle of Chile ( 1975-1979 ) which , in the aftermath of the fatal coup , bore witness with highly dramatic images , not only to the events , recorded with daily devotion , but also to the ideas and hopes that were soon to be dashed . The Battle of Chile ( 1975-1979 ) was a milestone in committed film at the time .
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Observing Memories Issue 7