Patricio Guzmán (1)
Patricio Guzmán
A living legend of documentary cinema, Patricio Guzmán has directed 30 films over a career spanning 50 years. One of his most renowned docs is The Battle of Chile: The Struggle of an Unarmed People (1972–1979), which contains a chronicle of Salvador Allende’s government, including the coup that overthrew him and led to a military dictatorship. After the coup, Guzmán fled to Cuba and eventually settled in Europe, where he’s made most of his films. In 1997, the NFB co-produced Chile, Obstinate Memory, a turning point in Guzmán’s career. In it, he explores identity and memory, with personal reflections on his return to Chile after 23 years of exile. Without appearing on camera, he revisits some of the characters in his epic doc, The Battle of Chile. Chile, Obstinate Memory has won a dozen awards and is still one of his most popular films to date. Guzmán’s most recent film is My Imaginary Country (2022), which only lengthened the impressive list of awards and accolades he has received across the globe since the seventies.
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Chile, Obstinate MemoryPatricio Guzmán 1997 58 minIn this feature documentary, a Chilean filmmaker returns to the motherland for the first time in 23 years. Time is passing. A generation of young Chileans has grown up with no knowledge of the facts surrounding the military coup of September 11, 1973. In his suitcase, The Battle of Chile his 3-part cinéma vérité chronicle of the political tensions in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counterrevolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. His documentary toured the world but was never seen in Chile. Discreetly, he shows it to his friends and a small group of students. After the screening, the young people are in a state of shock. They have an urgent need to know the truth, for it is they who must build the Chile of tomorrow. In Spanish with English subtitles
