Chile: Obstinate Memory

Agüero is able to look at the scene in all it's complexity around architectonical brutality that Santiago de Chile underwent around the year 2000.

The small town of San Carlos suffers an atrocious injustice: the neighboring city of Chillán snatches from them the prize for the "Best Longaniza in Chile". Faced with this blatant theft, a group of people from San Carlos organizes a powerful social movement, which aims to obtain the precious "Denomination of Origin" for their longaniza sausages, and thus repair the damage and recover the dignity of their beloved town.

Gathered by a theater company, a small town in Chile called Villa Alegre, looks deep into its origins and myths to tell their own history through a play.

February 2010. On a remote island in the Pacific Ocean called Juan Fernández, everyone slept in town. But a 12-year-old girl felt a tremor and warned of imminent danger.

Florian Hartung and Dirk Pohlmann have reconstructed a previously unknown dimension of the collaboration between Nazis and the CIA in the Cold War. Drawing upon recently released documents, the film exposes for the first time a perfidious, worldwide net that reaches deep into the power structures of the Federal Republic of Germany. Lending their authority to the fact-finders’ mission are high-ranking statesmen, journalists and historians.

An interview with the president of Chile conducted by Roberto Rossellini in 1971, but broadcast only after his death.

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

In 1962 Joris Ivens was invited to Chile for teaching and filmmaking. Together with students he made …A Valparaíso, one of his most poetic films. Contrasting the prestigious history of the seaport with the present the film sketches a portrait of the city, built on 42 hills, with its wealth and poverty, its daily life on the streets, the stairs, the rack railways and in the bars. Although the port has lost its importance, the rich past is still present in the impoverished city. The film echoes this ambiguous situation in its dialectical poetic style, interweaving the daily life reality (of 1963) with the history of the city and changing from black and white to colour, finally leaving us with hopeful perspective for the children who are playing on the stairs and hills of this beautiful town.

In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.

In 1981, seven Libyan exiles formed the core opposition group to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Thirty years later, they are back to their country only to inherit the mess he left. The film is an intricate blend of rare first-hand accounts, propaganda archival material turned on its head, evocative cinematography and an untold history of a country.

Stunning espionage documentary on the US conspiracy that led to the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson original White House tapes, and CIA Top Secret documents reveal how the US government planned to overthrow Brazilian elected president João Goulart.

A group of young politicians campaigning against an authoritarian constitution speak up, spark hope and ignite a once-in-a-generation movement in this energetic exploration of the recent elections in Thailand.

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Saddam Hussein (but were afraid to ask).

The chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.

Agüero interrupts the filming of 5 films that are being made in Chile in 1984, to ask each director the meaning in their work, at a time when making films in Chile was almost prohibited.  

It is a powerful predator, one of the most elusive animals in Patagonia and rarely filmed. In the very South of Chile the Pumas' hunting grounds lie in the awe-inspiring Torres del Paine National Park, follow a mother Puma as she rears her cubs in the wild, teaching them to survive and thrive.

The house of the director has a door out to the sidewalk. This gate separates the inside from the outside. The interior contains the filmmaker's personal story and his world of objects, thoughts and imaginations. Outer space contains the city of Santiago de Chile. The stories of the world inside the house are interrupted when the doorbell rings unknown and thus come into the film.

A Swedish mining giant, Boliden, is accused of having dumped 20000 tonnes of toxic waste in a poor neighborhood in a Chilean desert town.

"In Chile, when the sun rises, it had to climb hills, walls and tops before reaching the last stone of the Cordillera. In my country, the Cordillera is everywhere. But for the Chilean citizens, it is an unknown territory. After going North for Nostalgia for the Light and South for The Pearl Button, I now feel ready to shoot this immense spine to explore its mysteries, powerful revelations of Chile’s past and present history." Patricio Guzmán

Documentary on the events provoked by the systematic attack of imperialism on the Popular Unity government in Chile, presided by Salvador Allende.