Chile has chosen the documentary The mountain range of dreams by Patricio Guzmán (Santiago, 80 years old) for the race for best Ibero-American film at the 36th edition of the Goya Awards. In the decision of his country there is something vindictive: for decades, the director resented that in Chile neither his work was recognized nor his productions were shown as in Europe, where he settled after the coup d’état of 1973. “The curtain of forgetfulness it is very strong because, behind it, there is terror: do not remember, because you will get a stick from the police ”, says this man who considers that an in-depth cinematographic work should film poetry, doubt, enthusiasm, disenchantment, the suffering. “Chile, like almost all of Latin America, is a forgetful country, where history does not exist. There are two or three dates that are commemorated and the rest, zero, “says Guzmán, passing through his country, where he observes that little by little this matter is changing.
To be lucky with The mountain range of dreamsIt would be the first time that the trophy in this category at the Goya Awards would reward the work of a documentary filmmaker, a strong genre in Latin America. Author of indispensable non-fiction tapes such as the trilogy The battle of Chile, that 40 years after his debut has just been broadcast for the first time on Chilean open television, his compatriots have looked back to his prolific work, in the midst of a process of profound political and social changes. In a week, on Sunday, November 21, Chile will celebrate the presidential and parliamentary elections, in parallel to a constituent process that Guzmán applauds: “It is very nice that behind the force of the social outbreak, the word is reached,” he assures after filming for weeks to the conventional ones, which allowed him to enter to record closely the constituent.
“My 15 feature films revolve around historical memory, which comes in handy for today’s Chile where, above all, young people want to know,” says Guzmán, sitting in the bright dining room of an old house in Santiago, in the bohemian municipality of Ñuñoa, who belongs to the family of the singer-songwriter and writer Ángel Parra, his friend who died in 2017. A few meters away, is the producer of his works, Renate Sachse, his wife, with whom he will soon return to Paris to work with the images collected in this last trip. “The documentary is a network that you throw and you take out what interests you. Thanks to this exercise, it is possible to realize the state of mind of a country ”, says Guzmán, with half a century of experience. In his debut, The first year, immortalized the start of the socialist government of Salvador Allende, in 1970, a theme that haunts him.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do almost anything if it weren’t for Chile. From the first movie I was trapped politically and I have never been able to get away. Therefore, all the work that I did after is from the Chilean tragedy. How the country was forgetting and then remembering little by little. The Pinochet case and others are achievements that are taking up forgotten moments of this suffering Chile. And it is the cause of my thick work, ”says Guzmán, a good conversationalist. “Every creator has an obsessive theme, which fills him up. For some it is a city, a person and, for me, it is the memory of this country. I can’t move forward if I don’t turn to it. It is my advantage and my limitation, of course, ”acknowledges Guzmán, who was passing through Chile at the end of October filming the assembly that has been working on a new Constitution for four months.
With The mountain range of dreams that Chile hopes that the jury will select among the four films that will compete in the Goya as best Ibero-American film, Guzmán completes a trilogy composed of Nostalgia for the light and The mother-of-pearl button. Upon The mountain range of dreams Explain: “It is the reunion with characters whose memory is intact. Especially the final character, the camera operator, a spectacular person, who lives to film and filming is life. It is a rare situation in this country, unique in Latin America, there is no one like him. When you enter his life, it amazes you ”, he says in reference to the Chilean filmmaker Pablo Salas, his alter ego in this film that he dedicates to the Andes mountain range, the backbone of Chile. “The mountain range is a wall, a door. You can’t live without it, although you forget it and the smog sometimes doesn’t let you see it. It is a difficult object to film, because there are 160,000 hills, all the same, that it costs to transform into characters. Not like the Atacama desert, in the north of the country, which is full of life and suggestions, although it is empty ”, describes Guzmán about the geography of his country that has inspired him.
It premiered in May 2019, a few months before the social upheavals shook the Chilean institutions. The documentary maker relates that during the filming of The mountain range of dreams “You could tell there was something there.” He explains: “There was a lot of noise underground. Rumors And I thought: something is going to happen or something is brewing. You realize it when you look at people’s eyes ”, recalls Guzmán, who closes the film with a phrase that sounds premonitory:“ My wish is that Chile recovers its childhood and its joy ”. Then, in October 2019, Chile exploded, in a complex phenomenon that combined unprecedented violence with legitimate citizen demands for dignity: “There are times when an entire country encapsulates itself, enters, becomes entangled in its own history and present and is well a shake ”. After the pandemic that had to happen in Europe, he arrived in his country for the first anniversary of the riots. “What is happening in Chile is enormously hopeful,” says this man who has the recent history of his country in his mind.
Although he recognizes that his country is in a difficult political moment – “changes always cause a feeling of instability” -, he thinks that “Chile is setting an example to the world with the constituent”. He liked what he observed closely at the convention that, with successes and errors, he is working on a new Magna Carta to offer the country, with a deadline of July 2022. “So many intelligent people there are and you don’t realize it. Diverse people, talented, strong to speak. It is hidden by an absurd and old politics, under a cloak of spent neoliberalism. When turning the tortilla, beautiful and interesting phenomena are observed. I am sure that the thinking and modern sector that opens roads will win, ”says Guzmán, who met for hours with many of the conventional, in an old building in the center of Santiago where they have been in session since the beginning of July.
He would like to premiere it at Cannes and it has a tentative title: My imaginary country. A country that, he analyzes, needs 100 years to detach itself from the Pinochet dictatorship. “One hundred years, the minimum. To go back, recapitulate, analyze what happened, make more books, more lectures, put it in the school study ”. Of those 100 years, only half have passed, because 2023 will commemorate the 50 years of the 1973 coup. Guzmán believes that “it is an interesting half, because it was precisely in this half that the great change has occurred. ”.
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