LOADING
Directed by Patricio Guzmán | 88 minutes | PG | 50th Anniversary |
2:00pm Sunday, 17 May | Balam Balam Place - Cinema 2 | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
Patricio Guzmán's document of Pinochet's 1973 counter-revolution against elected leader Allende—on the ground as it happened.
On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende's democratically elected socialist Chilean government was overthrown in a bloody coup by General Augusto Pinochet's army, backed by the CIA. Patricio Guzmán’s epic three-part documentary captures the rise and eventual success of the counter-revolution from the street level, with the director and his crew were punished for their rebel filmmaking. Those who managed to escape imprisonment smuggled the footage to Cuba and compiled it abroad.
The Battle of Chile Part II: The Coup d’Etat begins with right wing riots against the government and ends with the bombing of the Presidential Palace, democracy replaced with dictatorship. In B&W film so grainy you could touch it through the screen, Guzmán and co. track Allende’s fall through workers’ meetings, military funerals, employers’ strikes, and fights on the streets … all en route to doom despite some valiant attempts to block the fascist tide. It’s a sobering and clear-eyed document that remains terrifyingly relevant and worthy.
SIMILAR: The Battle of Algiers, Kahnesatake: 270 Years of Resistance, Ogawa Productions’ Sanrizuka documentary series
“It’s documentary filmmaking as open combat.” - Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice
“It shows the different elements in the explosive situation with so much clarity that it's a Marxist tract in which the contradictions of capitalism have sprung to life.” - Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
Country: Chile
Year: 1976
Language: Spanish