Abstract

Films

This article presents information on two documentary motion pictures, "The Battle of Chile," and "Chile, Obstinate Memory," by Patricio Guzman. The film "The Battle of Chile," cuts to blue-tinted images of jets swooping over the rooftops of Santiago, Chile while pieces of the Moneda Palace erupt skyward. A voice on the soundtrack tells the disappointed bridegroom was one of forty associates of Chile's President Salvador Allende who chose to remain in the palace through the bombardment, even though the president had told them they could go. In "Chile, Obstinate Memory," Guzman estimates the weight of a silence spread over two generations, and he finds it to be considerable. But from a position of some moral authority, he also enters into the lives of those who have quietly borne up for all these years, and he does so with reverence.