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More than forty days of demonstrations. Chile, touted until recently by the international financial organizations as the "good student of Latin America", no longer leaves the newspapers. The Chileans, they, no longer leave the street, demanding more social justice, real public services, a new Constitution. Media images and social networks document this revolt around the world. Documentaries and debates, proposed as part of the festival " Chile despertó ! "(Chile awoke), which begins this Thursday, November 28 in Paris, illuminate and feed the reflection on" the page of history that is being written "in Chile. Filmmaker Carmen Castillo, who was in Chile when the protests erupted, is one of the guests of the festival. Meet.
" I used to finish all my texts with this word : despertar . Waking up (or waking up), explains Carmen Castillo. And Chile moved, the country
woke up; "Despertó", to quote the name of the festival which starts this Thursday. And the #chiledesperto tag flourishes on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Chilean society was anesthetized by indebtedness, consumption, the cruelty of life, continues Carmen Castillo. For the filmmaker - who was at Allende's side during the Popular Unity government and who is still a committed woman - the awakening of a society has a very political meaning: it is the desire to learn, want to organize. And very quickly, thanks to the October uprising, people organized themselves, by neighborhood, into groups (like the women's associations that took to the streets on November 25, the international day for the elimination of violence against women. women) or by profession.
► To read also : On the 40th day of the protest, demonstrators still very mobilized
The media pillory
Audiovisual professions are not left out. This collective Ojo Chile which federates professionals of the cinema or the association of documentarists chiliens (the ADOC ) which informs on the network WhatsApp of the date of its next assembly ( cabildo ), on November 30th. Carmen Castillo shows us the convocation. " The audiovisual sector has mobilized and there have been demonstrations against television ." Because the Chilean media are regularly pinned for their conservatism and their bias, very right. Most major media, newspapers and television are backed by industrial or financial groups and have largely supported the military dictatorship in the past. " There are some websites, the radio of the University of Chile and some popular radios, and that's it .. Carmen Castillo recalls. At the beginning of the protests, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights pointed to pressure on journalists to have more favorable coverage of the power of current events.
El Instituto de la Comunicación and Imagen de la Virucilla energetically condemned the actos represivos ejercidos por parte de Carabineros de Chile contra miembros of the comunidad ICEI, incluidos estudiantes y nuestra académica de la Escuela de Cine y Televisión, Coti Donoso. pic.twitter.com/ovENGIziFX
ICEI UChile (@ICEIUChile) November 20, 2019Journalists themselves protested against the way in which TV channels reported events and in demonstrations, slogans pointing to the bias of the media were legion.
The medios of comunicación viven a huge tensión, that mucho thinks that worm con como relocated with the comunidad (fuentes, elite, ciudadanía, etc). The Tercera no está ajena a ese fenómeno. Acá una entrevista al respecto: https://t.co/fs0Cl5GYfa
Sergio Jara Román (@jarismo) November 20, 2019The popular film school invests the streets
The filmmaker was in Chile when the demonstrations broke out. For several years, she has made regular trips to Chile where she participated in the work of the People's Film School of Santiago, created twelve years ago by two filmmakers, Carolina Adriazola and José Luis Sepulveda. " I met them for my film Calle Santa Fe , and since then we have not left each other. This is my base in Chile, "says the director who fled Chile in 1974 in terrible circumstances she tells in his book Santiago-Paris, theft of memory . It is created with them, " a weaving that combines intellectual and artistic complicities and deep political affinities ". They film everywhere, in mines, in prisons, in working-class neighborhoods. One of their films, Cronica from a committee (2014), is also part of the rich selection of Chile desperto festival (see box).
TRAILER CRONICA FROM A COMMITTEE from Escuela Popular de Cine on Vimeo.
This popular film school, which is free and welcomes students from all socio-professional backgrounds, is unique in Chile. The students are immersed in this group that lives " Ariane Mnouchkine way ", explains Carmen Castillo. Meals are elaborated and taken collectively. Classes are an opportunity for viewing and discussing the work of each, and all help and support each other, because cinema is above all a collective adventure. There is also a lot of talk about what is visible or not, she adds, taking the example of a film work on dance as a body liberator for women. But "in the popular neighborhoods where life is of a nameless cruelty ", the directors met a woman who had been tortured. How to tell the suffering of a body? How to film the pain? These questions must often be asked given the violence of Chile's contemporary history.
The students of the school seized the current revolt. Carmen Castillo takes her agenda and flips through the month of October, going back over the course of history. The invasion of the metro, after the rise of the ticket decided by the government of Piñera. The state of emergency at the end of the week after the phenomenon has amplified. " In the late afternoon, while I was going to take the metro, the one closes because of the invasions. A crowd of people can not go home. Santiago is like Paris: the places of residence are far from the places of work. People are desperate and furious ... and between Thursday and Friday the situation has exploded . "
On the 21st, it's a stir-fight at the film school. " We decided together to live that and bring our equipment to the barricades, in an operation that is called" los pantallazos en la barricada ". The first installation was in a rather central place, near the Museum of Contemporary Art. There was a curfew, so we started early, around 5am, and we opened the microphone . People gathered and talked. The word is free, she tells us. And it was repeated the next day in the Yungai district (west of downtown) and then in the other neighborhoods where they settled. " We felt that something very big was happening ", despite the ferocity of the repression, says Carmen Castillo, who insists on the violence suffered. A crackdown by human rights organizations such as Amnesty or Human Rights Watch that has killed more than 20 people.
The pantallazos organized by the school show the images filmed then hot mounted by the students during meetings in the neighborhoods. Images, spontaneous words that the media can not show or even see (or design?) The inhabitants of the center of the capital. What is documented here is the word, the feeling of neighborhoods. " I , Carmen Castillo explains to us, could not have accounted for this experience. Each time, this word that is released on the big screen creates a shock. A word with a lot of humor, but a dark and raw humor , "adds the filmmaker. People from lower-income neighborhoods tell each other, explain " what they are with their own language. For example, they tell me: we are "flaites". And when I ask them what it is, they tell me that it means little delinquent . Their language is liberated, their music asserts itself, their poetry is expressed and it gives them a lot of strength, of self-esteem. In a way, they learn to love each other and this achievement, no one can take it from them, according to Carmen Castillo.
" Vivre ça, for me, it's huge "
For her, this " school brings an experience of emancipation ". It allows us to understand that " equality is something that is not given to us but on which we act. And we act now! Equality is a beautiful concept that has been largely forgotten and replaced by words like "inequality", or "equity" which is a term that comes from business. Equality is something else, it is the gathering of differences . "A very political message and a filmmaker who lives with empathy this bubbling that is currently experiencing Chile. " For me, it's huge, " she confides, with perceptible emotion when she talks about Salvador Allende and Miguel Enriquez , his companion and one of the leaders of the MIR, assassinated in 1974, and their political heritage. " The Chilean land is not only the land of our dead ." No longer just, we might add.
Complex feelings and pain also found in another filmmaker, also exiled, Patricio Guzman . In his latest film, The Cordillera of Dreams , he recounts filming Chile more since his exile in France than during his life in his country. " The state of exile is something terrible, says Carmen Castillo, and I like Patricio Guzman an obstinacy to make memory a tool of emancipation and not nostalgia . This memory, these images, all these films will come to feed future archives that will have to be classified, archived for future films. For a new story page to write.
► The festival program Chile despertó
Chile despertó
from November 28th to December 1st at the Clef revival cinema in Paris
with a selection of documentaries such as Chicago Boys by Carola Fuentes and Rafael Valdeavellano (Chilean students of economist Milton Friedman recall their memories), Patricio Guzman's Memoria obstinada , Ahora te vamos a llamar hermano by Raul Ruiz (Salvador Allende Mapuches), Miguel Soffia's Campamento Esperanza ... and films shot in recent weeks in popular areas and demonstrations.
The screenings are accompanied by debates with filmmakers, artists and journalists.
► The complete program of the event organized by the collective La nouvelle embade