Country: Chile
Year: 0
Duration: 78'
A satirical take on President Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity process prior to the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. The film is made up of a series of short stories, in which different worlds cross paths. On the one hand that of the workers and the lumpen, headed by the figure of Lucho and, on the other, that of a group of intellectual supporters of the Unidad Popular coalition who come together in a poetical front more representative of the petite bourgeoisie. At one point in time, the characters converge in an apparent friendship that ends in scenes of great violence, giving rise to a satirical reading of the period. The film is part of the restitution of “Raúl Ruiz’s trilogy” of lost works from the Chilean period, after, alongside The Wandering Soap Opera (1990-2017) and The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror (1967-2020).
Biography
film director
Raúl Ruiz
(Puerto Montt, Chile, 1941 - Paris, 2011) took up cinema in Argentina. After returning to Chile he was involved in avant-garde theater. In 1968, he debuted in film with Three Sad Tigers, Golden Leopard in Locarno. Forced into exile after Pinochet’s coup d’état, he found refuge in France. He made his name on the international scene with The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting. He has then directed over one hundred films, making him one of the most prolific directors of all time. In 1996 he made Three Lives and Only One Death, the second to the last film Marcello Mastroianni acted in; the next year he received a Silver Bear in Berlin for Genealogies of a Crime. He then continued making films until his death, always working alongside his wife, director and editor Valeria Sarmiento.
FILMOGRAFIA
Tres tristes tigres (1968), L’hypothèse du tableau volé (1979), La ville des pirates (La città dei pirati, 1983), L’éveillé du Pont de l’Alma (1985), Trois vies et une seule mort (Tre vite e una sola morte, 1996), Généalogie d’un crime (Genealogia di un crimine, 1997), Shattered Image (Autopsia di un sogno, 1998), Le temps retrouvé (Il tempo ritrovato, 1999), Les âmes fortes (2001), Cofralandes, rapsodia chilena (2002), Médée (2003), Días de campo (2004), Le domaine perdu (2005), Klimt (2006), La recta provincia (2007), Nucingen Haus (Miss Christine, 2008), L’estate breve (doc., 2010), Mistérios de Lisboa (2010).
Valeria Sarmiento
(Valparaíso, Chile, 1948) is the editor of many films by Ruiz. She debuted as a director with Notre mariage in 1984. She then directed, among others, The Lines of Wellington (2012) and Le cahier noir (2018). She was married with Raul Ruiz, and since the director's death she undertook to recover and restore many lost works, especially during their Chilean period.
FILMOGRAFIA
Los minuteros (cm, 1972), Poesía popular: La teoría y la práctica (cm, 1972), Un sueño como de colores (cm, 1972), Nueva Canción Chilena (cm, 1973), La dueña de casa (cm, 1975), Gens de nulle part, gens de toutes parts (1979), Le mal du pays (cm, 1979), El hombre, cuando es hombre (1982), Notre mariage (1984), 100 Secondes pour une oeuvre (serie tv, 1988), Amelia Lópes O'Neill (1991), Latin Women Beat in California (tv, 1992), El planeta de los niños (tv, 1992), Elle (1995), L'inconnu de Strasbourg (1998), Un siècle d'écrivains (Un secolo di scrittori, ep, serie tv, 1995), Mon premier French Cancan (tv, 1999), Rosa la China (2002), Au Louvre avec Miquel Barceló (tv, 2004), Secretos (2008), Linhas de Wellington (2012), As Linhas de Torres Vedras (serie tv, 2012), Diario de mi residencia en Chile: María Graham (doc, 2013), La Telenovela Errante (coregia/codirector Raul Rúiz, 2017), O Caderno Negro (2018), Casa de Angelis (serie tv, 2018), El tango del viudo y su espejo deformante (coregia/codirector Raul Rúiz, 2020), Lou de Laâge in O Livro Negro do Padre Dinis (serie tv, 2021), El realismo socialista (coregia/codirector Raul Rúiz, 2023).
Declaration
film director
“It is fundamentally a political ‘feuilleton,’ in which we have dealt with the seizure of power rather ironically. I worked with a group of workers who had taken over a factory and, since they were good actors, the result was a musical comedy, even despite having filmed live.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTORS, SCREENPLAY: Raúl Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorge Müller. EDITING: Galut Alarcón. MUSIC: Jorge Arriagada. SOUND: José De La Vega. CAST: Jaime Vadell, Juan Carlos Moraga, Javier Maldonado, Nemesio Antúnez, Waldo Rojas, Marcial Edwards. PRODUCTION: Poetastros.
CONTACT: Poetastros (Chamila Rodriguez) chamilacine@gmail.com
