Ugo Ulive left his native Uruguay in 1967 to move to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, where two years later he realised three short films at the newly founded Centro de Cine Documental de la Universidad de los Andes: “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, “Diamantes” and “Basta!”. The latter was part of the Leipzig retrospective “Film in the People’s Struggle for Liberation: Latin America” in 1972. Inspired by Antonin Artaud’s concept of the “Theatre of Cruelty”, it stands out for disturbing images of an autopsy that reveal the degree of dehumanisation under the influence of imperialism. In “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, also in the form of an experimental collage, Ulive, roaming the streets of Caracas with his camera, contrasts the public face of a divided society with audio fragments from radio, advertising and pop music.

Florian Wüst

This documentary, whose title is a line from one of Pablo Neruda’s poems, is a snapshot of Chile after two years of military dictatorship. In the agitational Cold War rhetoric typical of Studio H & S, it portrays both representatives of the regime and the victims of the terror, who are beginning to organise themselves as they search for the arrested and disappeared. Walter Heynowski, Gerhard Scheumann and Peter Hellmich had spent several months in Chile in early 1973 to record Allende’s reform efforts as well as the machinations of the far-right forces. Hellmich stayed longer: On 11 September 1973, he managed to film the legendary footage of the bombing of the Presidential Palace, conducted the first interview with General Augusto Pinochet after the coup and filmed political prisoners in the Chacabuco concentration camp in the Atacama Desert. For the extremely risky interviews and filming of “Eine Minute Dunkel macht uns nicht blind”, Studio H & S had to send a West German team – Gerhard Biroth, George Boultwood and Frederico Füllgraf – to Chile. Their true intention behind the transparent pretext of “filming the landscape for the promotion of tourism” and documenting “the economic success of the Pinochet government” remained undetected, as Füllgraf remembers, despite constant surveillance and thanks to all kinds of tricks. This screening is the premiere of the restored and digitized version of the film which was supported by the Förderprogramm Filmerbe (Digitisation of German film heritage funding programme).

Florian Wüst

“El primer año” documents the first year of the Unidad Popular: the rude awakening of the ruling classes of Chile as they are faced with the democratically elected socialist government. From the immediate economic sabotage of the right wing through celebrating workers, the situation of the Mapuche, the agrarian reform, the nationalisation of coal and copper mining and Fidel Castro’s visit, up to the “March of the Pots” by bourgeois women crying for bread, of which they have plenty, the cycle of achievements and difficulties is complete. Besides their journalistic interest, Patricio Guzmán and his collaborators sought to capture the atmospheric aspect of the departure towards a fairer society under Salvador Allende, which is what makes “El primer año” such a moving document of its time. Chris Marker offered to produce a French version with the help of the SLON film collective, which is preceded by photographs by Raymond Depardon, accompanied by a foreword on the history of Chile. Guzmán continued his work on the chronicle of events until he was forced to leave the country after the military coup of 11 September 1973. It was only in Cuban exile that he was able to successively finish his masterpiece “La Batalla de Chile” (1975-79) together with Pedro Chaskel. Each of its three parts was acclaimed at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week and the Berlinale Forum.

Florian Wüst

Encouraged by the UN Resolution of 6 November 1974, which condemned the human rights violations of the Chilean military dictatorship, relatives of imprisoned and disappeared persons first began to join forces. Whether in this or other initiatives fighting for a return of democracy to Chile, the resistance was always primarily driven by women. It became more and more visible in the 1980s, not least due to the creativity of their forms of action. One example: On 30 October 1985, the “Mujeres por la vida” organised a protest in the Providencia district of Santiago under the slogan “Somos+” (We are more). The women formed three rows moving towards each other, each holding a ribbon in one of Chile’s national colours. The video documentation of the protest and its violent breakup by the police won multiple awards at the 1986 West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen.

Florian Wüst