Filmographies - films at UST by Country: Chile

Julio tells his girlfriend he has a job transcribing a novel, when he's actually writing his own work. Looking for inspiration, he revisits an old romance and grows fond of the past and the love he let slip away. Bonsai is an examination of the lies we tell ourselves in order to get by.

Niki and his friend Nacho are two unemployed professionals who pass the day taking sun and "chuteando" stones in a peripheral suburb of Santiago. In this imposed leisure, Niki digresses on the sense of the existence and dreams about Manuela, who is his impossible love; Nacho, the more realistic, exploits himself in homosexual prostitution. With so marginal means, the friends journey between self-destruction and crime in order to survive in this vicious circle that cannot be broken.

A glum, middle-aged bachelor, Don Andres, is the heir of a formerly wealthy and respected Chilean family. Andres suffers from decadence and solitude. He hires young Estela in order to look after his wealthy and abusive grandmother. The differences in class and age don't stop Andres from courting Estela, whose fiance Mario tries to make some money off of his well-to-do rival. The suffocating atmosphere of the run-down mansion mimics the deterioration of the Bourgeoisie, and threatens Andres own mental state.

Javier is a powerful politician and power broker. Despite his wife, family, and wealth, he is miserable as he feels forced to tell lies to stay on top. Struggling under the weight of his shame over the relationship with his secret lover Gonzalo, they take a trip to Chile to work things out. With so many secrets, lies, and power plays piling up, it is only a matter of time before things unravel and destroy their bond.

In the years following the repressive reign of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, a general amnesty program released famous safe-cracker Nicolás and 20-year-old small-time crook Ángel from prison. All Nicolás wants to do is go legit and reunite with his estranged wife and son, but discovers that they have both moved on with their lives without him. With few other options for the aging Nicolás, he is pulled deep into Ángel's plan to pull off one last heist to steal a fortune amassed by some of Pinochet's former henchmen.

Four priests exiled to a small Chilean seaside town to atone for the sins of their pasts find their fragile stability disrupted by the arrival of a newly-disgraced companion in this taut blackly comic drama.

Set in Chile. Young Johnny and the gang to which he belongs are planning to rob a video club that is in reality a front for a money-laundering operation. Unfortunately the robbers take too long and the police arrive before they can escape. But when the local media arrives, the gang pretends to be terrorists, exchanging hostages for a plane to Cuba. Inevitably the media presents Johnny as a tragic hero.

Seventeen-year-old Daniela is obsessed with sex, but her self-proclaimed passion is in direct conflict with her strict evangelical family. Finding an outlet on her blog, "Young and wild," Daniela soon finds kindred spirits in Tomas and co-worker Antonia. As she struggles to balance both relationships, Daniela learns that having it all--sex, love, and eternal salvation--is more complicated than she imagined.

Raquel has worked as a housemaid for the Valdes family for 23 years. On Raquel's 41st birthday, Pilar Valdez and family force the withdrawn maid to emerge from her kitchen sanctum and join the family for a celebration, but her discomfort is as strong as the family's need to acknowledge their awkward dependence on her. Raquel becomes unable to care for the house alone and new help is hired, which throws her into a jealous frenzy. The home soon becomes the stage for Raquel's comedic tricks as she drives away anyone trying to take her place.

On the verge of a forced retirement, Don Celso, an elderly office worker begins to relive both real and imagined memories from his life--a trip to the movies as a boy with Beethoven, listening to tall tales from Long John Silver, a brief stay in a haunted hotel. Stories hide within stories and the thin line between imagination and reality steadily erodes, opening up a ... new world of personal remembrance and fantastic melodrama.

In 1973, the Chilean military, under the direction of General Augusto Pinochet and backed by the CIA, overthrew the shaky socialist government of democratically elected President Salvador Allende. The coup led to the murder of 3,000 leftist Allende supporters and the detention of an estimated 250,000 political prisoners. Set against the background of the political instability that led to the crisis, Andres Wood's Machuca is the moving story of the friendship between two boys from different sides of the social spectrum.

To kill a man: After becoming the target of a street thug and finding no help from legal authorities, a working-class man decides to take matters into his own hands to protect his family. Based on a true story.
Our blood: A brother and sister meet for the first time on an isolated bison farm. What begins as an attempt to reunite a family ends in ecstatic violence when the two are seduced into transgressing primordial law.

This political thriller has its origins in an actual event -- the disappearance of a young American writer and filmmaker, Charles Horman (John Shea), during a South American military coup.

An on-the-edge photographer working with a beautiful magazine reporter uncovers a government's nightmare: a secret so deadly, the military will stop at nothing to eliminate them.

After suffering a heart attack, retired General José Mendieta is haunted by his dark past as an officer in Operation Condor, the CIA-backed campaign of political repression in Latin America that was responsible for executions, torture, and imprisonments in the 1970s. In a letter to his son Pablo, Mendieta confesses the role he played in the abduction, persecution, and execution of countless men and women during his posting to Chile.

In 1973, Gen. Pinochet overtook Chile in a violent coup. In 1998 came the surprise arrest of the former Chilean dictator for crimes against humanity. Armed with a diplomatic passport and apparent immunity, the retired general visited Great Britain for a vacation that was to forever change his life, and the prospects for dictators across the globe. Amnesty International spearheaded the long-awaited arrest with help from the Spanish and British governments, but faced a pro-Pinochet publicity campaign masterminded by one of the dictator's few allies, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. As the dissenting faction pushed for an extradition trail, 500 days passed with Pinochet held under house arrest in an exclusive suburban London community.

It is summer in Santiago and Tristan's perfect life is falling apart. His girlfriend leaves him, his job is interrupted by a strike, and his suitcase is stolen. On the other end of the city, Cristina's quiet life is changing. She finds the suitcase inside a garbage can and enters Tristan's world through his big headphones, smoking his cigarettes and becoming the silent witness to his downfall. Christina and Tristan wander the city, both searching but unable to find each other.

The town of Lota, Chile, 1897 is the setting that reflects a history of human and social changes. In the depths of the biggest coal mine in the world, a grand rebellion develops in the heart of a man. While the aristocratic family of Cousino Goyenechea dreams of progress, the coal miners awaken in their search for dignity.

This Chilean black comedy tells the tale of local taxi driver Ulises, who unsuspectedly joins the group of thugs responsible for holding him up. With dreams of making fast money, he begins heading down the wrong path, driving to rich neighborhoods and becoming involved in a series of bungled burglaries. After being thwarted many times by a swift police force, Ulises and the thugs take refuge at his house where his daughter Javiera also lives. The situation becomes too much to handle when his new friends begin trespassing on him and his young offspring. Whatever he decides to do from this point on is guaranteed to pose more problems than expected.

Marina and Orlando are in love and planning their future, when one night Orlando suddenly falls ill and passes away. Instead of being able to mourn her lover, Marina is treated with suspicion by authorities and with disdain by his family. She is forbidden to attend his funeral and thrown out of the apartment they shared. Marina is a trans woman and for most of Orlando's family, her sexual identity is a perversion. So she must battle the very same forces that she has spent a lifetime fighting just to become the woman she is now--complex, strong, forthright and fantastic.--Container.

The story of the Chilean poet, musician and folksinger Violeta Parra, tracing her evolution from impoverished child to international sensation and Chile's national hero, while capturing the swirling intensity of her inner contradictions, fallibilities, and passions.

La perra: A sexy satire in which a couple with empty lives invents a fantasy about the new maid in order to satisfy their sexual obsessions.
We have decided not to die: Three figures undergo transformation through three rituals in a modern day allegorical triptych.
United we stand: Eight old-timers come upon a young woman stuck in a swamp.
Antichrist: A group of young boys have a leader who believes himself to be the Antichrist. He goads the others into daring games until things spin out of control.
The old woman's shop: An old lady travels from her village to the city in order to sell a chicken so that she can buy a present for her grandson.
Ring of fire: An animated film in which two cowboys are looking for sexual pleasure in a land of dangerous and fascinating creatures.

Chile is one of six countries in the world where abortion is prohibited under any circumstances, even in cases of rape or risk to the life of the mother. In Chile, a woman receiving an abortion is likely to incur a penalty that can range from 3 to 5 years of imprisonment. Despite this prohibition, each year, several tens of thousands of Chilean women have illegal abortions conducted in secrecy. This documentary follows a group of young lesbian and feminist activists who put their lives at risk to run an underground abortion hotline.

El Mercurio is the oldest newspaper in Chile. This "newspaper of record" is the largest news organization in the country, controlled since 1956 by Agustín Edwards Eastman. In 2006/2007, six journalism students of the Instituto de la Comunicación e Imagen de la Universidad de Chile were called together by filmmaker Ignacio Agüero, producer and journalist Fernando Villagrán, and the heads of the ICEI to carry out a study on a specific issue: how El Mercurio reported on the human rights violations committed by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Together, they dig into the particulars of several key events and their coverage in El Mercurio, relations between the owners and managers of the newspaper and Chilean political parties, the church, military, secret police, and the CIA. The film raises questions not only about the role and responsibilities of this newspaper, but of all those who control or manage the dissemination of information and the reporting of news in every country.

Focuses on American military intervention in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and El Salvador. Discusses the roots of dictatorship, its effects on citizens, movements toward majority rule, and communist influences.

The film follows exiled Chilean musician Quique Cruz from the San Francisco Bay Area to Chile and back as he creates a multimedia installation and musical suite in an effort to heal the emotional wounds inflicted on him by the state-sponsored torture of the Pinochet regime.

Ian Wright's journey down the length of Chile takes him from the Atacama desert in the world to the southern-most point before the Antarctic Ocean. He visits Santiago before a train to visit the indigenous Mapuche Indians. He travels across the outstanding glacier-streamed mountains of Torres del Paine National Park. He ends his journey in the Eastern Island. Nearly three thousand miles of stunning countryside encompass a vast and beautiful country with a variety of terrains and climates.

Provides glimpses into the lives of women in Chile, including the effects of the Pinochet dictatorship and the role of women in opposing it.

Berta Quintremán, an elderly indigenous woman who at the age of 88 leads the last group opposing the construction of the Ralco project, a gigantic dam that will stop the flow of the Bio-Bio River and flood the land where her native Pehuenche community, Ralco Lepoy, have lived for centuries... She confronts the authorities of Endesa and the government, managing to halt the machinery and work together with other families to prevent flooding of their land.

During two months in 1973, over 12,000 people were detained in Chile's National Stadium, which served as an improvised detention center following the 1973 coup. Most of the detainees were tortured and some were killed. This film, which contains the testimony of over 30 survivors and eyewitnesses, provides a detailed account of their experiences.

A six-part series tells one of the 20th century's most important and least-known stories-- how nonviolent power overcame oppression and authoritarian rule. In South Africa in 1907, Mohandas Gandhi led Indian immigrants in a nonviolent fight for rights denied them by white rulers. The power that Gandhi pioneered has been used by underdogs on every continent and in every decade of the 20th century to fight for their rights and freedom. Episode 6. Chile: "Defeat of a dictator"

Isabel Allende, the most recent Latin-American novelist to bestride the wolrd literary stage-and the first Latin-American woman-describes the emotions that inform her fiction and the events that set them in motion. Niece of the deposed (and presumably assassinated) Chilean Marxist president Salvador Allende, she fled Chile in terror and blossomed in the exile to write of the love, hate, and revenge that shape the lives of people she knew, or dream about: her characters, her own legend in the making.

When in 1998 Chilean judge Juan Guzmán was assigned the first criminal cases against the country's ex-dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, no one expected much. Guzmán had supported Pinochet's 1973 coup that left the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and thousands of others dead. The filmmakers trace the judge's descent into what he calls "the abyss," where he uncovers the past, including his own role in the tragedy. THE JUDGE AND THE GENERAL reveals one of the 20th century's most notorious episodes and tells a cautionary tale about violating human rights in the name of "higher ideals.

Part 1: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie examines the escalation of rightist opposition following the left's unexpected victory in Congressional elections held in March, 1973. Finding that democracy would not stop Allende's socialist policies, the right-wing shifted its tactics from the polls to the streets. The film follows months of activity as a variety of increasingly violent tactics are used by the right to weaken the government and provoke a crisis.
Part 2: The Coup d'Etat opens with the attempted military coup of June, 1973 which is put down by troops loyal to the government. It serves as a useful dry run, however, for the final showdown, that everyone now realizes is coming. The film shows a left divided over strategy, while the right methodically lays the groundwork for the military seizure of power. The film's dramatic concluding sequence documents the coup d'etat, including Allende's last radio messages to the people of Chile, footage of the military assault on the presidential palace, and that evening's televised presentation of the new military junta.
Part 3: Deals with the creation by ordinary workers and peasants of thousands of local groups of "popular power" to distribute food, occupy, guard and run factories and farms, oppose black market profiteering, and link together neighborhood social service organizations. First these local groups of "popular power" acted as a defense against strikes and lock-outs by factory owners, tradesmen and professional bodies opposed to the Allende government, then increasingly as Soviet-type bodies demanding more resolute action by the government against the right.

On September 11, 1973, a military coup in Chile brought Augusto Pinochet to power, and over the next 17 years, thousands of men were taken from their homes never to return. Since that time, Chilean women have danced the country's traditional courtship dance alone, and 'La Cueca Sola' has become a symbol of women's struggle against the dictatorship. After 30 years in exile, critically acclaimed filmmaker Marilu Mallet returns to Santiago to meet with five Chilean women from three generations who suffered under the dictatorship and have emerged as heroes under democracy

Filmmaker Patricio Guzman travels to the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers gather to observe the stars. The sky is so translucent that it allows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe. The Atacama is also the driest place on earth, and the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, killed by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973. While astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search for the remains of their loved ones, hoping to reclaim their families' histories.

The life and work of Pablo Neruda -- Nobel Laureate, statesman, renowned poet -- both reflect and embody the events that shaped the 20th century. Born in Chile, he fled as a political refugee in 1948, not to return until 1952. Through archival materials, Neruda's writings, and interviews with family, friends and scholars, this program presents Neruda's life and the times that molded it.

From his childhood in Valparaiso to his suicide following the Pinochet military coup on September 11, 1973, the life and works of chilean president Salvador Allende.

The Mapuche defeated the Spanish Crown invaders, and do not recognize the border that Chile and Argentina have tried to impose. Presently, the struggle is focused on maintaining the identity as a people, and stopping the encroachment of multinational corporations in Mapuche ancestral territory. In an effort to increase profits, logging, hydroelectric, oil, mining, and tourist companies- among others- cause destruction and pollution on both sides of the Andes Mountains. The legal, political, and military structures of Chile and Argentina favor the interests of big business. The rights of a people whose spirituality is directly linked to Nature are constantly violated. The search for living in harmony with the environment, a horizontal way of organizing, and a resilience that has never been broken, have allowed the Mapuche to resist for over five centuries and assert: We still exist. In a journey through different communities of Puelmapu (the land where the Sun rises) and Gulumapu (the land where the Sun sets), the documentary takes the viewer across rivers, lakes, forests, and mountains. It registers the words and wisdom of Mapuche women, men, children, youth, and elders. The film breaks through the official news blackout, when it enters the prisons where the defenders of Mapuche rights are serving their sentences. Additionally, it covers a hunger strike that went on for over 100 days and gave rise to a wave of demonstrations.

This segmentof the World Atlas series includes animated maps from Rand McNally and in-depth cultural and historical information about Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It covers physical geography, political geography, popular locations, and thematic maps of the region.