FILMS ON CHILE RECORD STRUGGLE BEFORE THE COUP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01365R000300020003-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 27, 2004
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: October 24, 1973
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

NATIONAL GUARDIAN 1J i ?1 ,b ~.12t J_ R w t` tJ
oved For Release 2005/113 CCI~9RD'P88-01365F9DOd2QDQ3 14.q c e,2
(Wiff"r 1s 7-C 6(- ho,,,,-)
Fins On C' Me
record s ~g g!
before the coup
TWO FILMS ON CHILE,
"Que itacer" ("What Is To Ile Done?")
directed by Saul Landau, Nina Serrano, Raul Ruiz;
"Allende,"
an Interview with the late President.
Produced and directed by Saul Landau and ifm;kell Wexler.
Impact Films (114 BleeckerSt., NYC).
It is this focus on the political and emotional ambivalences of the
young Peace Corps woman that makes of "Que Ilacer," despite its
apparent anti-imperialism, a cultural artifact that exploits rather
than aids the Chilean people's struggle. In addition, its political
stance is so muddled that it provides neither enlightenment nor
emotional reinforcement of revolutionary convictions.
A 30-minute filmed interview with Allende by Landau and,
Haskell Wexler ("Medium Cool") offers a painful ex post facto self-
commentary on the political illusions of Chile's first "Marxist"
regime. Describing himself as a "socialist parliamentarian,"
Allende's theme in this interview, over and over again, is his
devotion to the law, to legal remedies, to "the highest possible
constitutional procedures." Considering that he was the precarious
president of his country at the time the interview was made, we
hardly expect him to speak much differently. But the inescapable
feeling is transmitted that Allende's commitment to a con-
stitutional road to socialism was much-more than tactical of the
moment. His was a developed political view-shared, obviously, by
his allies of the Chilean Communist Party-that Chile, somehow
was "different," that it could proceed towards a socialist society
within the framework of bourgeois legality.
The revisionists would have it that the "socialist camp" has
grown so strong in the world that countries such as Chile (in fact
any bourgeois democratic country, not excluding the United
States) can now pursue the path of peaceful transition. Challenged,
they accuse their Marxist-Leninist opponents of war-mongering,
adventurism and advocating violence for its own sake. But the
necessity for smashing the old bourgeois state apparatus if the
working class is to seize and hold power is hardly a new idea in the
revolutionary movement. It was the great lesson that Marxists
drew from the failure of the Paris Commune and has been a cor-
nerstone of Leninist revolutionary strategy ever since. Tragically,
the advocates of "Chilean exceptionalism" have paid with their
lives for their failure to comprehend this fundamental axiom.of
revolutionary strategy.
At the same time, it is clear that Allende represented the genuine
aspirations of Chile's workers and peasants. Support for the
Allende government was the only principled path for
revolutionaries both within and outside Chile to take during the
three years of the democratic regime.
The Landau-Wexler interview with Allende is as instructive a
piece of political conversation on film as we are ever likely to en-
counter.
Allende himself emerges as a warmly sympathetic human being,
a man who undoubtedly tried to serve his people with great courage
and dignity. If at times he seems a trifle vainglorious or unduly
Saul Landau's two films about Chile were, of course; made before
the military coup. But they were first shown to an American
audience while the news of the fascist take-over and Allende's.,.
murder were still fresh in everyone's mind.
The tragic difference between the political climate in which these
-films were produced and the reality of the events that transpired
since is, therefore, their most fascinating, albeit unintentiopal,
aspect.
The major effort is "Que Ilacer," a full-length feature that
combines llollywood-style fiction, newsreel clips and documen-
tary-style interviews and camera-work to describe Chile. in the
several weeks leading up to the election of Salvador Allende in 1990.
Apparently aware that any North American culturallnterVetltion
in Chile, no matter how sympathetic, is bound to have overtones of
Yankee imperialism, Landau has also introduced several anti-
cinematic devices designed to be wary of this inevitable form of
neo-colonialism.
The most interesting of these is a series of interviews with a
youthful militant of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR)
who comments on various scenes in the film. In two instance. at
.least, he accusses the film of political incompetence-in an at-
tempted fantasy kidnapping of a fictional CIA agent and in a
contrived confrontation between a Communist deputy and, his
"radical" son who has become a member of a terrorist band. It is a
criticism that might well have been extended to other aspects of
this film that has.borrowed its title, but little else from Lenin.
Also on hand to help separate fantasy from reality is Country Joe
MacDonald who pops up from time to time, guitar in hand, to
remind its that no matter what illusion the screen portrays, the
reality is that it's still one more movie made by North Americans.
"Making a movie in Chile, having a wonderful time," sings Mac-
donald early in the film. It's a bitter comment but it does not seem
to have dissauded Landau or his associates from proceeding
anyway. Perhaps they felt that by trumpeting their inevitable
complicity, they would somehow be absolved of its political con-
sequences.
The film's purpose-to the extent that one can use such a specific
word for what seems, at best, an ambivalent focus-would seem to
he an exploration of different trends on the Chilean left at the time
of the elections. Center stage is Allende and (lie Popular Unity
coalition, represented primarily. by the aforementioned Coni-
tnunist deputy who faithfully?deli%ers his party's lin'. on "peaceful
transition" to socialism. Contrasted against this are a radical
priest, an infantile terrorist group and the MIR. Playing an em-
barrassingly contrived counter-point are a business-like ('IA agent
and an idealistic young woman in the Peace Corps who, in the
ro brief
rocess of disengaging herself from the Corps; manages a
p
p
affair with (he ('I, ~~A-F b S -01365R000300020003-2
terrorist band.-
prideful in his place in the Chilean legislative spectrum, we can
forgive him such minor frailties in view of his obvious willingness
to give his life for what he conceived to he the best interests of the