The Guardian ·
Battle of Chile director Patricio Guzmán dies aged 85
Patricio Guzmán, the film-maker who chronicled Chile’s bloody 1970s political strife and its subsequent social and political turmoil in films such as The Battle of Chile and Nostalgia for the Light, has died aged 85. According to Chilean news outlet Emol, Guzmán died on Tuesday in Paris after a cardiorespiratory arrest.
Guzmán’s chief preoccupation throughout his career was the carnage unleashed by Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973 against Salvador Allende, Chile’s elected president. He later told the Guardian: “I’m a film-maker who was very marked by the ways of the dictator. It has remained with me for ever. I cannot leave it behind.” However, he resisted the idea that he was an activist, political film-maker, adding: “I’m not a sociologist. Neither am I a politician. I make films that are metaphorical and poetic; I interpret reality through my own personal way of looking.”
Born in Chile in 1941, Guzmán initially worked in advertising before studying film, first in Chile and then in Madrid. On his return to Chile, Guzmán responded to the febrile political atmosphere after Allende’s election in 1970, eventually completing the mammoth Battle of Chile documentary that chronicled Pinochet’s ultimately successful attempt to overthrow Allende, resulting in the latter’s suicide. Guzmán did not shrink from the brutality of the period, even including footage shot by camera operator Leonardo Henrichsen as he is shot dead by the soldier he is filming.
