ESTADOS UNIDOS: Tributo a Miguel Enriquez : CMI-PR

TRIBUTE TO MIGUEL ENRIQUEZ
AND COMRADE ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA

IN NEW YORK-HARLEM, UPPER MANHATTAN

AND THE BRONX

MIR-MOVEMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT

On the 30th Anniversary of the fall in combat of the leader behind the Chilean Revolution, the struggle continues!

CULTURAL POLITICAL ACT with the people, on the Road to Popular Power, with the poor and the marginalized, with all forms of struggle

FRIDAY, OCOTBER 8, 2004

MARTIN LUTHER KING AUDITORIUM

310 w. 43RD St. (between 8th and 9th Ave) Local 1199

6p.m.

For information: 718.292.6137 Email: lapena200@aol.com

Participants:
The founders of MIR

Latin American Guests

Leaders from the U.S. and the world

Artists, Hip-Hop, Indigenous & Folklore

Conveners: The Miguel Enriquez Collective and the La Peña del Bronx Movement-2004, New York

Miguel Enríquez and I, looking at the Pacific Ocean.
Photography taken by Inés Enríquez,
at the Desembocadura del Bío-Bío
Concepción - Chile 1968

With Javierita Enríquez, Miguel's daughter
Photography taken by Don Edgardo Enríquez
in Oxford - England
1978

Click on the pictures in this page, for a larger view
I
Introduction
However Miguel Enríquez genuine fighting and ultimate sacrifice for the Chilean people, for the poor and the oppressed, Miguel Enríquez grew up in his youth also as an intellectual elitist. I do not mean this as a negative feature, only in descriptive terms. As he did not choose this, since he inherited it in his familiar enviroment. The core group of private friends he had since early youth - around the mid fifties- were bounded by similar values, social traditions, intellectual preferences, and even aesthetic judgements. This group of friends had this basic common denominator: all were sons of professionals or scholars linked to the University of Concepcion as university teachers, and at the same time, some of the friends - including Miguel, Luciano, Bauchi, and myself- had direct family links to officers within the armed forces.
There were also others, mainly classmates, which stayed in different peripheral and/or episodical relation with the above mentioned group. I refer to them later, as well as to Miguel's late political friends and associates. And of course, the ladies in Miguel's youth.

Nevertheless, it was a very close group, with names never so far mentioned in any "biography", such as Darío Ulloa or Rodrigo Rojas. Darío, the son of a notable surgeon, and sister of a professor in anatomy at Concepción University. Rodrigo, the son of a university literature professor and one of Chile's most famous writers. Eduardo Trucco, son of the at that time Vice Rector of the University of Concepción. My mother, professor at the same university, and my father an officer at the Carabineros, nowadays a branch of the Chilean Armed Forces. As regarding Miguel, his father was both university Professor of Anatomy and officer at the Chilean Navy's medical corps (Capitán de Navío). When Bautista Van Schowen came to the same secondary school (Liceo De Hombres Enrique Molina) later in 1959 he was incorporated in the group of friends. Air Force General Van Schowen was brother of Bautista's father.

Thinking in the original group of friends - sharing rather similar intellectual preferences- I have sometimes wondered how come that only us who had this "armed forces genetical connection" (Miguel, Bautista and I) decided to embrace so early the thesis of the armed struggle. As to Luciano Cruz, he was the son of an officer of the Chilean Army, and the brother of an officer of the Chilean Army, as my own brother Mauricio was, and also two of my uncles. Although Luciano came to joint our group at a much later stage (jun-july 1965) his insertion in the core of political and strategical thinking was provided in much because that background. That's it.

Coming back to the early sixties: Politically, Miguel, Bautista, and my self, evolved clearly to the new left (the so called non-communist revolutionary left). Rodrigo did not follow us directly after high school, but reunited with us "politically" in the later sixties, although remaining close friends all the times through.

From the group of friends mentioned above, with the years Miguel, Bautista and I will participate in the foundation of MIR in 1965, after shortly participated first in the Chilean Socialist Party from 1962-1964 and 1964-1965 in the Vanguardia Revolucionaria (VRM, a less known organization with Trotskoist spirit). Rodrigo Rojas stayed in a political university group in alliance with MIR/MUI called GRAMA. Eduardo Trucco became - as far as I now- a member of the social democratic party, at that time in a right-center coalition at the national political spectra. As to Darío Ulloa, he apparently followed abroad the more orthodox and more established pro Moscow communist line. Both Eduardo Trucco and Darío Ulloa desegregated 1961 and for the times to come. Luciano Cruz was never part of the VRM and he had a background instead in positions more close to the traditional Chilean Comunist Party. Besides Luciano was a bid younger and of a later school promotion. Luciano's contact with Miguel and the rest of us dated then from the university years.

Of the original group of six young men, four went to study medicine (Miguel, Bautista, Rodrigo and Darío), and two went to study law (Eduardo Trucco and myself). I also enrolled simultaneously at Philosophy and a year later at Anthropology as well. Darío naturally separated from the group when he moved abroad to pursue his medical training. All the rest of us remained at the University of Concepcion. After my second year as Anthropology student (corresponding to my third year at the Law School) I came to the Medical Faculty to pursue the Anatomy courses (my teacher was Miguel's father, Prof. Edgardo Enríquez) at the Medical Anthropology course. It went all fine. Miguel came anew with the idea, this time supported by Don Edgardo Enríquez, that I should move to Medicine in a full time basis. I was at that time also living at Miguel's parents house in Roosevelt 1654, very close to the medical faulty. It was difficult to oppose to Miguel's vehement rationale, but I did not change my mind until years later (when I became doctor in medicine I also dedicated my examination thesis to my friend Miguel, as I have done in the very first book I ever published - Cantos de Rebelde Esperanza, in 1962).

With Don Edgardo Enríquez, Miguel's father
(See my dedicatory to Don Edgardo in "El Sepulcro de Don Quijote", 1970)

II

Another thing, all listened in the base to Verdi, Chopin and Schubert [ulterior preferences went to Beethoven symphonic music (Miguel and Bautista), to Paganini's (Rodrigo, if I remember well), and my self to George Philip Teleman's]. All of us read and discussed at the age of 12-18 about the same fiction and non-fiction books. By the starting of the university years the preferences gradually changed. For example, Miguel evolved from history and the classics to international politics, the same did Bautista Van Schowen. My self to political philosophy, aesthetics and anthropology.
Among the last books we discussed of the "history" period were - in the international perspective- Brué & Temin "La Revolución y La Guerra Civil en España", and also "Historia político-social de Alemania" by Ramos Oliveira. I have to make clear that in all those discussions we were accompanied, if not plainly introduced, by Miguel's eldest brother Marco Antonio. Marco Antonio was an historian erudite who did not compromise with nothing other but the classics in its sources. An illustration, when we were reading Brue & Temine, Marco Antonio was reading also Huge Thomas. Marco Antonio's ideological trotskoist influence upon us (Miguel, Bauchi and I) was much more gravitating than public known or acknowledged in the biographical texts on Miguel and MIR.

On the national historical events, we were absorbed by the historical clarification of General José-Miguel Carrera. When Miguel and Bauchi, already at the university, got more and more involved with the theoretical analyses of Lenin and Trotsky's original writings, I still was embellished by the historical issues around Carrera, and later the liberal Bilbao and the emergency of the Chilean liberalism. Trotsky was indeed fascinating, but yet "too close to Lenin" as I put it. Trotsky's "History of the Russian Revolution" is another book Bauchi presented me with, and asking me for comments. The reason was that I have several times expressed not being so comfortable with Trotsky's apparent participation in the suppression of the anarchist uprising in Kronstad (event told to me first by Marco Antonio and which I developed later in further readings).

Just how deep I remained absorbed in the historical disputes around José-Miguel Carrera could be seen in the articles I actually published on the subject in Punto Final, such as "José Miguel Carrera, General del Pueblo".

My portrait of Bautista Vanchowen
Stockholm 1977
From that time of the "clásicos marxistas" comes the the article of Miguel y Bauchi on the chino-soviet dispute in our own university publication (I do not actually remember in this moment if it was "Revolución" or "Polémica Universitaria"). I remember that in the same publication I wrote an article on the Polish student's rebellion against the soviet occupation. The same publication harboured a presentation written by Miguel on my new published book of poems "Cantos de Rebelde Esperanza". We were - the three of us- nineteen years old.

I should remember the name of the publication we have at the university for about 40 years ago since I was the "Director" of it (editor), being Miguel "Director responsable" for all juridical purposes. But as I said, either was "Revolución" or "Polémica Universitaria". At that time we had other participants in our nucleon such as Patula Saavedra and "Jarita" o "el negro" Jara (Patula would become with the years the major of San Miguel in Santiago, and Jara a prominent psychiatrist). One thing is clear, those were the years of our involvement in the Vanguardia Revolucionaria.

The other aspect which has been also obscured about our emergent organization was the influence of anarchist theory. We did absolutely read in common at least the full compilation of anarchist writings made by Irwing Horowitz. That was in 1965. I am positive about this fact because I still have the notes with those dates in that book's margins. In the ideological grounds, MIR was built not only on new left thinking, but also in reanalysed anarchist theory as well as with certain influence of Trotskyism. Two members included in the very first MIR leadership of 1965 had strong attachments to the chilean anarchist movement, such as Clotario Blest and Ernesto Miranda, leader of the Shoe Workers Union. As a matter of fact, it was at the locals of the anarchist Shoe Workers Union were MIR allocated it first conference. One of the groups that merged in the foundation conference of August 1965 was the anarchist oriented Movimiento de Fuerza Revolucionario (MFR), a group nucleated around the Christian trade union leader Clotario Blest since 1961. I myself sought the alliance of this fractions when in the foundation conference presented for the vote the name MIR and the red and black flag with MIR letters in white. The proposal won not unanimous, but in clear majority.

I give here (se illustrations below) examples of the books we presented to each other at that time. One book I received from Miguel Enríquez (Erich Fromm, El Lenguaje Olvidado / The Forgotten Language), another from Bautista Van Schowen (Wright Mills, The Marxists).

Miguel Enriquez hand-written dedication
in presenting me "El Lenguaje Olvidado"

It must be stressed that the direct politically literature we read at our pre university youth were only a part of our preferences. At that time we read the classical (as far as Herodoto, partly influenced by Miguel elder brother Marco Antonio's preferences, and Julio Caesar "Comentarios sobre la Guerra de las Galias"!), for some reason we read all the complete fables of Esopo, Samaniego, and La Fontaine (which actually repeated each other), and the pre and post war European and American literature. This is also the period of Hemmingway, Pearl. S. Buck, K. Malaparte, W. Georghiu, S. Maugham, J-P Sartre and A. Camu.

At the last year of high school and first year at the University, we had a renascence taste for Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and the Russian Classics Tolstoi and Dovtojewsky. Miguel himself devoted a preferential reading "cult" to Leonidas Andreyev, Bautista to Dovstojewsjy and myself to the Greek Nikos Kazanzakis.

Bautista Van Schowen hand-written dedication presenting me "Los Marxistas"

III

As I said, my own interest broaden from political readings to themes within anthropology, political philosophy and psychology, even being at the university originally a law student. This development was not unnoticed by my friend Miguel which was not too happy with my - what he called- "compromising" with "pseudo-intellectuals" (read: non-Marxists) such as "that Fromm" and he used to friendly and jokingly "harassed" me for that. Herbert Marcuse was somehow more accepted by Miguel, and certainly Wright Mills (one of Bautistas favourite reading). In a very revealing dedication on yet another book by Erich Fromm Miguel gave to me some year later he illustrated the "perils" of this "intellectual compromising". For Miguel was the Revolution what it counted. According to him, we young intellectuals should primarely read therefore revolution-relevant literature, from Von Clausewitz "El Arte de La Guerra" to Engels "Ludwich Feuerbach y el Fin de la Filosofía Clasica Alemana" (books I presented to him, matching his own wishes). "Soft" books a la Marcuse or Erich Fromm were things to be enjoyed at our very senior years, according to Miguel, long after we had succeed with the revolution. Miguel wrote the following in his dedication of a later book by Fromm he presented to me: "Como primer paso en tu conciliación ideológica, acorde con tu senilidad prematrura", "A la cárcel, o a empleado público". Either we choose to be revolucionarios and thus our foreseeable destiny will be victory or imprisonment, or we choose to be nothing and our destiny is behind the desk of an obscure public servant. That used Miguel to said to us in privacy.
Well, Miguel died in Santiago, heroically, in the trying. So did several other dear friends, such as Bautista Van Schowen and Miguel's brother Edgardo. As to myself, I got the imprisonment in Concepción and in the concentration camp of Quiriquina Island. It would be the seventh time I was arrested. Miguel's words below were indeed prophetic.

IV

Contrary as suggested in the new published biography "El Rebelde de la Burguesía" written by Daniel Avendaño & Mauricio Palma, the documents above show that my friendship with Miguel lasted all those years. Besides, Bautista became affiance of Miguel's sister Inés. A very significant fact that show the closeness of these core group of friends, Miguel, Bautista, and myself, is that we decided to have marriage ceremonies almost simultaneously in the summer of 1968. Miguel married Alejandra Pizarro (best man Bautista Vanshowen), Bautista married Miguel's sister Inés Enríquez (best man Marcello Ferrada-Noli), and I married Lía Schulz (best man Miguel Enríquez). Lía is the mother of my dear son Marcello Vittorio.

I would say that the friendship Miguel Enríquez entrusted me, the joy and enrichment that such friendship honoured me with, had for me a price at times hard to endure. The fact of my close friendship with Miguel raised at occasions an envious attitude from the part of those who never could become that close. Yet, some old comrades from MIR remember things and personal relations as they were, and me as the person I was. This is the case of Miguel sister Inés and Miguel's brother Marco Antonio. Or among many others, former MIR national leaders Andrés Pascal and Nelson Gutiérrez, or common friend Juan Saavedra Gorriategy, currently a Major at Santiago de Chile. Some other would remember me more as they were themselves. In sum, my actual participation in the history/foundation of MIR has been in certain cases accounted truthfully. In "El Rebelde de la Burguesía" it is accurately given that I was co-author (together with Miguel Enríquez and his brother and Marco Antonio) of the Mir’s first Tesis político-militar presented and approved at MIR’s foundation congress in 1965.

In other accounts have my participations in such events been directly omitted or obscured (like the case of Miguel Enríquez biography by Pedro Naranjo, in which not even my full name is given). This is somehow incomprehensible since the information has allways been known by the author Pedro Naranjo, himself and old comrade from MIR in Concepción. Some other former miristas, or persons in the periphery of MIR, or simply plain outsiders, have anonymously given to young and apparently not so experienced journalist’s false account of events (in the above cited biography written by D. Avendaño & M. Palma are some chracterizations of me attributed to those anonimous sources). In this fashion, even well minded young journalists, as the authors of "El Rebelde de la Burguesía", did become subjects of deception from the part of “witness testimonies” - and wich remain anonimous “witnesses”- referring to some existential aspects of Miguel Enriquez life and that ones of his friends, me included.

I have to acknowledge though, that one of the authors of ”El Rebelde de la Burguesía" contacted me per mail - for an interview - in 1999 while I was in living Norway. At that time it was impossible for me to participate or even to reply, partly due to private reasons, partly because I was then totally focused in the judicial suite I had opened against Pinochet at Scandinavian courts. This resulted in that not a single reference among the several the authors wrote on me (including as a person) in Miguel Enríquez biography was ever corroborated or commented by me. Unfortunately the consequence was that not all the information in their book resulted accurate, relevant, or according to the truth.

CONCLUSION

The price of Miguel's close friendship

It is not for me to speculate or evaluate my participation in the now historical events of the foundation of MIR and the political and military struggles ahead. When things happened then, it was not history.
For us it was just actual commitment to what we then regarded as the meaning of our lives. But facts are facts. As told by Daniel Avendaño & Mauricio Palma's book "EL Rebelde de la Burguesía" I was co-author with Miguel Enríquez and Marco Antonio Enríquez of the first Tesis Político-Militar, the base document approved at the MIR foundation congress. The authors could very well have added the following:
I am as well the author of the proposal denominating our organization as Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, MIR, and the designer of MIR's flag with the anarchist colours that prevailed in the foundation conference, becoming official and in use till now days (See details in A.L. Jarva "THE RED THE BLACK AND THE WHITE. Biographical documents on Marcello Ferrada-Noli", Part One, "The red & black anarchist colours and the origins in Chile of the name MIR" in the main page).

That was 1965. In 1969 I was imprisoned during the anti terrorist law passed by the Christian democratic government against MIR. My name was in the national list of 13 "prófugos de la justicia" - a sort of dead or live warrant- published in the national papers among in El Mercurio. In 1973, in the aftermath of the Military Coup which ended with Allemande's government, I was held prisoner at the Stadium in Concepcion after the struggles in Concepcion and thereafter at the Concentration Camp at the Navy base in Quiriquina Island. From 1975 I was forced to leave in exile in Europe after an ostracizing decree of the Military Government in Concepcion.

With all above regarding my personal and for me dear friendship with Miguel Enríquez, I want to make very clear that I have no intention whatsoever of claiming a site in the history of MIR beyond my very modest participation. I never was a national MIR leader or never assumed responsibilities other than at the fighting in Concepción and at the University, "la cuna del MIR". I have nevertheless endured several times fire fighting, seven times arresting or imprisonment, torture, and twice exile. I have never succumbed, nor ever given away a single bit of the integrity belonging to the organization or my dear combatant peers, friends or anonymous. All that for an altruistic cause I believed in as much as many others. At the same time I never was a "professional" militant, never lived on the Party. Yet, as facts tells, I was humbled devoted to the activities Miguel and the CP asked me eventually then to accomplish. I have paid my own full prize for it, such as being obliged to live in exile the most years of my life.

In my so called academic career - the survival in exile- I have consequently and always favour solely the scientific research that would enlighten the situation of the poor and the oppressed. I have always understood those academic achievements as just one more tool in the struggle for the same altruistic interest we had as the young ideological anarchists we were, the friends of Miguel Enríquez.

For all that, one thing is that I do not expect a medal, but a completely a different thing that I am ready to accept offensive and intentional equivocal in the referring of my name within certain "biographies" which very little have to do with historical facts.

One of my sons said, referring to the close friendship Miguel distinguished me with:
From those who truly knew Miguel Enríquez you can always expect the share of their sympathy
but you can not expect the same from those who never could have come closer.

My PhD thesis at The Karolinska Institute - Sweden
Also dedicated to my friend Miguel Enríquez
1996

Our tribute and Homage to the Chilean Revolutionary - Miguel Enriquez

On the 5th October 1974, Miguel Enriquez Espinosa, general secretary of
the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) was killed in combat. His
short but active life of 30 years showed him to be a true leader.
"Miguel Enriquez had not given all that he was capable of. If he is
regarded by what he was, his revolutionary status is high. If he is
regarded by what he could have been, it must be emphasized that he had
in him the potential to be head of the revolution." This was stated by
Armando Hart Davalos, member of the politburo of the Cuban Communist
Party, in the memorial act, which was given in honor of Miguel Enriquez
in La Havana.

"The struggle will be long and difficult.
It is just now beginning.
We have received some blows.
We have overcome them more blows will came
We know that in this struggle
We may lose our lives, but we will continue until the final victory".
Miguel on September 10, 1974, written a few weeks before his death

More than anyone, Miguel Enriquez personifies the generation in Chile
that rebelled against traditional politics and took on the revolutionary
struggle with radical passion. Everyone, however outstanding their
personality, expresses and epoch. It is not possible to evaluate
Miguel's thought and action without understanding the deep national
crisis that jolted our country during those years: Its historical roots,
its incubation under the Christian Democratic government, its
polarization during Salvador Allende's government, and its outcome in
the brutal military dictatorship against which Miguel fell in combat.

The biography of Miguel Enriquez must inevitably be the history of the
MIR, which he founded and led, as well as a reliable account of the
revolutionary movement as a whole, whose main protagonists are the poor
of the city and the countryside, and students and intellectuals firmly
committed to the popular demands.

The story must also include Miguel's comrades: the charismatic Luciano
Cruz; Bautista van Showen, studious and reflective; the severe Edgardo
Enriquez; the loyal shanty-towns organizer, Alejandro Villalobos; Paine,
the pugnacious militant who led the Mapuche to recover their land; "El
Coo" Villabela, who tirelessly armed the people; Svante Grande, the
generous internationalist who made our homeland's cause his own; and
many other men and women who dedicated, and sometimes lost, their own
lives to open the way to the hope of those excluded from power .

Without examining his family roots, his youth, and his everyday life,
the revolutionary cannot be portrayed or understood. His father, Don
Edgardo, was a paradigm of the righteous and enlightened man. The
southern city of Concepcin, historic frontier of the rebellions of the
Mapuche, the regionalists, and the workers awakened the young Manuel's
concern for social justice. And the influence of his elder brother,
Marco Antonio, introduced him to the world of the revolutionary ideas.

Miguel was devoted to revolution because he loved life. His political
personality had profound effects on ordinary people. His quick
intelligence made him stand out as a medical student and an incisive
political thinker. His attractive friendliness, his audacity, and his
personal confidence readily evidenced his capacity for leadership.

His death is nothing more than the continuation of his life. He died
fighting, just as he had fought every day for the advancement of the
revolutionary struggle. He took on all the risks that accompanied his
work knowing full well that should he die the movement and the people
would know how to continue the struggle. This is the heroic example and
the generous lesson the Miguel Enriquez has left us.

1999, 25 years after his death, the struggle continues, and his though
are presents in everyday of our struggle for a better and more just
society.

In Chile are preparing a massive tribute to Miguel Enriquez and his
legacy on October the 8th, day of Che Guevara, so if you like to be
present in this popular event in Chile you can send your greetings
through this e-mail thank you very much

The Struggles Continues!
Only the Struggle will make us free!

Foreign Support Collective
MIR-Chile
5 October 1999
http://members.tripod.com/~chilemir

The old and the new:
Latin American cinema at the
(last?) Pesaro Festival

by Julianne Burton

from Jump Cut, no. 9, 1975, pp. 33-35
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1975, 2004

When Lino Micciché, in his low-keyed opening remarks at the first evening film session, announced that this the 11th Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema might well be the last, there was hardly a stir from the auditorium filled to capacity with visiting journalists and local public. As the major forum for both feature and documentary films of an experimental and invariably political nature, and as an alternative to the “First-world,” established cinema of Hollywood and Western Europe, the Pesaro festival has played a major role since its inception in 1964. Its support for alternative film movements—bringing films and filmmakers together in a format which substitutes roundtable discussion for juries and competition, while still providing broad international exposure—has made a significant contribution to the survival of those movements. Films from Eastern Europe, Japan, Africa and the Arab countries have been consistently featured, but perhaps it is the Latin American filmmakers and their movements followers who have been the greatest beneficiaries of the Mostra.

Though early independent activities in Brazil and Argentina pre-date the festival’s founding, for the most part the lifespan of the militant New Latin American Cinema movement coincides with that of the Mostra. Virtually all the key films—several of which are still not available in the United States (1)—had their first screening in that Italian seacoast town: Argentina’s HOUR OF THE FURNACES*, Bolivia’s BLOOD OF THE CONDOR* and THE COURAGE OF THE PEOPLE*, the films produced in socialist Chile and in the heyday of Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement, and Cuban masterpieces such as MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT*, LUCIA*, and DAYS OF WATER. Who can predict the impact that the possible closing of the Mostra—coming as it does at a time of reactionary ascendancy in so many Latin American countries—may have on the survival of the New Latin American Cinema?

From the festival director’s opening address, a subdued air, a sense of decline, characterized this traditionally controversial and often explosive festival. The audience remained an amorphous passive receptor throughout, failing to generate any real political exchange—either between the members of the audience themselves or, in those rare opportunities where the directors were present, between the audience and the filmmakers.

The Mostra was declared to be in a state of financial crisis of such dimensions as to jeopardize its survival. What was not stressed (because it was obvious?) was the political dimension of this economic bind. Pesaro is a communist-controlled Italian town in a Christian Democratic region, and the latter party is increasingly reluctant to legislate the funds formerly channeled into the festival. The most optimistic alternative, never fully elaborated, seems to be to relocate the festival on the opposite coast, at Livorno.

The new austerity had a direct impact on the social and consequently the political relations during the eight-day festival. In previous years, all invited guests—both filmmakers and journalists—were given free room and board at a central hotel. Casual encounters abounded in lobbies and elevators, and the dining room became the set for social interaction and lengthy political debate. Participants apparently had a sense of each other and—however temporary—a sense of themselves as a group, which was never generated this year. A second product of the new economic constraints was the absence of simultaneous translation into anything but Italian, and occasionally French. In the past, Spanish and English were available as well. Since this year’s films, with very few exceptions, were in Portuguese and Spanish, aural comprehension was difficult for many viewers. Lack of simultaneous translation also seemed to restrain discussion after specific presentations.

The political content of the festival itself, apart from what was manifest or to be construed on an individual basis from the specific films, was generally reduced to the formal reading of declarations—against the fascist policies of the Chilean junta and specifically the incarceration of several film people, for example, or against the current state of siege in Argentina and the government’s mounting repression against all cultural workers on the left, especially those involved in filmmaking. Outside the theater, the political presence was considerably greater, as more and more Italian left groups set up displays of newspapers, literature, posters and records. One group appropriated the central arcade for a series of bulletin boards which graphically detailed the plight of Latin American workers and peasants under the current repressive regimes.

Some of the more seasoned and cynical journalists at the festival speculated that even the film selection was dictated by economic necessity. Specifically, they indicated that the two simultaneous program cycles offered—a retrospective of Brazilian Cinema Novo and of Italian filmmaking under fascism—were determined in large part on the basis of the modest financial outlay they required. The Chilean exile production of the past year, the new Cuban and Argentine output, and the less numerous films from other Latin American countries were interspersed among thirty-five from a movement which—as the films themselves demonstrated—has now come full circle. It has moved from banality through genius to the current powerlessness in the face of governmental suppression.

But the programming ran the risk of mistakenly attributing the past-glories-reduced-to-naught syndrome to all of Latin American cinema. First world critics have a fascination with the Brazilian Cinema Novo. In both Europe and the U.S., the amount of critical material available on the Brazilian film cycle rivals that can be found on all other Latin American national film movements combined). But now it must be recognized that one approaches Cinema Novo today as an essentially historical phenomenon. Despite counterrevolutionary coups, political repression, exile, and increased difficulties in both production and distribution, the same cannot and should not be said (yet) for filmmaking in Argentina, Bolivia, or even Chile, and certainly not for Cuba nor, for that matter, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela, where film production is on the rise.

CINEMA NOVO REVISITED

While underlining the historical nature of current interest in the Cinema Novo, I don't mean to undercut the importance of that interest. The Pesaro retrospective offered a unique opportunity to see the entire spectrum of Cinema Novo production, ranging from the late fifties to recent efforts to resuscitate a defunct movement. The work of Cinema Novo’s major directors—Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Ruy Guerra, Leon Hirszman, Carlos Diegues, Glauber Roche—was shown in its virtual entirety. Unfortunately, random ordering of films and the absence of an introduction or discussion which would set the idiosyncratic Brazilian film product in a context intelligible to non-specialists somewhat reduced the possibility of appreciating the movement in its full significance.

Because Pereira dos Santos’ first feature, RIO, QUARENTA GRAUS (RIO, FORTY DEGREES, 1955), was inexplicably absent, the survey of his work began with the second and last of his unfinished trilogy in Rio de Janeiro, RIO, ZONA NORTE (RIO, NORTH ZONE, 1957). Despite expectations generated by his masterpiece VIDAS SECAS* (BARREN LIVES, 1963, McGraw-Hill Contemporary Films), nothing in his subsequent and (for a third world filmmaker) prolific output measured up to that unrelenting portrayal of the vicious circle of survival for a migrant family in Brazil’s barren northeast. Among his recent films characterized by obscure politics and indiscriminate violence and populated by mod and post-adolescents with mystical trappings (FOME DE AMOR—HUNGER FOR LOVE, 1968; QUEM E BETA?—WHO IS BETA?, 1973), only COME ERA GOSTOSO O MEU FRANCES* (HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE FRENCHMAN, 1970, New Yorker) stands out as non-derivative. The film is a serious reconstruction of Brazil’s Tupinamba Indians in the 16 th century and succeeds remarkably well in shedding the European heritage of cultural ethnocentricity as it portrays, in measured style and dazzling setting, one Frenchman’s assimilation to “paradise” and his eventual sacrifice according to plan (no hard feelings, n'est-ce pas?).

Ruy Guerra has the flashiest of the generally flamboyant Brazilian cinematography. His early OS CAFAJESTES (THE DELINQUENTS, 1962), an Antonioniesque study of alienation, debasement and petty anti-social rebellion on Zabriskie-like beaches, boasts a magnificent ten-minute circular pan which, ranging from long shot to close up, gradually closes in on its naked target. The alienation of OS DEUSES E OS MORTOS* (THE GODS AND THE DEAD, 1970) is of a different sort, deserting Antonioni for Godard. This is quintessential Cinema Novo (decadent period) in its allegorical bent, its hyperbolic and interminable bloodshed, and its political obscurantism where symbol masquerades as analysis. Mysteriously, OS FUZIS* (THE GUNS, 1963), reputed to be Guerra’s best, was not screened at the Mostra.

Leon Hirszman’s films pursue the subtle and the psychological searching for the contradictions of character. A FALECIDA (THE DECEASED WOMAN, 1965) wills her own death in anticipation of her opulent funeral. Her husband, following her instructions, discovers her rich and corrupt former lover and uncovers a passionate and abandoned side of the woman who, with him, had always been neurotic, repressed and obsessive. SAO BERNARDO (1971) traces the rise of a self-made fazendeiro as he conquers Sao Bernardo, the ranch (fazenda) of his dreams, and a refined wife to go with it. This is a tale of self realization in a double sense. In the process of achieving his material goals, the protagonist is confronted with his own egotism, suspicion and exploitiveness —the same traits which drive his wife to suicide.

The films of Carlos Diegues constitute a kind of capsule thematic recapitulation of Cinema Novo. GANGA ZUMBA* (1964), like many early Cinema Novo works, finds its inspiration in a regionalist novel of the sugar-bearing northeastern coast. With its predominantly black cast, the film attempts to present the slaves’ view of life on the plantation and the liberating alternative of Palmares, the most famous and enduring of the runaway slave communities. Diegues’ rendering remains an essentially liberal, idealized one. The film prefers to focus on oppression and the process of escape rather than on the complexities of autonomous social organization and constant guerrilla warfare implicit in any first-hand view of the rebel society. In the film’s context, rather than the historical actuality it was, Palmares becomes a folk myth. A GRANDE CIUDADS* (THE BIG CITY, 1966) represents the next step of the Cinema Novo’s geographic-thematic progression. It is the over-sentimentalized story of a young woman who migrates from the Northeast to Rio in search of her boyfriend. He, of course, has turned into a criminal who wants to reform. Its clearly too late and their love for one another can only lead to a tragic end, etc., etc..

With OS HEREDEIROS* (THE INHERITORS, 1969), Diegues, like his fellow directors of the same period, moves from the sentimentalized depiction of class-linked oppression to an attempted analysis of the class responsible for it, their own. They depicted the Brazilian haute-bourgeoisie whom the 1964 coup and subsequent decades of miraculous economic growth under the wing of the U.S. imperial eagle have so directly benefited. Rocha in TERRA EM TRANSE* (LAND IN ANGUISH, 1967) and Gustavo Dahl in O BRAVO GUERREIRO* (THE BRAVE WARRIOR, 1968) undertake a similar analysis. Diegues’ film is the broadest in scope, encompassing the realms of r1e young urban liberal, the traditional landed gentry, and the major national power-brokers who control government and the media, and ranging in time from the 1930s to the mid-sixties.

Diegues’ most recent film, QUANDO O CARNAVAL CHEGAR (WHEN CARNIVAL COMES, 1974), is a self-conscious throwback to pre-Cinema Novo banality. Ostensibly a spoof on the chanchada (a kind of superficial musical comedy), this film is more chanchada than spoof. Despite the unceasing schemes of their zany agent, this band of itinerant musicians—which includes Chico Buarque de Holanda, the most famous of the young Brazilian singers—never consents to perform for “the king.” Cinema Novo is here reduced to an entertainment film, free of a subversive self-critical dimension on either the verbal or the visual level. Social protest is reduced to passive resistance.

Glauber Rocha, most internationally renowned of the Cinema Novo filmmakers, and the only one to go into permanent political exile, put in a brief appearance at the festival but disappeared before his rumored press conference. The practice of excluding films made outside Brazil or not completely Brazilian in theme prevented the showing of his more recent works (DER LEONE HAPT SEPT CABEZAS*—THE LION HAS SEVEN HEADS, 1970; CABEZAS CORTADAS—SEVERED HEADS, 1971; and TATU BOLA, 1972). The major films of the pre-exile period were all shown at the festival, though many were relegated to the second program cycle, presumably because of the generous exposure they have received in the past. These include the early collaboration on BARRAVENTO* (1962), saga of love, superstition and political awakening in a black fishing village; TERRA EM TRANSE* (LAND IN ANGUISH. 1967); and the famous DEUS E O DIABLO NA TERRA DO SOL* (BLACK GOD, WHITE DEVIL, 1963, Hurlock Cine World) and O DRAGAO DA MALADE CONTRA O SANTO GUERREIRO* (ANTONIO DAS MORTES, 1968, Hurlock Cine World).

HISTORIA DO BRASIL, Rocha’s most recent film, which has been three years in the making, received a mixed response. Faced with the same problem as the exiled Chileans, the inaccessibility of original footage, Rocha and his collaborator Marcos Medeiros raid the film archives and produce a pastiche of “highlights” from the Cinema Novo, sprinkled with Cuban newsreel footage, excerpts from Hollywood heart-warmers, and other assorted borrowings. Five centuries of Brazilian history are ‘covered’ in some two hours—the last century virtually on a year-by-year basis.

Such breadth of scope precludes any depth of analysis. A traditional and elitist historical concept predominates which defines history as the enumeration of events in the lives of rich and powerful men. Two women are cited in the course of the film, though their particular significance is never made clear. There is no attempt to provide an in-depth analysis, to ferret out the larger historical currents, to give a sense of dialectical process. The more generous-minded viewers perceived a potential dialectic—or at least a self-conscious artistic intention—in the persistent disjunction between visual image and narration. But pointing to an absence of artistic and intellectual control are the indiscriminate randomness of much of the material, sloppiness of assembly (split still photographs improperly lined up, at least one image photographed backwards), and total lack of restraint. (Why include the entire credits of SAO PAULO SOCIEDADE ANONIMA—SAO PAULO, INC.—without tying it in any way to the rest of the film?) Cinematically pedestrian, the film failed to make creative use of image or sound (music was kept to a minimum) and failed to mold diverse and autonomous elements into a unified whole.

The film was not lacking in unconscious irony, however. The following headline was shown, accompanied a still of a well-known Brazilian novelist: “During his entire life, Jose Lins do Rego fought against the assertion that his work lacked inventiveness and was only a collection of photographs.” If the names were changed, this might stand as an epigram for Medeiros’ and Rocha’s film. In the context of a festival dedicated to a retrospective of Ciema Novo, in this poorly assembled filmic scrapbook, the movement becomes at best a sort of guessing game for initiates. (Who can identify the source of the footage first?) For those not in a playful mood, it is a tedious experience, more mystifying than demystifying, and saddening above all.

One of the most original and memorable new films screened at the festival was also Brazilian. However—perhaps in large part due to the collaboation of Wolf Gauer and Stopfilm—it revealed no debts to Cinema Novo. Jorge Bodanzky’s IRACEMA, described as an “interpretative” or “fictional” documentary. In it, a small cast of non-professional actors (with one exception) improvise the action against a background of real people in real situations, filmed in direct cinema style. Iracema, a 15-year-old Amazonian of pure indian blood, deserts her family’s boat and subsistence existence for the glittering baubles of Belem on festival day. She is picked up by Tiao Brasil Grande, who takes her with him on a run to haul virgin timber from the interior. He promises her broad horizons—Rio, Sao Paulo—but on the return trip he dumps her at a raunchy all-night bar. Faced with the chance to make an “honest living,” Iracema prefers “wandering around” to the backbreaking and blinding option of embroidering twelve hours a day. She is taken advantage of, deceived, abused. Her most violent abduction, significantly, is at the hands of a group of soldiers. The film refrains from voyeurism and titillation by focusing on the prelude and the results rather than on the actual experience of her degradation. Interconnected sequences of stripping and burning entire forests, of highway construction, of selling indentured workers wholesale, put Iracema’s (an anagram of “America”) experience in a larger perspective without belaboring the point.

As the film ends, Tiao Brasil Grande runs into Iracema once again. He fails to recognize her, poorly dressed now, missing a tooth, and in the company of derelict and drunken prostitutes. He rejects her approach and then refuses her request for five cruzeiros. In the last shot his new red truck vanishes down the dirt road, leaving Iracema behind, broke and stranded, “Filho de puta” (son of a whore) she yells after him, her only revenge a self-deprecating insult.

The parallels between the colony-metropolis relationship and that of the dominant male-dependent female are well taken. Tiao moves on once Iracema has been “exhausted,” just as the neo-colonialists freely abandon exploited territory for the virgin region further on Tiao is always in the driver’s seat. He calls the shots and Iracema goes along for the ride, convinced that she is finally going somewhere when in fact she is only being “taken” to her own destruction.

OTHER LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES

CHILE

Last year, on the first anniversary of the fascist coup d'etat, the Pesaro festival featured the films of the two major Chilean directors, Miguel Littin (THE JACKAL OF NAHUELTORO*, COMPAÑERO PRESIDENTE*, THE PROMISED LAND*) and Raul Ruiz (THREE SAD TIGERS, QUE HACER?*—with the U.S. director Saul Landau, NO ONE SAID A THING, etc.). This year there was a continuing emphasis on Chilean cinema and an opportunity to seriously consider the options and prospects of an exiled film movement.

The Chilean film movement, which developed under the Popular Unity government, lives on in Sweden, East and-West Germany, France, Cuba. As Alvaro Ramirez, one of the Chilean filmmakers present at the festival, asserted, there is no filmmaking in Pinochet’s Chile. The junta did commission one film, LOS MIL DIAS (THE THOUSAND DAYS), to give their revised version of Chile’s three years under socialism. But they were forced to ban their own film because no amount of narrative obfuscation could obscure the truth of the documentary images.

Of the eight films by Chileans and/or on Chile, five used pre-coup footage or material shot at the time of the coup and subsequently smuggled out. Two (Sergio Castilla’s QUISIERA TENER UN HIJO—I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A CHILD, and Beatriz Gonzalez’ DULCE PATRIA—SWEET HOMELAND) used childrens’ drawings as one imaginative solution to the lack of new material. Only one film, by the intrepid East German film journalists Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann, was shot in fascist Chile. The same abandoned northern mines whose militant labor history drew the filmmakers to them in the summer of 1973, before the coup of September 11th, were repopulated when they returned in 1974. No longer commercially viable, their desolate location and derelict buildings now provide the junta with made-to-order concentration camps. By a combination of ingenuity (the filmmakers’) and incompetence (the military officals’), which the film explains in detail, Heynowski and Scheumann gained unrestricted access to two major concentration camps, Chacabuco and Pisagua, including the one privilege which Pinochet’s attaché had expressly forbidden: the opportunity to photograph and interview detainees. According to the filmmakers’ own account:

“The people being interviewed knew nothing of who it was asking them questions. All photography was under military escort. The voices and the facial expressions are eloquent enough testimony to the meaning of fascism at every instant, when arbitrariness, insecurity, terror, isolation and imprisonment reign. We constantly had the impression that we were witnesses to a tenacious solidarity whose mission is to survive and to cling to life for the sake of a future which will be.”

The resulting film, ICH WAR, ICH BIN, ICR WERDE SEIN (I WAS, I AM, I WILL BE), juxtaposes this testimonial footage of silent struggle to reminiscences of the miners who slaved and fought a different but interconnected struggle on the same site. The filmmakers interview Pinochet and Gonzalez Videla (the anti-communist dictator of the forties who drove Neruda underground and into exile), the military officer in charge of Chacabuco and the one in charge of the temporary camp for detainees in the National Stadium. Though not yet available in the United States, the film has been shown in thirty-five countries to date. This past September, on the second anniversary of the coup, it was televised via Eurovision to millions of Europeans.

CON LOS PUÑOS FRENTE AL CAÑON (FISTS AGAINST THE CANONS), produced in West Berlin by the Grupo Lautauro, is a polished and brilliantly documented historical reconstruction of the rise of the Chilean workers’ movement. Begun in the euphoria of the UP victory, the film originally intended to trace Chilean proletarian militancy from its origins through its peak and subsequent suppression by a bourgeois counterrevolution in the 30s and 40s to its final victory in the 1970s. Before the film could be completed, however, a second and much bloodier counterrevolution was unleashed. The film became instead a meditation on history’s “nightmarish repetitions.”

Alvaro Ramirez’ LA HISTORIA ES NUESTRA Y LA HACEN LOS PUEBLOS (HISTORY IS OURS AND IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT), conceived as an exploration of the problem of food shortages and the black market, was in the final editing stages when the coup occurred. The footage was smuggled out of Chile and reedited in East Berlin to include a broader thematic construct of the continuing clandestine struggle and the inevitable victory over the forces of repression, as the title—from a speech by Salvador Allende—suggests.

Continuing ties established during the Allende years, two Chilean films have recently been completed in Cuba. Patricia Castilla’s film NOMBRE DE GUERRA: MIGUEL ENRIQUEZ (NOM DE GUERRE: MIGUEL ENRIQUEZ) is a short film-tribute, with a stylistic debt to the Cuban documentarist Santiago Alvarez, to the life and political career of a founder and leader of the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left).

LA BATALLA DE CHILE: LA LUCHA DE UN PUEBLO SIN ARMAS (THE BATTLE OF CHILE: THE STRUGGLE OF A PEOPLE WITHOUT ARMS) is a projected four-and-a-half hour documentary in three parts: Part I, LA INSURRECCION DE LA BURGUESIA (THE INSURRECTION OF THE BOURGEOISIE) was shown at Pesaro and several other recent European festivals; Part II, EL GOLPE DE ESTADO (THE COUP D'ETAT) has just been completed but is not yet in distribution; and Part III, LOS PODERES DEL PUEBLO (THE POWERS OF THE PEOPLE), now in production, will deal with the popular resistance.

The list of those who collaborated on the film is impressive. The Equipo Tercer Año consists of six filmmakers who worked together throughout the UP period under the direction of Patricio Guzman. Pedro Chaskel, head of UCAL (Latin American Union of Film Societies), is credited with the editing, and Jorge Muller, abducted and held as an “unacknowledged prisoner” by the secret police since November 29, 1974,(2) was director of photography on this as well as many other award-winning Chilean films. Militant French filmmaker Chris Marker helped get the footage out of Chile and collaborated in its final shaping. Marta Harnecker, former editor of the magazine Chile Hoy and co-author of the famous Cuadernos de Educacion Popular (popular pamphlets offering a Marxist social analysis), and Cuban filmmaker and film theorist Julio Garcia Espinosa served as special advisors.

The most effectively analytical of all the Chilean documentaries at the Mostra, this film divides the “bourgeois insurrection” into five parts: commodity shortages, black markets and popular antidotes; Parliamentary maneuvers; student politics; strikes by managerial unions; and the strike of the El Teniente copper miners. As the film opens, a mosaic of brusque mini-interviews on the occasion of the interim national elections of March 1973 conveys the level of frenetic political passion on both left and right. The final footage, shot during the first (unsuccessful) coup attempt on the 29th of June, is overpowering in its abrupt finality. As history, as first-hand testimony, and above all as cogent analysis, this film is an impressive achievement which deserves the widest exposure.

ARGENTINA

Argentina was represented at the Mostra by five films: two black and white documentaries and three feature films, in color, which rival first world productions in visual style and level of technical competence. The most visually striking of the three was, in fact, a directorial debut. Bebe Kamin, a young engineer with a psychological bent, active in film societies and related activities for the past nine years, calls EL BUHO ( THE OWL) an “apprentice film” because of the range of its techniques. A fiction film of often understated dramatic intensity, it also contains surrealistic fantasy sequences, documentary reconstructions, an animated section, and a comic spoof on the production of a telenovela (soap opera). It is the most sensitive portrayal I have seen of female experience by a male director—of the alienation of work and personal life, the resulting detachment, inner-directed eroticism and vindicatory fantasies of a young factory worker. Psychological rather than fully political, the film seems to drift off into an abstract, existential stance which the director himself acknowledges as potentially escapist in the contemporary Argentine context. The film is politically constructive, however, to the extent that it persistently lays bare the disjunction between personal experience and the “official” version of reality, de-constructing the alienating effect of modern mass communication. Raymundo Gleyzer’s beautifully fluid camera, the masterful editing and sound work, and the accuracy and openness with which the director assesses the merits and shortcomings of his own film make Bebe Kamin a director to watch.

Ricardo Wulicher’s QUEBRACHO (1974) is more ambitious in scope and more explicitly political in theme. Like the Cuban film LUCIA*, QUEBRACHO consists of three autonomous fictional segments which portray a specific historical and economic process at three different moments. During the major part of this century an essential element in the leather tanning process was extracted from the quebracho tree, indigenous to Argentina. Wulicher uses this industry as a paradigm of neo-colonialist operations, exposing the alternatively reinforcing growth of militancy on the part of the workers and the escalation of repressive tactics on the rest of the industrialists. In the end the neo-colonialists see fit to use their ultimate weapon. They shut down the factories and move on to the African mimosa groves which they themselves, with great foresight, had planted sixty years earlier.

Lautauro Murda, one of the lead actors in QUEBRACHO, directed the third Argentine feature, LA RAULITO (1974). This measured and moving portrait of a social outcast is based on the real-life case of a woman whom the state continues to confine on grounds of insanity. La Raulito lives among the street urchins and passes herself off as male. (“It’s not that I want to be a man; I just don't want to be a woman.’) Unaided in any lasting way by either the ineffectual pity of the “liberal” doctor or the fatherly generosity of the middle-aged newspaper vendor who eventually begins making sexual advances, La Raulito is forced to hang out among the very young. Fiercely independent and determined, she escapes her captors time and time again. The film is a heart-warmer and a tear-jerker, and Marilina Ross gives a brilliant performance. In light of its lack of social analysis, the film does not seem sufficiently potent politically to explain why both director and star have received death threats from right-wing terrorist groups. (An attack on his home prevented Murda from attending the Pesaro festival.)

Despite periodic lapses into “liberalization” over the past decade, the level of repression of workers and militants has been consistently high in Argentina. Before Peron’s return several filmmakers—most notably Fernando Solanas and Octavia Getino, directors of LA HORA DE LOS HORNOS* (THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES, 1967)—had to work clandestinely. Currently, however, all cultural workers on the left are under serious threat of exile, imprisonment and death, as representatives from the Grupo Cine de la Base urgently stressed at the festival. The contrast between this collective’s first effort—LOS TRAIDORES* (THE TRAITORS, 1973), a color feature which traces the progressive corruption and final betrayal of a Peronist labor leader. Their recent black and white short, ME MATAN SI NO TRABAJO, Y SI TRABAJO ME MATAN* (THEY KILL ME IF I DON'T WORK AND IF I WORK THEY KILL ME), is eloquent testimony to the adverse conditions now facing Argentine filmmakers. Though also made clandestinely and distributed outside established circuits, THE TRAITORS brought an ambitious script and large cast together in a comparatively polished effort.

ME MATAN SI NO TRABAJO, on the other hand, lacks internal cohesion and is so “imperfect,” to use Julio Garcia Espinosa’s term, as to seem more a set of film notes than a finished product. It is the only film to be completed in Argentina since the promulgation of a new law which prescribes eight years in prison for anyone engaged in producing material which might foment “terrorism.” Thus this film is an extreme example of the contradiction—not to say the absurdity—of applying universal first world critical canons to film produced in and destined for such hostile environments. Like all Latin American cinema, this film especially must be viewed in the context of its mode of production and the circumstances surrounding and determining that process. In order to continue producing cinema under such threatening conditions, the Cine de la Base group developed what they call the Vietnamese system” of film production: endless ingenuity and constant reliance on the masses.

An audience who did not participate in the events recapitulated in this film is in a sense superfluous to it. Extremely taxing working conditions, combined with the sudden and premature deaths of two fellow workers, prompt a strike in a factory in the Matanza area of Buenos Aires. In cases where the factory physician had recommended aspirin and the therapy of getting back to work, independent physicians diagnosed severe lead poisoning affecting seventy-nine out of eighty-one workers examined. Only through the combination of all available tactics were the striking workers able to convince the company to meet their demands. Tactics included work stoppages, soup kitchens, Parliamentary channels, mass demonstrations, and the intervention of the ERP (Popular Revolutionary Army) guerrillas.

The final Argentine offering, added at the last minute, was as pointless, manipulative and offensively anti-popular as the Cine de la Base piece was urgent, direct, and committed to the popular struggle. To film CEREMONIAS (CEREMONIES), Carlos Cytrynowsky and his collaborators contracted a dozen down-and-out middle-aged men and women to spend a week living together in close quarters, allowing themselves to be filmed at any and all moments, in exchange for free room, board and liquor. Using a direct cinema technique, Wiseman-like in style with echoes of Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA and Cassavetes at his most impious, the camera closely tracks the action. It soon becomes apparent, however, that any action is artificially provoked by the camera itself and by the presence of bizarre “props” furnished by the filmmakers (huge stuffed teddy bears, straw hats which read “Los intocables”—the untouchables). The camera shows no pity; it is brutally and increasingly intrusive, focusing or people snoring, urinating, on a man powdering his genital area against lice, and turning an alternately shy and defiant woman into a bizarre odalisque of lovely, full breasts and aged, toothless grin. The sound (by Bebe Kamin, director of EL BUHO) is also artificial and distorting. Almost always nonsynchronous, it further dehumanizes the film’s “subjects” by eliminating their verbal responses to the ordeal they are undergoing. The level of intrusiveness, voyeurism and manipulation is such that the viewer begins desperately to hope that these specimens under microscopic lens will seize the camera and turn it on their tormentors. Unfortunately, they never do in this unredeeming and unredeemable, film.

THE CARIBBEAN

Finally, two Cuban features, a full-length Cuban documentary on Puerto Rico, and the first Haitian documentary—also feature-length—constitutes a major Caribbean contribution, which round out the Latin American offerings at the festival. Both Puerto Rican and the Haitian documentaries are of major political importance. The latter, directed by Arnold Antonin in collaboration with the 18th of May Organization, traces popular resistance from the indigenous Taino population of pre-Colombian times through the revolution against the French and up to the iron-fisted regimes of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, self-appointed “president for life,” and his succesor, Baby Doc, who is literally selling the blood of his people on the international market. The rough-edged and somewhat belabored aspects of this first film effort are offset by the urgency and import of its content.

PUERTO RICO*, by Fernando Perez and Jesus Diaz, is a compilation documentary based on archive material and borrowed footage from several other films on Puerto Rico currently in distribution. Conceived in support of the struggle for independence, the film focuses on the Puerto Rican situation from the fifties to the present. Rising consciousness of Puerto Rico’s neocolonial subordination to the economic interests of the United States makes such a film particularly timely. But the unevenness and dated or repetitive nature of some of the material limits the film’s potential political impact on the current situation. (3)

The two Cuban features were both original and provocative, as one has come to expect from this revolutionary film industry. EL OTRO FRANCISCO (THE OTHER FRANCISCO), based on a 19th century abolitionist novel, offers an entirely new approach to the process of cinematic adaptation of literary “classics.” Neither a “faithful adaptation” nor a “new interpretation” of the original, Sergio Giral’s film carries out a critical operation on its own literary inspiration, questioning the novel’s characterization, its psychological, sociological and historical accuracy, and its underlying political motivation. A dynamic tension is created between the artificial melodrama of the novelistic sequences and the brutal immediacy of a more realistic view of events. Francisco, the docile and refined house slave who is turned out to the fields in punishment for his love of a mulatto maid, passively accepts the sadistic abuse of his master and the slave captain until he is driven to suicide. Critical of this version of events, the film analyzes this passivity and abnegation as projections of Anselmo Suarez Romero, the genteel habanero who wrote the novel. Against Francisco’s resignation, the filmmakers juxtapose the rebel determination, which they view as a more accurate and more constructive response to the conditions of slavery.

DE CIERTA MANERA (IN A CERTAIN WAY) is an even more unusual film. The first Cuban feature made by a woman, it is also something of an anomaly because of its contemporary setting since most Cuban film projects seem to require the perspective provided by historical distance. Sara Gomez’ film focuses on the problems of sex and ethnic culture in a society which has tried to downplay the existence of both racism and sexism while working toward their elimination. It deals with the persistence of atavistic traditionalism in a society which has undergone fifteen years of revolutionary transformation; with the persistence of class differences in a soc