Director: Patricio Guzmán (Chile). Year of Release: 2022
We start with black and white film from early 1970s Chile. In a voiceover, director Patricio Guzmán recounts his early films – documentaries like “The Battle of Chile” about the fall of the elected socialist president Salvador Allende and the seizure of power by General Pinochet, an actual fascist. Guzmán is now in his 80s, and has spent much of his life documenting the hope and despair surrounding 50 years’ history in his home country.
The period covered by this film started in 2019, when Chile’s neoliberal government announced an apparently small rise in ticket prices for public transport. But following a series of attacks, this was one price rise too many, and protests erupted, most notably in the capital city of Santiago. We see footage of young protestors storming the stations, jumping passenger barriers and driving the tooled up police out of the station. This scene ends with footage of burned out trains.
Guzmán got his big break when French film maker Chris Marker took some of his films to Europe. He recounts Marker telling him:”When you want to film a fire, you have to be where the first flame will appear.” Apologetically, he says that when the unexpected Chilean revolt started, he was living in exile, so he missed the original spark. Nonetheless, this is a film which refuses to show demonstrators from a distance but reports from the thick of the struggle.
The protests take to the streets, with the largest demonstration mobilising 1.2 million people. We see footage of young people breaking up slabs of concrete into a size suitable to throw at the police, who themselves are firing tear gas and water cannons. In contrast to the indistinguishable robocops, the demonstrators are joyous – singing, dancing and jumping up and down as they wait for the next salvo of police fire. And many of them are women.
Guzmán argues why so many women were involved, citing statistics saying that 73% of Chilean babies are born out of wedlock, and that 60% of the heads of household are female. All the people who he interviews are women, from a photographer who lost an eye while filming the protests to school students to paramedics and academics. One of the most impressive interviewees is Sibila Sotomayor, part of the 4-woman Las Tesis collective, who wrote the poem “A Rapist in Your Path.”
A Rapist in Your Path was recited on many demonstrations, often by blocks of women, It starts by refusing to accept the blame for sexual assaults, leading up to the slogan “The Rapist is You”, shouted while pointing at the men confronting the demos. The poem goes on to blame the police, the courts and the State for being the real rapists. It is a text which recognises not just gender inequalities, but also the class exploitation which makes this possible.
While the activists report police beatings, the academics make abstract pronouncements without really offering much analysis of what was happening or why. The film is either unwilling or unable to explain why the protests happened – Why here? Why now? Instead it prefers to glorify the spontaneousness of what it calls a “leaderless movement”. Similarly, it reports Pinochet’s surge to power as something which just happened, with no mention of the CIA or US imperialism.
There are some good reasons for this rejection of “politics”. There have been enough opportunists – in Chile and elsewhere – who have rushed to the head of powerful social movements, only to lead them into ignominious defeat. And yet the inability to even start to pose a political vision for taking the movement forward means that a film – and a movement – which starts by celebrating the power of the street slowly moves into government chambers.
As the film continues, its focus shifts from denouncing the state to trying to find reforms within that very institution. Much Is made of the attempt to change Chile’s constitution, and although some people say that it would only be the start, their ambition finds it hard to imagine much more. When asked what the absolutely worst outcome of the current struggle would be, one replies “thr right wing winning the referendum”.
This is, indeed, what happened, even though this is outside the remit of this film. We are not given any inkling on why 64% of Chileans might vote against the new constitution, but if you squint enough and look between the lines, you might see some reasons. The first hour of the film is full of street protests. The final 25 minutes in debating chambers, or of large crowds looking on passively at Boric’s election address. The people are once more the object, not subject, of history.
None of this is to suggest that you shouldn’t go to see this film, which is in equal parts inspiring and frustrating. One of the best reasons to see it is a user review on IMDB, which denounced it for “Pure communist revolutionary propaganda.” If that doesn’t make you want to go straight down to the cinema, you’re dead inside. But it’s a shame that few reviews have actually engaged with the film, showing either disgust or unquestioning adulation for the ideas on show.
I am deeply inspired by the courageous women we see on screen, but the refusal to discuss their strategy (or even their wilful rejection of the need for a strategy) does them a disservice. The protests in Chile in the last few years are truly inspiring, as is the footage of history being changed in front of our eyes. And yet the blind hope that the movement will win on its own and the abhorrence at debating strategy means that we cannot understand the victories or the defeats.
This is a shame, as this is a film which offers much, even if it is not able to deliver on all this promise. As St Just said, “„Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own tombs.“ Having said this, half a revolution is more exciting than normal documentary fare.
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