One hundred years have passed and documentary filmmakers in Latin America are mostly recognised for having captured with their cameras the political changes of the region in countries such as Cuba, El Salvador and Nicaragua; documenting the quest of social collectives from Chiapas to the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil; keeping alive a memory of the atrocities associated with the military regimes that have haunted the region –particularly Chile, Argentina and Uruguay– and exposing issues related with the unprivileged and the commonly relegated indigenous communities in countries such as Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico.
Very powerful films, crafted with great care and commitment, have inspired audiences well beyond the Latin American borders. Filmmakers such as Santiago Álvarez (Cuba, 1919), Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas (Argentina, 1936), Patricio Guzmán (Chile, 1941) represent a political conscience in Latin American cinema.
As years go by, technology becomes more accessible and the world globalises, the subjects and the approaches to documentary film in the region have become wider and more tuned with the global trends in contemporary filmmaking. However, if there is something very particular to Latin American documentaries it is the political engagement that prevails even now in times of trivialisation.
While political activism may be a trademark in Latin American documentary, there is also room for experimental films, personal tales, essays and social observation. Artists such as Cao Guimarães (Brazil, 1967) combine documentary filmmaking with visual art with very inspiring results and his work has been praised both at the Tate Modern and as the Venice Film Festival. The Mexican-American Lourdes Portillo (1944) is another example of a documentary filmmaker who embraces the crossing of boundaries and experimentation in the making of her politically oriented features.
The last decade was a very interesting one for non-fiction film in Latin America. The genre keeps expanding, and with it the enthusiasm for its results is growing. The following list cannot include as many titles as we would like to recommend and doesn’t pretend by any means to be a ranking. It is, however, a listing of amazing films produced in this new millennium that certainly deserve to be seen and remembered.
The Pinochet Case is a very intelligent film, almost a thriller, divided into three narrative episodes: the rise of Pinochet in power after the coup and the killing of Salvador Allende; the attempts of the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón to bring justice –until Pinochet arrives to Chile– and the return of the General to Santiago, where for the first time he faced charges in his own country, accused of 200 crimes committed during his authoritarian regime.
The Pinochet Case is sober and precise in the information that it discloses, never too emotional but always moving and unsettling.
When the victims of the dictatorship, mostly women, speak to camera, the film reaches its maximum intensity. Each testimonial becomes a sequence in its own right. They are set in a very cinematic space and filled with an inner rhythm where silence and pauses are almost as important as words. This is one of the most important films produced in Latin America: a truthful and engaged piece of art against oblivion.
Lourdes Portillo is one of the finest documentary filmmakers of her generation. She likes to experiment, to break the rules, to explore new paths in filmmaking, but always remains truthfully engaged to the important subjects that she addresses and that are very close to the Latin American communities, both inside and outside the United States, where she resides. Here she tells the story of these young women from a very personal point of view. She inserts herself in the narration and structures her film to reflect the unsolved mystery of the crimes, like a kind of detective who at the same time is a very poetic storyteller. Missing Young Woman is a fine documentary, full of delicate resources and metaphors, like the single shoes lying on the floor that reappear throughout the film. It is not just a movie about dreadful crimes, but about the very dark side of globalisation, where youthful and vulnerable girls as young as 12 or 13 years old are forced to work in a city with no infrastructure, no police, no streetlights and no protection.
This is the place where Paulo Sacramento decided to make his film, a powerful and devastating account of life under confinement. A couple of months before the prison’s implosion, the filmmaker trained a group of inmates in the basics of camera work, and together with his crew they produced many hours of footage, showing daily life in prison. The result is a highly personal self-portrait which exposes the internal rules of Carandiru: from entertainment to punishment; from trivial moments of fun to the dark images of weapons, drugs and death; from their hopes, dreams and family tales, to the unbearable anguish of living in the closest image of hell on earth. In the long tradition of prison films (from Hollywood super-productions to independent documentary films), this is one of the most intense portraits of life behind the bars.
The Immortal is the story of the Rivera twins, a pair of siblings who ended up fighting in opposite sides because of the incongruence of war and the lack of a defined ideology. When they try to confront the memory of the war, the deaths that they carry in their minds, the blame and the mutual hatred, they encounter a decaying social structure that still separates them.
The Immortal is an excellently crafted film, very sensuous and beautifully nourished by the tools of fiction narrative. Its characters speak for themselves and nourish their testimonials with touches of humour, mysticism and popular culture. This is a rounded documentary that, without being explicitly painful, constitutes a subtle and powerful reflection on the consequences of the armed conflict that shook Nicaragua.
As an adult, Moreira Salles decides to find Santiago and make a documentary about him. He frames him in elegant black and white camera shots and even if he asks many questions, he almost never stops to listen.
After years of work, the filmmaker realises his mistakes and leaves the material. He comes back to his reels more than a decade later, not to tell the story of his steward anymore, but to reflect on the interrupted creative process and to question himself about the fragility of a relationship that, even if it was intended to be the one of a filmmaker and his character, never stopped being the one of a spoiled child and his servant.
Carefully crafted in its style, Santiago is a fascinating film, a very powerful and beautiful reflection of the essence of documentary cinema. All possible universality may be found in the modest home of an individual. This is the best example of an intimate and discreet film that never neglects its social content yet captivates for its explosive poetry.
By tracing the artist’s path, the director Luis Ospina –one of the most important Colombian documentary filmmakers– gets as close as he can get to a real portrait of his own Colombia by redefining and re-imagining a crucial period of his country’s history: the civil war that began in 1948, the guerrilla fighting, the new drug culture of the 1970s and the following wave of violence and terror. Using the techniques of collage itself –picking a piece here, and a piece there, a testimony here and a discovery miles away– Ospina reconstructs (or constructs) the personal story of a wonderful outsider and tells a story of a generation of Colombians interweaved with art, politics, truth, lies, documentary and fiction.
Very powerful films, crafted with great care and commitment, have inspired audiences well beyond the Latin American borders. Filmmakers such as Santiago Álvarez (Cuba, 1919), Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas (Argentina, 1936), Patricio Guzmán (Chile, 1941) represent a political conscience in Latin American cinema.
As years go by, technology becomes more accessible and the world globalises, the subjects and the approaches to documentary film in the region have become wider and more tuned with the global trends in contemporary filmmaking. However, if there is something very particular to Latin American documentaries it is the political engagement that prevails even now in times of trivialisation.
While political activism may be a trademark in Latin American documentary, there is also room for experimental films, personal tales, essays and social observation. Artists such as Cao Guimarães (Brazil, 1967) combine documentary filmmaking with visual art with very inspiring results and his work has been praised both at the Tate Modern and as the Venice Film Festival. The Mexican-American Lourdes Portillo (1944) is another example of a documentary filmmaker who embraces the crossing of boundaries and experimentation in the making of her politically oriented features.
The last decade was a very interesting one for non-fiction film in Latin America. The genre keeps expanding, and with it the enthusiasm for its results is growing. The following list cannot include as many titles as we would like to recommend and doesn’t pretend by any means to be a ranking. It is, however, a listing of amazing films produced in this new millennium that certainly deserve to be seen and remembered.
El caso Pinochet, The Pinochet Case, Patricio Guzmán, Chile-France, 2001, 108’, Spanish
Internationally renowned Chilean director Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile, Obstinate Memory), narrates in The Pinochet Case the chronicle of the judicial process that General Augusto Pinochet faced in England, Spain and Chile, starting from his arrest in London in October 1998, during a leisure trip that comprised tea with Margaret Thatcher, an unexpected operation in a London clinic and the subsequent arrest by the London police. The General spent 503 days under house arrest outside London, until Tony Blair's government released him on grounds of ill health.The Pinochet Case is a very intelligent film, almost a thriller, divided into three narrative episodes: the rise of Pinochet in power after the coup and the killing of Salvador Allende; the attempts of the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón to bring justice –until Pinochet arrives to Chile– and the return of the General to Santiago, where for the first time he faced charges in his own country, accused of 200 crimes committed during his authoritarian regime.
The Pinochet Case is sober and precise in the information that it discloses, never too emotional but always moving and unsettling.
When the victims of the dictatorship, mostly women, speak to camera, the film reaches its maximum intensity. Each testimonial becomes a sequence in its own right. They are set in a very cinematic space and filled with an inner rhythm where silence and pauses are almost as important as words. This is one of the most important films produced in Latin America: a truthful and engaged piece of art against oblivion.
Señorita extraviada, Missing Young Woman, Lourdes Portillo, Mexico, 2001, 74’, Spanish
“In our countries, a young woman, poor, of dark complexion –because there is much racism in Latin America– is worthless”, says Mexican-American filmmaker Lourdes Portillo. Thousands of young women have disappeared or been murdered (after being kidnapped, tortured and raped) in the northern city of Juarez, most of them young immigrants from the interior of the country who moved to Ciudad Juarez to work in the maquila factories.Lourdes Portillo is one of the finest documentary filmmakers of her generation. She likes to experiment, to break the rules, to explore new paths in filmmaking, but always remains truthfully engaged to the important subjects that she addresses and that are very close to the Latin American communities, both inside and outside the United States, where she resides. Here she tells the story of these young women from a very personal point of view. She inserts herself in the narration and structures her film to reflect the unsolved mystery of the crimes, like a kind of detective who at the same time is a very poetic storyteller. Missing Young Woman is a fine documentary, full of delicate resources and metaphors, like the single shoes lying on the floor that reappear throughout the film. It is not just a movie about dreadful crimes, but about the very dark side of globalisation, where youthful and vulnerable girls as young as 12 or 13 years old are forced to work in a city with no infrastructure, no police, no streetlights and no protection.
O Prisioneiro da Grade da Ferro, The Prisoner of the Iron Bars, Paulo Sacramento, Brazil, 2004, 123’, Portuguese
Until 2002, when it was demolished, the Carandiru complex in São Paulo was the largest prison in Latin America. It hosted about 8,000 prisoners who were divided in nine pavilions spread into five floors. When it was opened in the early 50’s, Carandiru probably had the most modern installations, but as the years went by it became the best example of overcrowding and subhuman living conditions. Carandiru was the location of one of the biggest human rights violations ever to occur in a penitentiary, when a prisoner revolt triggered a massacre that ended the lives of 111 inmates, 102 of them killed by gunshots fired by the Military Police.This is the place where Paulo Sacramento decided to make his film, a powerful and devastating account of life under confinement. A couple of months before the prison’s implosion, the filmmaker trained a group of inmates in the basics of camera work, and together with his crew they produced many hours of footage, showing daily life in prison. The result is a highly personal self-portrait which exposes the internal rules of Carandiru: from entertainment to punishment; from trivial moments of fun to the dark images of weapons, drugs and death; from their hopes, dreams and family tales, to the unbearable anguish of living in the closest image of hell on earth. In the long tradition of prison films (from Hollywood super-productions to independent documentary films), this is one of the most intense portraits of life behind the bars.
El Inmortal, The Immortal, Mercedes Moncada Rodríguez, Mexico-Nicaragua-Spain, 2005, 63’, Spanish
Nicaragua, 1979. After decades of dictatorship and a legacy of more than 50,000 dead, the Sandinista National Liberation Front –FSLN– took power in an uprising that overthrew Anastasio Somoza. Six months later, the former guards of Somoza moved to the borders with Honduras and Costa Rica from where a new period of war against the Front started. This side –the contras– was financed by the US and later on supported by people unhappy with the policies of the FSLN.The Immortal is the story of the Rivera twins, a pair of siblings who ended up fighting in opposite sides because of the incongruence of war and the lack of a defined ideology. When they try to confront the memory of the war, the deaths that they carry in their minds, the blame and the mutual hatred, they encounter a decaying social structure that still separates them.
The Immortal is an excellently crafted film, very sensuous and beautifully nourished by the tools of fiction narrative. Its characters speak for themselves and nourish their testimonials with touches of humour, mysticism and popular culture. This is a rounded documentary that, without being explicitly painful, constitutes a subtle and powerful reflection on the consequences of the armed conflict that shook Nicaragua.
Santiago, João Moreira Salles, Brazil, 2007, 80’, Portuguese
When João Moreira Salles was a kid, his family had a butler. Santiago Badariotti was not a simple employee, and the Moreira Salles were not ordinary people. The highest Brazilian aristocracy was served by an Argentinian linguist, an inveterate copyist and a chronicler of extinct nobility.As an adult, Moreira Salles decides to find Santiago and make a documentary about him. He frames him in elegant black and white camera shots and even if he asks many questions, he almost never stops to listen.
After years of work, the filmmaker realises his mistakes and leaves the material. He comes back to his reels more than a decade later, not to tell the story of his steward anymore, but to reflect on the interrupted creative process and to question himself about the fragility of a relationship that, even if it was intended to be the one of a filmmaker and his character, never stopped being the one of a spoiled child and his servant.
Carefully crafted in its style, Santiago is a fascinating film, a very powerful and beautiful reflection of the essence of documentary cinema. All possible universality may be found in the modest home of an individual. This is the best example of an intimate and discreet film that never neglects its social content yet captivates for its explosive poetry.
Un tigre de papel, Paper Tiger, Luis Ospina, Colombia, 2007, 114’, Spanish
Allegedly, Pedro Manrique Figueroa was the pioneer of collage in Colombia. Whether he existed or not does not really matter. His works were fascinating, daring and iconoclast. This is why he left a mark in Colombian fine arts. But one day, back in 1981, he vanished in the most bizarre way.By tracing the artist’s path, the director Luis Ospina –one of the most important Colombian documentary filmmakers– gets as close as he can get to a real portrait of his own Colombia by redefining and re-imagining a crucial period of his country’s history: the civil war that began in 1948, the guerrilla fighting, the new drug culture of the 1970s and the following wave of violence and terror. Using the techniques of collage itself –picking a piece here, and a piece there, a testimony here and a discovery miles away– Ospina reconstructs (or constructs) the personal story of a wonderful outsider and tells a story of a generation of Colombians interweaved with art, politics, truth, lies, documentary and fiction.
Los herederos, The Inheritors, Eugenio Polgovsky, Mexico, 2008, 90’, Spanish
The Inheritors accompanies a group of working children in various regions of Mexico through their daily life: farmers, artisans, woodcutters, shepherds, weavers... They are responsible for securing their own bread and sometimes also the bread of their parents and young siblings. They have inherited the tools of their ancestors, but also the misery that looks like a spiral that never closes.
The Inheritors is an exemplary film that needs no tricks to deeply touch and shake the viewer. The image is close and very carefully executed (Polgovsky is the photographer of the film and he definitely has a very fine and sharp eye), the sound track is rich and colourful and the editing is built rhythmically and accurately on a solid structure.
There is nothing beautiful in child labour, this is clear, but there is much beauty in each of the children of The Inheritors, perhaps because the director decides to show them in moments of strength and not in distress. They take their work with a disquieting responsibility and handle their tools with surprising skill. Their childhoods have been kept from them but they live with a dignity that impresses.
The Inheritors is an exemplary film that needs no tricks to deeply touch and shake the viewer. The image is close and very carefully executed (Polgovsky is the photographer of the film and he definitely has a very fine and sharp eye), the sound track is rich and colourful and the editing is built rhythmically and accurately on a solid structure.
There is nothing beautiful in child labour, this is clear, but there is much beauty in each of the children of The Inheritors, perhaps because the director decides to show them in moments of strength and not in distress. They take their work with a disquieting responsibility and handle their tools with surprising skill. Their childhoods have been kept from them but they live with a dignity that impresses.
