Word: chiles
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tapes of that broadcast are included in both Avenue of the Americas and It's Raining in Santiago, and the filmmakers' choice is not surprising. A moving testimonial to Allende's faith in Chile and her people, the speech marks the end of an unforgettable episode--three years during which a peacefully-elected government implemented left-wing reforms, three years during which Chile struggled against the crippling American economic and political intervention that finally led to a brutally repressive junta...
Comparing these two films intelligently seems virtually impossible. Although both portray Chile under Allende's Popular Unity government and the eventual overthrow of that regime, Avenue of the Americas takes a documentary approach, focusing on the life of the Chileans in the years before the coup, and on American involvement in the coup. It's Raining in Santiago fictionalizes the coup itself, in the tradition of Costa Gavras' Z. Together, the two films recreate the tragedy of Allende's Chile. Although a majority of the workers and peasants supported his government and its reforms, although the country's productivity increased...
Walter Locke '71-4, who produced Avenue of the Americas, says he originally went to Chile in 1972 to see what was going on, to document the building of a socialist society. Produced by Locke, directed by Peruvian Jorge Reynes and written by Charles Horman '64 (one of two Americans killed during the 1973 coup), the film depicts those people who supported the U.P. coalition, recording their faith in Allende and his policies. When the truckers who formed the basis of Chile's infrastructure went on strike--supported by money from the CIA--these were the people who refused...
...explains, "It's a very emotional thing for us." A coal miner says, "Before it was terrible because the 'momios' [the rich, the big landowners] ran things and threw us out when they were angry. Now we are in good shape. We work for ourselves and so for Chile." Their words are not forced--they come from the heart...
Interspersed among these statements and scenes of life in Chile--a young boy herding cattle on the pampas, the copper mines, a country road--Avenue presents the framework in which the U.P. government operated. Without becoming overly technical, the film gives the basic facts of Chile's history and economy: a history of domination by an elite working closely with American capital, an economy based on the extraction of raw materials and exploitation of cheap labor. In 1969, two-thirds of the Chilean people lived on less than $2 a day; 600,000 children had brain damage from malnutrition...