4 THE VOICE OF THE OTHER: BRAZILIAN DOCUMENTARY IN THE 1970S Jean-Claude Bernardet In the early seventies, institutionalized repression under Brazil's military regime was at its height. Filmmakers went into exile, ceased filming, or developed highly encoded, allegorical modes of representa- tion commonly referred to as their "tropicalist" phase. The end of the decade, when this chapter was written, saw the incipient loosening of repressive mechanisms, anticipating the transition in the early eigh- ties from dictatorship to democracy. Jean-Claude Bernardet suggests here that certain marginalized and often ephemeral documentary practices anticipated the challenge to established patriarchal hierarchies of power that was to mark po- litical discourse in the next decade. He is particularly concerned with documentaries that explicitly and implicitly critiqued dominant an- thropological, ethnographic, and sociological discourses. In these ex- perimental and contestational efforts, Bernardet perceives attempts to eschew information and explanation, break through the subject/ object dichotomy, embrace acts of mediation and intervention as the only genuinely representable phenomena for those outside the culture they strive to document, and calls for "an anthropology of ourselves" to replace a problematic if not futile fascination with an inaccessible Other. The films Bernardet discusses constitute a potential counter- canon of liminal cases in which concepts of film and auteur as unified, differentiated fields are superseded in favor of an emphasis on pro- cess over product, subject over object, active intervention over de- tached observation, multiple over univocal representations of reality, and shared rather than hierarchical dispositions of power. THIS TEXT is not a balance sheet of Brazilian documen- tary film in the 1970s. It attempts instead to point out some approaches that deviate from documentary production as a whole - certain points 87 Jean-Claude Bernardet of rupture that contemporary Brazilian documentary cannot afford to ignore. An Invisible Congadal The theme of Arthur Omar's Congo (1972), which is popu- lar culture or folklore, fits in perfectly with the short film production of the period. However, it approaches this theme with a markedly dif- ferent attitude: not a single image in the film refers to the theme an- nounced in the title. The film is composed of approximately 150 shots, of which 124 are intertitles (black letters on white background), as well as sketches, photographs, and pages from books. Only 24 shots are filmed live. None of these, however, portrays the congada. This is a paradoxical film because it does not present the viewer with what its title promises. It is a film of concealment - a "blank film" - in contrast to others that offer abundant images of these popular celebrations on the verge of disappearing. Congo stands as a break from such images. This deviation, never directly acknowledged in the film (it leaves it to the audience to figure out), consists of the radical affirmation of the im- possibility of representing, of reproducing on the screen, the congada phenomenon in general or any congada in particular. This problem is not addressed in any other films of the period which attempt instead to provide the audience with a last naive glance at these spectacles be- fore the curtain falls on them for good. (The only exception to these unproblematized folkloric representations that I know of is O pals de Sao Sarue [The Country of Saint Sarue, 1971] by Vladimir de Carvalho, in which a folk dance known as the Sea Horse is shown, with the clear acknowledgment that this is performed expressly for the film.) Omar gives us a general long shot of an immense rectangular plaza, formed by the buildings on some plantation estate. Empty. In the back- ground, three children play. Their images are very small, accentuating the emptiness of the space. It is a stage: the site of the spectacle that never takes place. Still shot of a black family dressed in everyday clothes in front of a ranch house - presumably the guardians of tradition. No information is given. I assume that they preserve the rituals of the congada be- queathed by their ancestors - rituals that perhaps they will not man- age to transmit further. But it is also possible that this shot simply has nothing to do with any of this. Closeup of a handsome young mestio (person of mixed Caucasian and African blood) in a straw hat looking at the camera. Silence. Empty space. There is a holding back. There is silence. There is a secret. A marked contrast to the loquacious images squandered by those 88 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s films that purport to preserve popular culture. This is a serious matter. This film denies even the recording function of the cinema: preserve reality, conserve the past sealed in a can; let the cinematic image fulfill its function in the elaboration of "national memory." Such precious themes. The historical archive - a business that keeps me bent over, thanks to a project for the Brazilian Film Archives. If Arthur Omar, in contrast, doesn't squander images, he does squander words. Torrents of written words. Books are the place for the written word, not the screen, because with a book, people can pace themselves, go back, compare, meditate on the contents. The number and frequency of the intertitles doesn't allow the audience to extract all their meanings, nor to establish the relationships between them and the fleeting images we glimpse in between. We are divers in a sea of words that take on a dramatic force of their own, beyond that which they literally signify. In a desert of images, we continue living our urban, university-oriented, bookish lives. Omar's words are our words as authors or readers of sociology, anthropology, folklore, and so forth. And it is through sociological or anthropological words pronounced in cities and in books that we come into contact with the forms of popu- lar, rural, and traditional cultures, rather than through actual, produc- tive personal experience. Even if we approach a bumba-meu-boi, 2 how- ever much we try to breathe in this cultural tradition by osmosis, our formation will still be based on urban paradigms and on books. Until we break away from this kind of cultural formation, we will be only empathetic spectators and never producers of an evolving bumba-meu- boi. But we would be able to produce more words - books like Danga Dramitica no Brasil (Dramatic Dance in Brazil) from which the film reproduces a passage by Mario de Andrade on the Atibaia congada. It is of this that Congo speaks, of the distance between our culture, our ways, our class, and what we call popular culture. This is a dis- tance that the concept of "national memory" negates in the name of national unity. Congo is a film not about popular culture, but about the relationship we have established with popular culture, since our only way of understanding it, because we will never be producers of it, is through the mediation of our print-based culture. By negating the idea of direct and magical contact with popular culture and by working with the issue of mediation, Congo brings forth the subject that, traditionally, documentary has tended to hide. While presenting itself as direct contact with the real, as the recorder of real- ity, traditional documentary disguises the subject who makes contact, who registers the real. The subject pretends that he does not exist. In reality, he does. And this subject, not so invisible after all, assumes an omniscient position. He knows everything about the reality he's 89 Jean-Claude Bernardet dealing with, and thus he turns the real object of his knowledge into the object of his film. By affirming the presence of the subject and working on the issue of mediation, Congo does not turn popular cul- ture into an object, but instead establishes relationships between two subjects from the point of view of the speaking subject. Here, then, emerges the radical impossibility - for the documentary filmmaker as well as for the audience -of a kind of representation that converts those it represents into objects, since any representation is always produced by the subject. Congo's images, words, and music order themselves like a net that constitutes a mediation between the subject and popular culture. I will not describe the entire film, only a few examples. The image track is composed of two separate series: one refers to the bourgeoisie and Catholicism, the other to the interior of the country. In the hall of a colonial building, a circular pan reveals medallions labeled "Industry," "Poetry," "Sculpture," "Painting," etc. They are the values of a certain bourgeois culture-a profile of its idea of knowledge and cultural ac- tivity. Cows, pigs, a shed, children: these are what the subject learns of the interior. The word mimesis flashes on the screen. Intertitles read: "Ancient epic-poems versus the modern hero" (a reference to Lukacs), "Historical romances - maritime, Moorish, chivalrous, and novelesque," "Kino Eye" "Dialectics of film + tactical targets." These are the sub- ject's cultural references, his epistemological instruments for ap- proaching the congada. Or maybe a photograph from Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's Os inconfidentes (The Conspirators, 1971). Here Congo explicitly addresses other films from its own cultural context. Do his- torical features represent history, sticking to it as documentaries stick to popular culture, or do they designate history as another subject? What about Os inconfidentes in particular? In its attempts to address popular culture, Congo locates itself in relationship to other cinematic discourses that belong to the same cultural context. Even the system of thought that apprehends the congada phenome- non and the relationship to it is made explicit: "Sudanese versus Ban- tus," "sailors versus Moors," "Queen Ginga versus Ana de Souza," "ab- solute power versus dissolution of ties," "1618 versus 1972." This form of thought, which pivots around binary opposition through association or contrast, structures almost half the intertitles in the film (for example, "thesis versus antithesis") and structures the relationships with popu- lar culture as well. Congo tells us that from where we stand now, we have no direct or productive contact with popular culture. All this stuff about record- ing, preserving, memorializing, archivally preserving popular culture simply does not exist. From where we stand, to speak of popular cul- 90 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s ture can only mean working with and from our position outside of it, making our mediation of popular culture the focus of our work. A Mythical Fish Congo radically negates a type of sociological cinema3 that claims to speak of the other as object, refusing to reduce the other to that which is spoken of. Rito e metamorfose das maes Nag6 (Rituals and Metamorphoses of the Nag6 Mothers,4 Juana Elbein dos Santos, 1979), also negates this type of sociological film, but differs from Congo because instead of working toward an externalized view, it attempts to construct its perspective from the inside. Rito e metamorfose ad- dresses the myth of the ancestral mother in the Nag6 imaginary (imagi- ndrio). It doesn't speak about ritual, however, nor does it speak of the Candomble community, its rituals and mythologies.5 The first two sequences, which are what is important here, directly express the myth. The discourse is from the inside out. The film doesn't tell us directly that there are people for whom birds and fish symbolize the ancestral mother. The filmic language itself recreates (reelabora) the myth. The bird images, pauses, freeze frames, and dissolves are them- selves the myth. The images do not refer to the myth; they are the myth cinematically rendered. There is, obviously, much to be done in this regard, since documentary work associated with the areas of sociology, anthropology, and ethnography is unprepared for this kind of approach; unprepared to cease being anything but sociological, anthropological, and ethnographic documentary. At one point in the second sequence, the film provokes an emotion in the viewer which is revealing, in my opinion, of the breaking away (rutura) from the "scientific" modes of discourse to which we are accus- tomed. The first sequence establishes the myth of the ancestral mother, as connected to the birds and their plumes, the fish and their scales. The second sequence shows women of Bahia doing everyday chores at the open-air market. A fisherwoman scales a fish in a manner familiar to those who frequent the outdoor markets. The scaled dead fish is an object that we can buy and eat. But over the fish-scaling shot we hear a poetic passage (already heard in the first sequence) that affirms the mythical status of the fish and of its scales. Suddenly this fish is in- vaded by another dimension that, in our ordinary relationship with it, escapes us. To exchange value and use value is also added myth and the imaginary. The reality of the fish cannot be approached from a single angle; its reality is multiple and irreducible. The break with the sociological that Juana dos Santos makes with relation to popular religions is not a solitary act. We find the same thing 91 Jean-Claude Bernardet in films by Geraldo Sarno and Nelson Pereira dos Santos. In the early 1960s, Nelson edited Glauber Rocha's Barravento, in which Candomble is viewed from a "religion-as-the-opiate-of-the-people" perspective, as a form of alienation that blocks the awakening of social consciousness and obstructs lucid and effective practice. In 1965, Sarno completed Viramundo, the classic Brazilian sociological documentary, which pre- sents abject poverty, social displacement, poor working conditions, humiliation, hunger, the impossibility of becoming master of one's own life, and the attraction for the northeastern contingent of the Sao Paulo working class of mystical practices and behaviors in which the faithful can compensate for social and emotional frustrations through a pro- cess of alienation.6 Films containing scenes of mystical outbursts that wash away feelings of frustration, oppression, humiliation, repressed aggression and impotence are frequent during this period - whether religion as we ordinarily understand the term in the films mentioned above as well as in Opinido pdiblica (Public Opinion, Arnaldo Jabor, 1966), or the "religion" of soccer in A falecida (The Deceased Woman, Leon Hirszman, 1965) and particularly Subterraneos do futebol (Soccer Underground, Maurice Capovilla, 1965). In the 1970s, this attitude does a 180-degree turnaround. There is a critique of the "superior intellectuals" who, from the exalted perspec- tive of their cameras, "scientifically" judge the behavior of the people, showing them their "errors" and steering them toward the correct path along which history is evolving. In a Super-8 documentary made in Recife,7 a filmmaker called Geneton assumes the role of the intellectual who addresses the cultural elite, negating absolutely the pseudo- scientific interpretations that originate from this sector, according to which soccer is a form of alienation that generates or derives from the passivity of the masses, or is simply a form of manipulation by the domi- nant class. He affirms that soccer is a pleasure and that pleasure is neither alienating nor incompatible with social consciousness and po- litical struggle. Though the film assumes an attitude toward soccer's social role that stands in opposition to that of the other films cited, it resembles them to the degree that it continues to make "the people" the object of its discourse. In doing this, it fails to alter the level of discourse, which continues to be a discourse "about" rather than "of" the people. With respect to religion, we see a similar about-face in the film Ia6, by Geraldo Sarno (1975) and O amuleto de Ogum (The Amulet of Ogum, 1975) by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Candomble and Umbanda become acceptable. Nelson asserts that the filmmaker's attitude toward these religious practices should be acritical, and the film is intentionally di- rected toward the umbandistas themselves who, Nelson continues, 92 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s should feel good about themselves and validated in their behavior when they leave the screening. This commitment to direct the film to the um- bandistas and to attempt to offer a vision from within the culture is explicit in Nelson's intentions when he states that the viewers who are not familiar with Umbanda will not understand the rituals presented in the film. In the umbandista terreiro (sacred plot of land, site of ritual celebration), it is enough to see some people behaving like children for an umbandista to be able to identify this as the celebration of Cosme and Damiao, but anyone outside will not understand. Yet, to explain the ritual, to direct the film to those who do not understand, would change the point of view from inside to outside, and turn the Cosme e Damiio celebration into an object. After all, in "our" cinema we only need to see a woman dressed in white in a church, and without further explanation we recognize a wedding. We find this completely natural because, Catholic or not, we were all brought up with Catholic rituals. For those who may not have had this background, it would be neces- sary to state: they dress their women in white and take them to a build- ing where.... In la6, Sarno films the initiation process with extreme dedication and tenderness, affirming that the values expressed in Candomble are revolutionary. Sarno does not aim to treat Candombl6 as an object. He reveals this very concern when he films himself practicing rituals. He is not outside that which he is filming; he penetrates inside. In this par- ticular sequence, it is possible to waver ambiguously between partici- pation and a tactical stance in order to be able to film, but 1a6 remains an attempt to break through the subject/object dichotomy and achieve a discourse from within. Neither Nelson nor Sarno, in my view, makes a qualitative leap that would enable them to present a form of religious expression entirely from the inside. But their attitudes express a profound change in ap- proach between the films of the 1960s and those of the 1970s, and their position can be seen as a transition toward Juana dos Santos's approach. An Anthropology of Ourselves I would like to bring into this discussion some other films that, on first appearance, have nothing strictly to do with this subject. Loucura e cultura (Madness and Culture, 1972) by Ant6nio Manuel, and Di, by Glauber Rocha (1977), for example, are works that propose a new content and approach to anthropological filmmaking. Tradition- ally, anthropology, whether filmed or not, is concerned with peoples con- sidered primitive, and in any case, never with those social groups to which the anthropologists themselves belong. 93 Jean-Claude Bernardet Loucura e cultura rekindles a debate about art that began in 1968 at the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art. The film features Rogerio Duarte, Ligia Pape, Luis Saldanha, Caetano Veloso, and Helio Oiticica, in that order.8 Rogerio, Ligia, and Caetano are filmed live and are shot sequentially full-face, in profile, and from behind, posing for the camera, close against the backdrop, practically immobile. Oiticica is filmed in profile. Saldanha does not appear at all; the screen simply goes black. Eleven very distinct shots in all, since the cuts are very clearly marked, never concealed. On the sound track one hears fragments of the de- bate, which was taped, and of the "Marseillaise" - initially in an instru- mental arrangement, later with lyrics. "Attention. Attention. I need to speak. Attention. I want to speak" are the first words of the debate selected for the film. As the debate continues, we hear people referring to the "great farce that is Brazilian culture," and statements like "Madness to me signifies a feeling of free- dom and creativity," or "I'm still very much a kid, understand?" The audience is accused of repressive, policelike attitudes, particularly the person who dubbed the whole discussion "intellectual masturbation." The film reveals a moment of oppressed intellectualism - concerned and disoriented. A sense of police oppression is manifested in the way the shots are framed: the people are filmed as though they are being photo- graphed for mug shots. Exile is the black screen and the photograph of Oiticica. The geometric severity of the filming and the editing (remi- niscent of certain films by Julio Bressane) expresses the repression to which these artists are subjected and is also connected with the propa- gation in Brazil of certain linguistic theories (for example, serial com- position). The sound track is the site of aspirations to freedom: it speaks to and expresses the need to speak out (while the people in the image remain mute); it speaks of ambient repression, of freedom and creativ- ity. The "Marseillaise" is the dream of the literary. What I have written up to now more or less represents the inten- tional dimension of the film. But Loucura e cultura gains greater di- mensionality and depth if perceived as profoundly ambiguous. Let's start with the "Marseillaise." If it once was a hymn of liberation, it stopped being that a long time ago. Today it is an official anthem ma- nipulated by those in power. The recording chosen by Ant6nio Manuel reinforces this aspect: a pompous orchestration and operatic singing. It is nothing like the "Marseillaise" whistled at the end of O noivo da morte (Death's Groom, Walter Rog6rio, 1975): an interrupted, hesitant, out-of-tune, thin but paradoxically strong whistle. The "Marseillaise" of Loucura e cultura is a call to liberation, but to an abstract, undefined liberation already swallowed by those in power. The images are also ambiguous: police-type repression, yes, but what 94 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s we see on the screen is sinister. People are mute and petrified. The fact that the last segment of the series is a freeze frame intensifies the sen- sation of progressive petrification. Is this petrification possibly only the effect of repression, only a facade behind which repressed life seethes? One does not get that impression. Instead, the actors seem like horrible wax figures, withdrawn from life, who have already inter- nalized death. This effect is a result of how the film was made; it is a product not of the people filmed, but of Antonio Manuel's chosen form of expression. Are they mute because they are not allowed to speak or because they have nothing-except for this confusing call to free- dom, as abstract as it is fossilized-left to say? There is a tension between what I will call the "level of intention"- preplanned, controlled by the author - and the ambiguities of possible readings that perhaps escaped him. This repression, this sense of stylis- tic severity, this deadliness, this call to freedom with all its confusion trace the boundaries of a space where the anguish of a certain kind of intellectualism was debated, putting an end to the dream. In Di, Glauber Rocha turns death into a celebration. The death of a friend, the painter Alberto di Cavalcanti, is a moment of exuberant life, highly eroticized, in which the carnival of that life gushes forth. Through the dead man, Glauber dives into his life. This is profoundly shocking to those for whom death is a time of silence and sepulchres, for whom the dead should be revered through sadness. In opposing the attitude we usually adopt toward death, Di con- fronts us with what we consider to be beyond question. Who doesn't feel grief at the death of a loved one? To question this seems irrever- ent. At the same time, the film opens our minds to other possibilities for relating to death in our society, to the possibility of experiencing death in another way. To make a film that confronts the process of death in our own society is quite different from making a film about funeral rituals in a remote Zulu tribe. Interprete mais, pague mais (Act Now, Pay Now, Andrea Tonacci, 1975), based on a tour of the Middle East by actress and impresario Ruth Escobar, is also included in this movement to produce an anthro- pology of ourselves. This could have been a publicity flick or a simple reportage of a series of events: the show, the rehearsals, the traveling, and so on. There are many such films. However, the way that Tonacci films, what he values, and what he gives little importance to, turn ac- tual episodes into simple backdrops. What he develops (with the par- ticipation, on occasion, of the people actually involved in the film, even though not as intensely as Tonacci would have liked) are the relation- ships the characters establish between themselves and with the situa- tions that involve them. In one of the film's most intense moments, the 95 PREFACE DESPITE the thematic, stylistic and "generic" variety of Latin American documentary, despite the extent and duration of the region's prolonged documentary "renaissance" and its broad social and cultural impact, the existing literature on Latin American documen- tary practices is sparse indeed - a handful of essays and interviews ap- pearing primarily in specialized periodicals of limited circulation. No book surveying the evolution of documentary practices in Latin America exists in any of the relevant languages - Spanish, Portuguese, French, or English. This volume assembles some twenty essays originally written in all these languages, making several translated pieces available in English for the first time. Most of the contributions that have already appeared in print have been extensively revised for this volume, and many have been updated. Several essays were written expressly for this collection and have not appeared elsewhere. More a selective survey than a systematic history, this book is pri- marily concerned with documentary filmmaking as a specific set of so- cial practices and representational strategies that constantly negotiate and renegotiate the distance between lived experience and its audio- visual reembodiment. Part I, "Establishing Shots," develops a number of historical, con- ceptual, and theoretical concerns. The first chapter attempts an over- view of Latin American documentary history and its points of in- tersection with and divergence from an international "documentary tradition" as currently defined. Chapter 2 examines Latin American documentary practices from the point of view of concepts and cate- gories developed within the Latin American context. Chapter 3 offers a close examination of modes of visual and verbal address in a num- ber of historically significant texts. Part II, "Wide Angles," examines the uses of documentary in par- ticular countries during specific historical periods: Chilean production ix Jean-Claude Bernardet show's producer, its director, the actors, and technicians take turns arguing about a broken machine. It is essential to the production, but its prospects for repair are dubious. Amid general perplexity, the dis- cussion stagnates. We forget the broken machine. What emerges from this grotesque and distressing argument, which becomes increasingly pointless, are the behavior and relationships among the various figures: domination, submission, protection, estrangement, narcissism, petty resignations, small gestures of support, minor rituals. It is as if the quarrel were generated in a laboratory. This is not the behavior of a "primitive" people, nor the conduct of those strange and amusing be- ings called stage actors, but rather the actions and behavior of the very environment we ourselves belong to. We are subjects and objects, si- multaneously on the screen and in the audience. I am reminded of something Valencio Xavier, director of the Parana Cinemateca, said. We were having a conversation about the Contestado War: the religious motivations of the so-called fanatics; the first sol- dier killed in combat whose burial, in Curitiba, reenacted that of Sadi Carnot in Paris.9 Valencio observed that, like people who write books, we always consider the religious behavior of rebels worthy of study, but we never question the religious practices of the military and the dominant class that repress them. This is enough to mark out the posi- tions: the rebels are the Other, for whom we harbor the most sympa- thy, but they continue to be seen as the Other, for we are looking on from another side. As for the military, for whom we can sometimes feel the greatest antipathy and whose actions we criticize, we do not see them as unfamiliar. What I am saying is that the films of Ant6nio Manuel, Glauber Rocha, and Andrea Tonacci inaugurate a type of anthropological film- making aimed at ourselves, a kind of anthropology in which the sub- ject is not distinguished from the object (which, granted, does not seem to be very scientific). Ant6nio Manuel does not remain outside the group of artists that he shows on the screen; he investigates the ideological dimensions of this group from within. Glauber speaks of the experi- ence or the nonexperience of death as lived by the group to which he and his audiences belong. The Camera in the Hands of the Other There remains another step: to pass the camera over to the people who are seen on the screen, so that the medium no longer expresses only how they are seen through other eyes or how one en- gages them in dialogue, but rather, how they see themselves. Aluisio 96 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s Raulino's Jardim Nova Bahia (New Bahia Garden, 1972) attempts to take this step. The film shows a northeastern car washer in Sdo Paulo. Raulino takes him to Santos, and on the beach he hands him the camera. In the film, we see the young man shooting as well as the footage he shoots. The result is not particularly significant, nor should we expect it to be, but what is very significant is the situation in which the documentary filmmaker finds it necessary to break the dominance of his own voice and to let the Other speak. In this case, the filmmaker is confronted with the exotic situation of the car washer-filmmaker who himself is now confronted with a circumstance completely foreign to his life experience-a situation conceded to him by chance unac- companied by knowledge of how to handle the equipment. So the selec- tion of footage, like the editing and the sound track, remain in the hands of the documentary filmmaker. In any case, Raulino's film ex- presses one of the principal tensions in Brazilian documentary film and points toward a more radical solution than the one promoted in the 1960s of giving voice to those who have none through cinema verite- style interviews. Other, similar films are being made. While Juana dos Santos was making Rito e metamorfose, in the community where she was shooting people began filming in Super-8. For the present, these experiments serve as a training ground and provide information for the filmmakers who organize them. Tonacci has for some time been developing similar projects with Indian communities, using video instead, which allows for immediate feedback. The camera people can immediately see the result of their work and can react at once to the image. Those who ap- pear on the tape can see the results and react just as quickly. These attitudes and approaches, inasmuch as they are not simply ethnographers' experiments, can generate among us new concepts of film. In the context of this kind of filmmaking practice, the concept of the work loses much of its meaning. The idea of the film itself - and of its author - as a unity is diluted. The idea of the film work as a differ- entiated object tends to be substituted here by an idea of a process that may or may not result in a finished product in the end. Even if a final product is produced, this is not the principal goal of the pro- cess. The idea of merchandise to which contemporary artistic products are intimately tied is also diluted. The question of the source and ori- gins of film production is also posed. As long as production and equip- ment remain exclusively in the hands of professional filmmakers, the handing over of the camera will always be a limited and conciliatory gesture, however interesting and complex the experiments become. The structural transformation of production clearly raises "extracinematic" 97 Jean-Claude Bernardet questions that involve modes of both film and knowledge production. In this context the amateur film, home movies, travel "diaries," all can be seen as assuming considerable significance. Interventionist Documentary There exists an extremely strong tradition that dictates that documentary filmmakers make every possible effort not to alter the reality which they are documenting. But in actuality there is al- ways a process of intervention, if only because of the presence of the equipment and the crew, or the choice of framing in the shooting and in the editing. Frequently, the documentary pretends to be noninter- ventionary, perpetuating the fiction that it simply, magically projects an objective reality upon the screen. Jodo Batista de Andrade assumes a diametrically opposite position: intervention is inevitable and should be taken as a given. What's more, it should be confronted in an active and productive manner. Far from feigning neutrality, Batista intervenes in the reality he films, hoping that this intervention may bring aspects of reality to the surface. What he films is this intervention and the filmmaker's own relation to what he is filming - and how reality reveals itself through this process. This interventionist proposition was the most interesting of the Street Cinema (Cinema de Rua) movement that developed in Sao Paulo in the first half of the 1970s. This movement returned to popular the- matics that had been absent from the screen for many years, such as living conditions, on-the-job accidents, transportation, street urchins, and public construction. The tone resembles reportage. These films were produced under precarious conditions and were specifically aimed at people concerned with the problems addressed on the screen. This proj- ect of an interventionist dramaturgy was certainly, from my perspec- tive, the richest aspect of the Street Cinema movement in the sense that it created new relationships between the documentary filmmaker, the reality addressed, and the public. Migrantes (Migrants, 1972), di- rected by Batista, is the first film of this movement. As early as 1966, Batista began working along these lines with the film Liberdade de imprensa (Freedom of the Press) whose originality was not given due credit at the time. Along with interviews with per- sonalities who spoke about the press, Batista would approach people near newsstands, hand them books on the press and request them to read the underlined passages, and then interview these people on what they had just finished reading. Technically, this was heresy, the reverse of documentary etiquette, for the interviewer should not motivate the interviewee, nor suggest lines of response. But what Batista wanted 98 The documentarist foregrounds his own intervention. Migrantes (Joio Batista de Andrade, 1972). Credit: Cinemateca Brasileira Jean-Claude Bernardet to do was just that: to see how the interviewee would react upon re- ceiving new information, since this reaction reveals the person's par- ticular situation as much as the disequilibrium and eventual restora- tion of equilibrium which the information provokes. Similarly, instead of filming police action to show repression in the cities, he rigged a situation in the street - an argument among a few people on the side- walk that then provoked a gathering of more people. Eventually, the police spontaneously intervened to disperse the contentious group. Liberdade de imprensa was important both for the theme it broached and especially for the breakthrough it represented in the panorama of Brazilian documentary. It is a negation of sociological discourse as the source of truth, a rejection of the position of superiority that consists of showing people and facts and speaking about them "ex-camera." In Liberdade de imprensa, Batista does not assume the role of a supposed neutral observer, but rather an active role that takes on the responsi- bility of creating situations in which social contradictions express them- selves. This, it seems to me, is what brings Batista to the concept of interventionist dramaturgy. This approach is also developed in some other Street Cinema films. From this point of view, the most significant sequence of Migrantes is a dialogue between a northeasterner who recently moved to Sao Paulo where he lives with his family under a viaduct, and a white-collar native of the city. The northeasterner relates his situation - the impossibility of working the land in the Northeast and the necessity of finding a job to sustain the family - while the bureaucrat contends that "Sao Paulo has many problems, and the migrants only bring more; in any case, the Bahian isn't going to solve his problems here; he should have stayed in the Northeast or at least not come here; he should go to the interior of the country and work the land there." This dialogue was not foreseen by the director when he began by interviewing the northeasterner. The bureaucrat, like other passers-by, stopped to watch the filming and proceeded to involve himself in the conversation. Instead of pushing him away, as would have happened in a traditional documentary, the director incorporated him into the film, taking advantage of the shooting situation and what this situa- tion can spontaneously catalyze. This spontaneity is taken advantage of as long as it is revealing of the contradictions that the documentary filmmaker wants to expose. The filmmaker doesn't speak about the northeasterner; rather he seeks out telling elements in the reality that he films - elements whose collision reveals the tensions and contradic- tions he wants to pass on to the viewer. A similar situation is seen in A escola de 40.000 ruas (The School of 40,000 Streets), a film about abandoned children. The filming provokes 100 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s a gathering of people. An older woman, who claims to have been recently robbed by a street urchin, verbally attacks a boy, as if he were the rob- ber, while the boy, surrounded by an antagonistic crowd, tries to de- fend himself. The two opposing actors would not have met in the same place; it is the film that fosters the contact. In another untitled version made for television and subsequently seen on the film society circuit, the residents of a favela (slum) on the banks of the Pinheiro river are to be moved to the Maria Luiza Garden, near a working-class housing project. Working-class housewives living in the Garden complain about the relocation of the favela-dwellers. How can they raise their children in contact with the favelados - marginal elements, robbers, drug addicts, and so forth. Batista goes to the Garden to film the workers' wives and record their statements against the favela-dwellers. He then goes im- mediately to the favela, turns on his tape recorder so the favela women can hear what the workers' wives are saying about them, and proceeds to film this scene while reading the slum dwellers' responses to the comments. From this footage, Batista assembled the film, which was produced by the news department of Sio Paulo's TV Globo. Batista notified both groups of the scheduled broadcast. His intention (and intention it re- mained, because he did not have the production conditions necessary to finish the project) was to return to both locations to film again in order to find out what modifications (if any) the film provoked in those spectators involved. He especially wanted to see if the working-class women had changed their opinion as a result of hearing the favela women. This documentary creates a new situation that does not exist inde- pendent of the film: favela-dwelling women and working-class women establishing an incipient dialogue through the medium of the film. The film defines opposing positions through the clash between them and registers the reactions provoked by the new information. In O Buraco da Comadre (Godmother's Gully), the intervention would have gone even further if much of the material had not been lost be- cause of technical problems. In the Brazil Garden neighborhood, there is a huge sinkhole over 100 meters wide in the middle of a street. Resi- dents and interviewees explain that the hole has been growing for years. Letters, protests, negotiations with City Hall have not produced any action - hence the complaints against the public authorities. During the filming, actors from politically oriented community theater groups (teatro do periferia) conduct interviews and collect information along with the neighbors. Subsequently, the actors descend into the hole and perform a theater piece based on information and actions derived from the accounts given by the neighbors. The neighbors, seeing their own 101 Jean-Claude Bernardet actions stylized by the actors, initiate a dialogue regarding their dependence vis-a-vis the public authorities. Though the film, as it turns out, becomes but one more protest against the indifference of City Hall, its premise remains a very rich and suggestive one because it does not disguise a preexisting reality and then attempt to hide behind it. In- stead, it creates a situation that it acknowledges as unique to itself, foregrounding rather than concealing its theatricality. Multiple Reality How is one to read A pedra da riqueza (The Stone of Wealth, 1975), by Vladimir de Carvalho? In innumerable ways. But with regard to what interests us here, I could say that this film pre- sents itself as similar to many others that describe the miserable living and working conditions of the Brazilian proletariat. We see an open-air mine, observing the strenuous nature of the work and the insufficient safety precautions taken against possible accidents. In voice-over a man tells about his life as a miner: arduous labor, accidents on the job, families without shelter sleeping under trees to protect themselves against possible landslides during the night. Source sound. Music. Read in this manner, A pedra da riqueza does not exhibit great originality. But a closer look at A pedra da riqueza reveals other aspects. There is the photography - black and white, extremely washed out, with very little shading, offering few details about what it is showing. The goal here can hardly be simple demonstration. This crude photography, pos- sibly the product of expired film stock, gives us a "crude" product. The poverty which the production takes upon itself and the apparent pre- cariousness of the photography refer to and reproduce the poverty and precariousness of what is being shown. Aruanda (the first film of the Paraiban documentary movement of the late 1950s, on which Vladimir de Carvalho worked) originated the strategy of presenting the poverty of a documentary production - to the degree that the production takes the poverty upon itself - as an ex- pression of the misery of the people on the screen. This quickly became a reflex. A pedra da riqueza, made in the Paraiban tradition, reclaims this approach and goes beyond it. The unconventional photography seems to spread into an abstraction of black-and-white splotches. We sense that there is something that defies description. This feeling is reinforced by the shrill and dissonant music that creates tension but is not directly related to the mine. Environmental noise is also used musically: the hammering sound of iron against iron rises on the sound track in the beginning of the film, its source not yet visible. When we see the source, the sound is not synchronized; there is a discrepancy 102 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s between what is seen and what is heard. The film makes us recognize what it shows us while at the same time distancing us from it. A characteristic of the editing that distances us even more involves four short, dark sequences (one of them the opening) that contrast with the unconventional photography of the mines. These are images of an editing table on which the former miner is viewing the footage. Far from the glare of the mine lights is this cavern of a different order where the film is being assembled. The mine that we are viewing on the screen is not a mine pure and simple, but the result of this work at the edit- ing table. Someone, leaning over the editing table, asks the witness, "Do you know what the scheelite is for?" This is the only synchronized sound in the whole film, underlining the dramatic import of the sentence. We discover that the film is about a scheelite mine at the same time we realize that we do not know how to answer the question. Neither does the worker. "I don't know what the scheelite is for. They take it to Cam- pina Grande, but I don't know what for.... I think that they take it ... abroad." This is the last speech of the film, leaving it obvious that it is not the worker's lack of knowledge that is in question here, but a fundamental aspect of the work relationship: the worker's ignorance of the purpose of his work is one form of exploitation. In a long final intertitle, the film answers the question: "The tung- sten extracted from the scheelite is used primarily in the defense in- dustry, in the advanced technologies of the superpowers. Rockets and spaceships are created with this mighty steel alloy tempered to resist fire and violent impact. ... The mine seen here is one of many rudimen- tary extraction sites in the Northeast where the Brazilian reserves lie, perhaps the world's largest reserves after the mines of mainland China." With this text, the film makes an immense leap: the small suffering work of one man, a minuscule detail, suddenly becomes part of an interna- tional system. The miner is aware of the fact that his work is being exploited, but on a more immediate level, one that he feels in his bones. He speaks of his boss as "the guy that discovered there were minerals on his land, and continued to explore and exploit them, and got himself into a good situation, but all because he is the owner of the land. He buys minerals at one price and sells them at another. If he buys, let's say, for two contos, he sells for ten." [A conto equals 1,000 old cruzeiros. ] But of the international dimensions of this exploitation the miner had no idea. The banality of the question, the miner's answer, the rudimen- tary mine, the takeoff point for space technology - these diverse ele- ments give great dramatic force to the discrepancy between the miserable northeasterner and the final result of his work. It is especially relevant to see this particular dimension of labor exploitation in A pedra 103 Jean-Claude Bernardet da requeza because it is completely absent from the group of Brazilian documentary films that, frequently, describe the worker's misery and exploitation at the hands of his immediate boss or overseer, but which never reach the level of international capitalism. This single fact pro- foundly differentiates Vladimir de Carvalho's film from the general run of Brazilian documentaries. The "spaceships" mentioned in the final intertitle refer us to the ini- tial one that announced, "The Museum of Modern Art Film Archive presents A pedra da requeza or The Hillbilly's Fight to Unearth the Rock That Went to the Moon with the Astronauts' Spaceship."'o The subtitle captures the flavor of titles of the popular pulp literature of the region [livreto de cordel: little books strung on cords and sold in the open air markets] and generates an expectation that cannot at any time be fulfilled by the miner, the editing table, the oral testimony, or the music. Only the spaceships of the final intertitle echo the "magic rocks" of the popular cordel publications. Suddenly a new circle is es- tablished in the reality that is explored by the film. This subtitle sug- gests another dimension: that of the imaginary, and how the imagina- tion works on reality. And this, again, is a dimension rarely apparent in the Brazilian documentary, which either takes on the imaginary (such as folk celebrations and handicrafts) or describes living and working conditions, but only rarely attempts to embrace these varying levels of reality at the same time. What sharply separates Vladimir de Car- valho's film from the documentary context in which it was made is that it works simultaneously on various levels. Reality is a given of every- day life; it is a given of an international system; it is an experience of the imagination. These various levels are not a result of some narrator who explains to us how things are. Instead, the various circuits of the real arise from the very structure of the film, simultaneously simple and complex. It is the relationship between the image and speech, and the two intertitles that frame them, that suggests the various levels on which reality can be elaborated. These films indicate unequivocally that Brazilian documentary film- making underwent profound transformations in the 1970s. During a phase of intense political repression, unfavorable to cultural innova- tions, during a phase in which public contests encouraged filmmakers to produce sterile films about baroque churches, handicrafts, and "per- sonalities," new attitudes emerge. These are not simply good films or bad ones, but films that reveal a new comprehension of society, of the Other, of the filmmaking subject, and of the way artists insert them- selves into society. Naturally, there was no spontaneous generation here. Some of these new attitudes are presaged in the sixties in films like Lavra-dor (Peasant), by Paulo Rufino, Inddistria (Industry) by Ana 104 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s Inscriptions of labor as suffering: Lavra-dor (Paulo Rufino). Credit: Cinemateca Brasileira Carolina Teixeira Suares, Rodas e outras historias (Rodas and Other Stories) by Sergio Muniz, along with Liberdade de imprensa and others. The various films I have cited (and several I've failed to include like Rudi Andrade's film about Oswald de Andrade, or Otavio Tavares's film about Harry Laus, or works by Sergio Peo), diverse as they are, all share certain affinities. Two of these seem to be essential. The first is that reality tends to no longer be compressed into univocal under- standing. Reality is multiple. The multiplicity of its aspects is not ex- clusionary, nor is one aspect more truthful than another. The various levels are interconnected and all pertain to equally important and sig- nificant experiences. The other affinity shared by these films is no less important: there is a breaking down of the power of the documentary filmmaker who no longer takes on the object of his study from the heights of his knowledge, reducing the other to a sociological category. The filmmakers position themselves as subjects, but not omniscient or omnipotent subjects. They refuse to constitute the Other as an ob- ject, and instead they work within and upon the distance between them- selves and the Other. They establish the Other as a subject; they en- gage in dialogue with the Other as another subject. The emergence of 105 Preface from the 1950s to the present, Santiago Alvarez's work in Cuba during the 1960s and afterward, dissenting practices in Brazilian documen- tary during the difficult decade of the 1970s. Nearly half of this section is dedicated to Central America, with essays on the appropriation and modification of modes of documentary representation by the Sandinis- tas in Nicaragua, and on the current Salvadorean conflict as viewed from opposing political perspectives. Part II ends with an account of one North American videomaker's journey through Latin America in search of independent video work and of the collection which she assembled. Part III, "Texts in Close-up," focuses on specific films of recognized historical importance, offering sustained analysis of the representational strategies of pivotal works, from the historical compilation Memories of a Mexican (1950), through the more sociological depiction of the vicious cycle of rural-urban migration in Brazil, Viramundo (1964), to two epic political documentaries - The Hour of the Furnaces (Argen- tina, 1968) and The Battle of Chile (Chile/Cuba, 1974-79). The conclud- ing essay, on three recent works by women filmmakers who have pro- duced more intimate accounts of personal life and the socio-ideological construction of gender, serves as an essential counterweight to the epic works discussed in the preceding chapters, and reflects the notable in- crease in media-making activity among Latin American women dating from the 1970s. Part IV, "Beyond the Documentary/Fiction Dichotomy," examines a series of films that fuse fictional and documentary discourses, com- bining historical contextualization with individual subjectivity. The hybrid forms challenge the arbitrariness of the conventional distinc- tions between the documentary and fictional modes. Implicitly, if not explicitly, they also challenge the authority of all existing social, epis- temological, and ideological dichotomies. This persistent challenge is perhaps the most signal contribution of what might be most effectively termed the new Latin American cine-media - a movement which, for all its singularity, has remained persistently, provocatively plural. Jean-Claude Bernardet the documentary filmmaker as subject (and not just naively filming the camera filming, but actually incorporating this attitude into the very structure of the film) and the constitution of the Other not as object but as another subject, are complementary movements, part of a single process-just as the transformation of the customary object of socio- logical or anthropological discourse into another subject and the emer- gence of an anthropology of ourselves are complementary. The Other, in the films discussed here, are members of the popular or "lower" classes, and this fact will have profound consequences with regard to the populist line in Brazilian cinema. The Other in these films ceases being an object - of the documentarist, of the film, of knowledge itself - and becomes the subject of history and knowledge, despite the fact that, for the time being, existing modes of filmic production may not yet be transformed - an essential requirement for the continued evolution of this situation. These films don't simply signify an evolution in the documentary sector; they are symptoms of profound transformations in the Brazilian social arena. These are transformations yet unrecognized, whose evolu- tionary directions we do not yet perceive, but which suggest that the concept of power traditionally in force in Brazil - which shapes our com- prehension of society and our own action -is undergoing a structural alteration. The dismissal of the conventional sociological documen- tarist, the dismissal of the "voice of the master" in Sergio Santeiro's phrase, is the dismissal of the prince, of the military chief, of the presi- dent of the republic, of the head of the university, of the father, whether generous or not, whether harboring good or evil intentions, with his liberal or authoritarian stance, his controlled and strategic "permis- siveness" (aberturas) or blatant censorship. It makes no difference: he is not the axis of reality, not its principal structuring force, even though he may control the canon. To no longer make films about ob- jects of study, but rather to recognize the voice of the other as an equal, signifies the collapse of the concept of society as a composition of con- centric circles or pyramids encasing one another, with the father, or government bureau chief, and eventually the prince, occupying their respective pinnacles. Society does not organize itself according to a cen- tral power or a network of central powers that echo one another, but rather according to a multiplicity of relatively autonomous powers that uphold each other and interrelate. It is both significant and auspicious that these indications emerge precisely at a time of intense authoritarianism and repression. This makes it clear that Brazilian cultural life did not stop during "the night that lasted fifteen years" (or is this sense we have of being at the dawn 106 Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s of a new era only an illusion?)12 and that the traces of this cultural life cannot be reduced to a "cultural vacuum" or a "culture of resistance." Positive forms of culture and imagination are being developed. The documentary films discussed here and their characteristics do not re- sult from any official incentive, or financing, or the influence of some "national cultural policy." Authoritarianism does not shape the whole of Brazilian social life, nor can our lives be reduced simply to a relation- ship of subjugation or opposition to it. During the more intense au- thoritarian period of the last few years, other processes have occurred and are occurring, barely recognized, sometimes even beyond powers of intuition, but which we are nonetheless beginning to be conscious of. These documentaries help us perceive this process of evolution and perhaps make it even more profound. This Brazilian cinematic project is still taking its first steps; it has not yet been consolidated. But its mere emergence is all that is necessary to negate all the official and quasi-official projects of national unity or national identity. Neverthe- less, this movement is not defined by its opposition to the theme of unity. It defines itself through its affirmation of the autonomy and mul- tiplicity of the voices that make up the nation. An emergent project, one we can bet on.... Or can we? For it is obvious that the wager is not won - such movements can be stopped, neutralized, coopted. Such movements can also limit themselves to becoming a form of updating and modernizing capitalism in Brazil. This chapter could be (will be) considered partial or excessively per- sonal. Actually, I have only spoken of the films that stirred, perturbed, and challenged me. In order to write this, I did not draw only upon my familiarity with documentary film; my emotional reactions and the lov- ing dialogue that I have sustained in order to establish an intimate con- nection to these films also served as my tools. And, as you can see, I presume to assert that such dialogue is generalizable and capable of revealing an important dimension of contemporary Brazilian cinema. NOTES This chapter was originally published as "A voz do outro" in volume 4 (Cinema) of a collaborative series entitled Anos 70 (Rio de Janeiro: Europa, 1979-1980). It was translated by Julianne Burton in collaboration with Dafna Wu, a Brazilian-Chinese-American student of literature at the University of Califor- nia, Santa Cruz. Reprinted by permission. 1. A congada is a dramatic song and dance depicting the crowning of a king in the Congo. 2. The bumba-meu-boi is a traditional pageant or dance in northeastern 107 Jean-Claude Bernardet Brazil in which the townsfolk symbolically invert existing social hierarchies. An example occurs in Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Vidas Secas (Barren Lives, 1963). 3. See the analysis of Viramundo in chapter 11 for a fuller critique of this sociological model. 4. The Nag6 are Brazilians of Yoruban ancestry. 5. Candombl6 is based on Yoruban rites and is often associated in Brazil with Macumba and Umbanda, similarly derived from a synthesis of African and European religious practices. 6. See chapter 11 for a full analysis of Viramundo. 7. Unfortunately, I have not been able to trace the title or the maker of this film. 8. Among this group of artists, the most well known outside Brazil are H. Oiticica, a leading figure in the plastic arts during the 1960s and 1970s, and C. Veloso, a celebrated singer-composer associated with the Tropicalist move- ment of the early-to-mid 1970s. 9. The Contestado War was a turn-of-the-century peasant revolt in the south of Brazil; Sadi Carnot was a French statesman assassinated by an Italian anarchist in 1894. 10. A man of the sertdo or backlands, in the original Portuguese. 11. By dividing Lavra-dor into two syllables, the film's title suggests the pain and suffering - dor - of the agricultural worker's lot. 12. In 1985, Brazil returned to a democratic, civilian government after twenty-one years of military rule. 108 5 CHILEAN DOCUMENTARY: CONTINUITY AND DISJUNCTION Zuzana M. Pick This chapter traces the evolution of Chilean documentary from the first examples of the medium produced at the turn of the century to Acta general de Chile (General Report from Chile, 1986), feature di- rector Miguel Littin's four-hour record of his clandestine return to the homeland from which the Pinochet regime had permanently barred him. Pick emphasizes the Popular Unity period (1970-1973) and its aftermath, including documentary production in exile and under the military regime. The only comprehensive national history in the pres- ent volume, Pick's chronicle, the most complete to date, appears here in English for the first time. One of the most intriguing aspects of this account is the prospect of an international cross-fertilization of cinematic approaches and techniques as the indirect product of the Chilean-cinema-in-exile phenomenon. Pick implicitly sees exiled Chil- ean filmmakers as mediators between Latin American cultures and the norms of cultural existence as understood in Europe and North America, mediators whose cinematic practice requires an ongoing process of negotiation between cultures in perpetual and mutually enriching contention. As A chronicle of daily life, as testimony of social and cul- tural experience, as voyage through history, documentary is a means of investigating reality. Latin American documentarists have not simply set out to record "exotic" faces and landscapes. Their social commit- ment, along with their militant political stance, has placed documen- tary film within a privileged zone of aesthetic and narrative inquiry. Their consciousness of history and their dialectical valorization of in- dividual and collective experience have generated an approach that goes far beyond mere formal speculation. They have embraced documentary as an essential tool of political awareness and social transformation. 109 Zuzana M. Pick Images of trains arriving at La Ciotat station and the workers leav- ing the factory of the Lumiere brothers in Lyon awoke the imagination of photographic technicians in Chile. In 1902, as Alicia Vega recounts,1 cameramen in Valparaiso recorded Ejercicio general de bombas (General Firefighters'Exercise), and in 1910 Arturo Larrain filmed Los funerales del Presidente Montt (President Montt's Funeral). As in other Latin American countries, cinema was enlisted to record various national civic events, but little of this material was preserved. With the estab- lishment of film studios in the twenties, commissions by private com- panies and government institutions multiplied, particularly as the lat- ter began to perceive the political potential of this new technology. From the twenties on, the mining companies commissioned promotional films on their enterprises in the north, without mentioning the brutal repression of their workers. The national newsreels recorded the elec- tion campaigns of political candidates, but Chileans never saw the grind- ing poverty of the peasant population in rural areas. Over the entire Latin American continent, the masses had limited access to film. Cin- ema and the print media transmitted an ideologically tinted image of "national reality" to the urban middle classes who constituted the prin- cipal film-going public. In the fifties, for the first time, a concerted attempt to redefine the parameters of representation of national social and political life was undertaken by filmmakers in the context of a radical movement for social change. The work done by young "amateurs" in Valparaiso and Santiago, under the influence of the cultural avant-garde of the time, proposed to identify the more authentic artistic expressions of the Chil- ean people. Documentary and fiction films made over the subsequent three decades looked at national problems in a critical way. Their pro- ducers became attuned to their social environment and to the political processes that began shaping Chilean history in the sixties. Motivated by individual and collective experiences and attitudes, Chilean film- makers diversified their cinematic practice while retaining the concept of film as a privileged site of militant intervention in the sociopoliti- cal arena. The development of documentary in Chile goes hand in hand with that of an evolving fictional cinema that revealed its potential for criti- cal commentary but did not fully realize it during the three years of the Popular Unity government.2 The coup d'6tat of 1973 produced a break in the development of Chilean cinema. But the wealth and variety of the approaches to individual and collective reality in subsequent films by Chilean filmmakers in exile and inside the country was born of prior film experience and inflected by a political process that has left its mark on more than one generation of artists. A brief study of the 110 Chilean Documentary trends in documentary film in Chile prior to 1973 will allow us to iden- tify the phases through which cinematic production has evolved since the violent overthrow of the Popular Unity government in that year. From the Experimental Film Group to Popular Unity In 1955, the Film Institute was created at the Catholic University of Chile, and in 1957 a group of members of the University of Chile's Cinema Club formed the Experimental Film Group. After 1962, film production activities were also concentrated in the studios of the three university-owned television channels. Those individuals who were to participate in the development of a committed cinema came together at these three institutions. With the production of Mimbre (Wicker, 1957) by Sergio Bravo, Andacollo (1958) by Jorge di Lauro and Nieves Yancovic, and the work done by Rafael Sanchez at the Film Institute, the groundwork was laid for a documentary movement that has since continued to grow and develop in an ideologically and for- mally consistent, if varied, way. Sergio Bravo was active during the early years of the Experimental Film Group. His documentaries about a wicker-maker in the Quinta Normal neighborhood, the daily life of four organ-grinders in Santiago, and the operation of a primitive threshing machine are chronicles of the past marked by a tradition deeply rooted in physical labor. In Mimbre, Bravo's camera records from unusual angles the beauty of a material that the artisan's skilled hands transform into a collection of baroque decorative objects. In Dia de organilleros (Day of the Organ- Grinders, 1959), the artisans' efforts to survive are conveyed through a street chronicle interspersed with a series of episodes from urban life. In Trilla (Thresher, 1958), the monotonous circular movement of horses and the music performed by Violeta Parra are blended together in an homage to the cycle of seasons that shapes rural life. The narrative structure of these documentaries is based essentially on experimenta- tion with visual elements and sound. Sergio Bravo juxtaposes ethno- graphic concerns with a poetic treatment of daily life. In spite of his attempt to integrate the word with the poetic rhythm of the image, the omniscient voice-over seems annoyingly redundant. These and other early Experimental Film Group documentaries were strongly influenced by the British documentary school founded by John Grierson, and by postwar Italian neorealism. But the political dynamism prevailing in Chile during the sixties would lead filmmakers to seek, in the country's contemporary reality, those indigenous elements that were an integral part of a history of social and political struggle. 111 Zuzana M. Pick Sergio Bravo wound up in his work. Credit: courtesy Zu- zana M. Pick The political vocation of Chilean documentary would become evi- dent in 1963 with Sergio Bravo's La marcha del carbdn (The Coal March), a documentary that records the historic Lota coal miners' strike. The political significance of this event takes on a lyrical hue as Bravo alter- nates the enthusiasm of the men, women, and children marching from Lota to Concepci6n with the choreographic movements of their ban- ners waving in the wind. One year later, Sergio Bravo traveled through the northern villages with their saltpeter mines, interviewing workers who had actively participated in the formation of the Chilean labor movement. Las banderas del pueblo (The Flags of the People, 1964) is 112 Chilean Documentary a documentary based on testimonies by historical witnesses. Bravo in- tegrated these historical recollections into the political mobilization that was taking place during Salvador Allende's first electoral campaign in 1964. The films of Sergio Bravo in Chile, like the early works of Fer- nando Birri in neighboring Argentina, are pioneering examples of Latin American social documentary.3 Documentary filmmakers in Chile also concentrated on the social implications of their practice. By 1962, the members of the Experimen- tal Film Group and later of the National Film Society, under the direc- tion of Pedro Chaskel, were instrumental in setting up an alternative distribution and exhibition network for documentary films, in conjunc- tion with labor organizations that used film to complement political debate. As filmmakers and cultural workers were becoming increasingly involved in the political process and as this radicalism evolved into ac- tive militance, the documentary films made in Chile took on a combat- ive character similar to that of films produced in other Latin American countries during the sixties. The 1962 visit to Chile by the Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, one of the most outstanding figures of world documentary, exerted significant influence on the work being done by local filmmakers, but the screening of Latin American documentaries at the First Latin American Festival at Vifia del Mar in 1967 was an even more influential event. It permitted a first contact between Chilean filmmakers and their colleagues on the same continent. By 1969, the Chilean documentary shared ideological and stylistic characteristics with the emerging "new cinema" of Latin America. Chilean filmmakers responded to some of the most pressing issues that were being addressed by left-wing parties in the period preceding the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. Like Carlos Alvarez in Colombia, Mario Handler in Uruguay, and Jorge Sanjines in Bolivia, Chilean filmmakers turned to a cine urgente that combined the urgency of militant political practice with an innovative use of cinematographic devices. Scarce funding and technical limitations forced Chilean filmmakers to seek original solutions. Documentarists tried to compensate for the lack of synchronic sound through the use of visual effects, photographic stills, and the addition of music by the performers of the Chilean New Song movement. Technical imperfections and a certain poverty of nar- rative strategies did not, however, diminish the impact of the first ef- forts of the young filmmakers who made their debuts during this pe- riod. Douglas Hubner's Herminda de la Victoria (Herminda from La Victoria, 1969), indicated that images of political violence in the shanty- towns of Santiago have an intrinsic power that no voice-over commen- tary can convey. Testimonio (Testimony, 1969), Casa o mierda (House or Shit, 1970) and Reportaje a Lota (Report to Lota, 1970) expose pain- 113 Zuzana M. Pick ful aspects of marginal existence systematically ignored by the official media. One of the most interesting documentaries of this period is Ven- ceremos (We Shall Overcome, 1970) by Pedro Chaskel and Hector Rios. The parallel editing between shots depicting bourgeois frivolity and the desperation of the working class, punctuated by abrupt changes in the music, foregrounds the violence of the clash between the political forces in the country. The almost pathetic inertia of the first part of Vence- remos is displaced in the final scenes. Following the intertitle that says NO MORE!, the screen fills with images of Chileans celebrating the imminent triumph of the Popular Unity government. Venceremos in- augurated the Popular Unity period of Chilean documentary and re- mains one of the most forceful films of this period.4 Between 1970 and 1973, the ranks of the documentary film move- ment swelled with a growing number of university students. Produc- tion units were established in several government agencies, and those organized earlier by the labor unions intensified their activities. Film schools were established at several academic institutions and, together with the Film Workshops of the state agency Chile Films,5 provided basic professional training for new filmmakers. During the Popular Unity period, more than 100 documentaries were produced, most con- ceived in terms of immediate political utility. Attempts were also made to define the priorities of a cinema intended to serve as an essential instrument of national culture. The Manifesto of the Popular Unity Filmmakers (1970), drawn up by Miguel Littin, and the discussions held within the cultural sections of political parties were attempts to formulate a national film policy that never materialized. Film produc- tion itself, however, was taking off in 1973 as the distribution circuit expanded. The military coup interrupted a series of ambitious projects that might have been central to the future development of a national film industry in which documentary would presumably have held an important place. The impossibility of concerted cultural action combined with limited access to technical facilities did not hinder the production of documen- tary films during the 1970-1973 period. The compelling immediacy of the political process experienced in Chile led filmmakers to take their crews into the streets and the factories, out to the fields and down into the mines. Documentary cinema, which had essentially been a cinema of denunciation in the preceding period, became a chronicle of political processes during the Popular Unity government. The documentaries made by independent filmmakers sought to go beyond observational or testimonial approaches, aspiring to become instruments of political analysis. At Chile Films, in contrast, the ongoing production of informes (news reports) and later noticiarios (newsreels) was conceived primar- 114 Chilean Documentary ily as a vehicle of information and political commentary with particu- lar emphasis on the events and government policies that were to effect the country's "road to socialism." For the first time in Chilean history, through mobile distribution units cinema began to reach the peasants, the workers, and the shantytown dwellers. Filmmakers again went north in search of the historical traces left on mining installations by workers who fell to military violence. In Santa Maria de Iquique (1971), Claudio Sapiain evoked historical events through the well-known songs of La cantata de Santa Maria; and in Cr6nica del salitre (Nitrate Chronicle, 1971) Angelina VAzquez used witnesses to retell historical events. In Mijita (1971) Sergio Cas- tilla employed direct address interviews with women to stress the con- tradictions that limit their active participation in a period of rapid so- cial change. The songs of Violeta Parra punctuate the representation of repetitive female tasks. Advertising images and popular songs serve as visual and aural premises for Descomedidos y chascones (Cool and Tough, 1972), a portrait of adolescents. Director Carlos Flores del Pino compares the aspirations of young workers with those of bourgeois youth, uncovering contrasts in attitudes and behavior. In these docu- mentaries, while montage occupies a dominant place in the narrative, the creative treatment of found footage tends to offset the expressive restraints imposed by limited access to modern equipment. With El primer ario (The First Year, 1971) and La respuesta de oc- tubre (The Answer to October, 1972) Patricio Guzman developed a work- ing method that later culminated in the production of the three-part La batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile, 1973-79). These films are es- sential resources for the comprehension of the political process initiated by Salvador Allende's electoral victory and interrupted by his brutal overthrow. Both before and during filming, Guzman concentrated on the most conflict-ridden sectors of national political life, later weaving them into a narrational sequence during the editing process. El primer aio is basically a celebratory chronicle of the events the first period of the Popular Unity government. La respuesta de octubre systemati- cally draws together, by means of dialectical montage, the events sur- rounding the truck drivers' strike that year, a key stage in the class struggle and mass mobilization of the popular sectors. In La batalla de Chile, the exploration of situations, the montage of images and sounds, and the use of interviews and music correspond to a clearer conception of the documentary as an instrument of politi- cal analysis. The three parts, La insurreci6n de la burguesia, El golpe de estado, and El poder popular (The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie, The Coup d'Etat, Popular Power), follow the chronological order of events and develop the more significant characteristics of particular 115 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS LIKE THE subject matter it addresses, this book is clearly the product of collaborative effort. I want first to thank my contribu- tors for their participation, patience, and willingness to revise as neces- sary. I would like to acknowledge as well the Faculty Research Com- mittee of the University of California at Santa Cruz for timely support during the preparation of this manuscript. Judy Burton and Pat Hairston retyped various sections with dispatch and good cheer. Chuck Kleinhans, Bill Nichols, Michael Renov, and Marcia Landy read the manuscript at various stages in its evolution and made helpful sugges- tions. Fred Hetzel, director of the University of Pittsburgh Press, dis- played a heartening mixture of enthusiasm and patience. Manuscript editor Jane Flanders kept the project on track despite earthquake and more mundane delays. xi Zuzana M. Pick situations within each sequence. La batalla de Chile and Los puros frente al catd6n are the only documentaries from the Popular Unity period that had to be finished in exile. Since 1973, these two films have been central to the discussion and analysis of the events that shook the country. Los puZios frente al card6n (Fists Against Cannons, 1972-75), made by Gast6n Ancelovici and Orlando Lubbert, shares the ideological con- cerns of the Popular Unity period as well as some of the issues involved in the first stages of film production in exile. In 1971, Ancelovici and Lubbert began assembling a slide show on the history of the Chilean labor movement. By 1972, this project had become a film, though it was not completed until 1975, in Germany. Los purios frente al car-6n, which reconstructs the organization of the first Chilean labor unions, is a documentary montage characterized by the creative use of audio- visual materials and by its attempt to uncover historical patterns and continuities. The history of left-wing political organizations and the workers' printing presses is recounted by old men from the north who had carefully conserved their personal collections of photographs and newspaper clippings. These modest but treasured mementos stand in poignant contrast to the extensive record preserved by the bourgeoisie. Period newsreels and early "home movies" constitute the privileged chronicle of a self-interested class that sold out the country to foreign economic interests. Public relations films produced by British and American mining companies, recovered when the copper industry was nationalized by the Allende government, bear witness to the country's economic dependency. Newspaper clippings and press photos are the only documents of popular rebellion in a country where the bourgeoisie has consistently denied the repressive role of the national army. An- celovici's and Lubbert's compilation begins at the turn of the century and extends to the thirties and the Popular Front. Los pun-os frente al can-6n opens and closes with images of the Popular Unity govern- ment, bracketing the sociopolitical situation of the thirties. Found and archival material is used with imagination and wit. Trick photography, special effects, superimposed images, animated and looped takes reveal the ideological dimension of archival material and other forms of his- torical representation.6 It should be stressed that the exceptional character of these two works -Los puftos frente al can6-n and La batalla de Chile -in relation to documentaries made by other Chilean filmmakers in exile has as much to do with the historical conditions that reinforced their impact as with their intrinsic quality as documentary films. However, the growing op- position to the Pinochet regime experienced inside the country since 1983 has renewed their relevance and popularity. 116 Chilean Documentary Reassembling the dispersed traces and testimonies of Chilean labor history: Los puhos frenta al cafdn (Gast6n Ancelovici and Orlando Lubert, 1975). Credit: G. Andelovici The Chilean Documentary in Exile In the months following the overthrow of Chile's elected socialist government, progressive groups throughout the world mounted an intense campaign of solidarity. As grisly details of military repres- sion filtered through the dense net imposed by government censorship and the junta's declaration of a state of siege inside the country, mobilization outside of Chile mounted. When Chilean exiles arrived in their respective host countries, they became involved in solidarity cam- paigns. Their songs, poems, films, and mural paintings spread the po- litical and artistic slogans of the Popular Unity government. During the public meetings and rallies organized in European, North Ameri- can, and South American cities, artistic expression became an integral part of the political resistance to the military dictatorship. Filmmakers from various countries who had visited Chile during the Popular Unity period and whose involvement with the events of 1973 went beyond a strictly journalistic interest, produced and directed a series of documentaries on Chile. During the first months of military rule, these filmmakers managed to film some of the most dramatic epi- sodes: the burial of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, interviews 117 Zuzana M. Pick with relatives of imprisoned and "disappeared" persons, a visit made by international journalists to the National Stadium, which had been hastily enlisted to hold suspected opponents of the new regime, the junta's first press conferences. These unique audiovisual documents had worldwide repercussions. Films such as La spirale (The Spiral, 1975), directed by Armand Mattelart, Jacqueline Meppiel, and Valerie Mayoux, Septembre chilien (Chilean September, 1974), directed by Bruno Muel and Theo Robichet (both made in France), Contra la raz6n y por la fuerza (Against Reason and by Force, 1975), directed by Carlos Ortiz Tejeda in Mexico, and El golpe blanco (The White Coup, 1977), directed by Gerhard Schumann and Walter Heynowski in East Ger- many, showed the tragedy of a people who were the target of a cam- paign of violent repression without precedent in the history of Latin America. Together with the work of Chilean filmmakers, these films contributed to keeping alive the memory of a singular political process that the military government tried to exorcise through repression and terror.7 The Chilean filmmakers who had been forced to leave their country and to resettle in different parts of the world resumed their activity primarily by directing documentaries. The Chilean "cinema of resistance" was born as films made by Chileans living outside their country were put to the service of a concerted campaign of public education and pro- test. The documentarists, most of whom had directed only one or two films before the coup d'etat, became the intermediaries between Chile, its exile community, and those groups involved in the international solidarity campaigns. There is no doubt that the worldwide interest in Chilean events provided the necessary conditions of political and finan- cial support to sustain the cultural and artistic expressions of a com- munity in exile, but it was above all the shared formative experience of the Popular Unity period that motivated the artists to pursue their creative endeavors.8 The emphasis on political resistance and the recounting of the events of the Popular Unity period marked a first phase of the development of a cinema in exile. But as filmmakers settled in their respective coun- tries and the solidarity campaign became less prominent, these shifted to the analysis of the experience of exile. After 1978, documentaries produced by Chileans living abroad became less concerned with Chile per se and more intent on conveying the collective experience of Latin America and of individuals uprooted from their national origins. La historia es nuestra y la hacen los pueblos (History Is Ours and the People Make It, 1974), made in Germany by Alvaro Ramirez, uses archival material and direct-address interviews to tell the story of a people in struggle. La canci6n no muere, Generales (The Song Does Not 118 Chilean Documentary Monumental imagery of leadership: President Salvador Allende in The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzman and El Equipo Tercer Afio, 1974-79). Credit: Courtesy ICAIC Die, Generals, 1975), made in Sweden by Claudio Sapiain, proposes an imaginary trip across time. A song, "With My Soul Full of Flags," takes the spectator from the demonstrations on the streets of Santiago to those of Stockholm. Demonstrations of solidarity with Chile, with the Victor Jara Group singing in Stockholm, Quilapaylin giving a concert in London, or Inti-Illimani performing in the amphitheater at Verona, serve as the main thread of the film. La cancidn no muere, Generales involves the spectator emotionally as the filmmaker records his first experiences of exile. A los pueblos del mundo (To the Peoples of the World, 1975) de- nounces violence and military repression in Chile through the accounts of well-known Chilean personalities. Made by a collective in the United States, it makes an appeal for worldwide opposition to the Pinochet regime. Chilean filmmakers could not narrate the events that were tak- ing place with the same distanced objectivity as their international counterparts could. Thus, Nombre de guerra: Miguel Enriquez (Nom de Guerre: Miguel Enriquez, 1975), made by a collective in Cuba; Den- tro de cada sombra crece un vuelo (Within Every Shadow There Grows a Flight, 1976), made in Germany by Douglas Hubner; Lota 73 (1977), 119 made in Germany by Alvaro Ramirez and Beatriz GonzAlez; and Victor Jara vive (Victor Jara Lives, 1978), made in Sweden by Claudio Sapiain, are deeply personal documentaries whose emotional force springs from the need to denounce the brutal violence as it hit home to filmmakers. These films are predominantly intended to mobilize public sentiment against the Pinochet regime; their calls for resistance are typical of the political "voluntarism" that characterized solidarity groups organized abroad after 1973. The first exile documentaries contain most of the stylistic features of the Popular Unity cinema, although they are much more elaborately crafted, thanks to the filmmakers' access to advanced equipment and technical facilities. Sponsored and produced with the assistance of local labor unions and political organizations in the host countries, these works consolidated the cinematic apprenticeship of the younger genera- tion of filmmakers. It should be pointed out that only relatively rarely did Chilean filmmakers and Chilean technicians work together in exile. The majority of these documentaries were produced in conjunction with national groups, enabling the Chilean filmmakers to make contact with local film communities and new political perspectives. In this way, many filmmakers had to redefine their working methods and search for means of expression that would enable them to communicate the specifics of their own cultural and political practices to European and North Ameri- can audiences. There is no doubt that new conditions of production and contact with new audiences contributed greatly to the development of Chilean documentary and to the evolution of its thematic as well as formal con- cerns. Uprooted from their social and cultural environment, filmmakers in exile were forced to devise ways of transmitting their individual and collective national experience. The images and sounds of the Popular Unity period took on an emblematic function when utilized in a new context. Filmmakers began making films that illustrated the everyday experience of exile and recorded the assimilation of Chileans who settled in various countries. The need to safeguard the memory of the native land was gradually replaced by a thematics of exile based on a critical observation of the environment. Yo tambien recuerdo (IRemember Too, 1975), made by Leuten Rojas in Canada; Dos anos en Finlandia (Two Years in Finland, 1975), made by Angelina VAzquez; and Roja como Camila (Red Like Camila, 1976), made by Sergio Castilla in Sweden are chronicles of the memories of children and adults now faced with an uncertain present. The landscapes of the cities in which the Chilean ex- iles live, the new languages they must learn, and the work they must do provide means of overcoming a sense of emptiness. These documen- taries explore the individual and collective significance of exile, its so- Zuzana M. Pick 120 Chilean Documentary cial and political ramifications, and the desire to break through the con- fines of personal and cultural solitude. Although many documentaries by Chilean filmmakers in exile share the same themes, each of them is distinguished by individual nuances. Eramos una vez (Once Upon a Time We Were, 1979), made by Leonardo de la Barra in Belgium, and Los ojos como mi papd (Eyes Like My Father's, 1979), made by Pedro Chaskel in Cuba, show how children have responded to specific situations and how environment has determined certain reactions. Eramos una vez focuses above all on the gestures and games of Latin American children brought together at a summer camp near Brussels. Los ojos como mi papd communicates through in- terviews with Latin American children and adolescents the process of reflection and development experienced by young Chilean exiles in Cuba. The aggressiveness of a stage play performed by the children and the uneasy calm of the dormitory in Eramos una vez stand in sharp con- trast to the mature articulation of memories and everyday life in Los ojos como mi papd. The experience of other exiles also attracted Chilean filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s. Using documentary as a means of investigating their surroundings, filmmakers based in immigrant-settled countries began to depict experiences of other groups that resembled their own. Los Borges (The Borges Family, 1978), made by Marilui Mallet and pro- duced by the National Film Board of Canada, portrays a family of Por- tuguese immigrants in Montreal. Although it uses documentary tech- niques characteristic of Canadian "direct cinema," the observational mode is enriched by the level of identification established between the filmmaker and her subject. In Chez Mascotte (1981), made in Belgium, Leonardo de la Barra manages to capture the anguish and solitude of individuals trying to maintain their dignity at all costs, even though they feel completely abandoned by society. Here the filmmaker finds parallels in the European environment for the marginalizing forces in present-day Latin American society. The narrative and stylistic con- struction of Gente de todas partes, gente de ninguna parte (People from Everywhere, People from Nowhere, 1980), made by Valeria Sarmiento, correspond to what is generally considered "avant-garde" or "experimen- tal" cinema. This cinematic poem fixes in images the everyday life of the immigrant worker in France and proposes a critical reflection on the marginalization of the individual in consumer society. Sarmiento makes use of cutaways, inserts, and extreme close-ups to point out the forced anonymity, the unhealthy working conditions, and the vio- lence intrinsic to the environment. The urban landscapes of La Grande Borne, a Paris suburb, are the setting for fragmented lives where the aggressiveness of children's games coexists with the will to maintain 121 a sense of community. The images of this film, in the tradition of Ser- gio Bravo's early work with the Experimental Film Group, take on an unusual dimension through the expressive use of music and the ab- sence of dialogue. Chilean filmmakers resettled in Europe and in North America started traveling to other Latin American countries. Apuntes nicaragienses (Nicaraguan Notes, 1982) by Angelina Vazquez; El Evangelio de Solen- tiname (The Gospel in Solentiname, 1978), by Maril6 Mallet; and Nica- ragua: El sueno de Sandino (Nicaragua: The Dream of Sandino, 1982) by Leut6n Rojas and Leopoldo Gutierrez are expressions of the film- makers' encounter with a culture that is simultaneously new and familiar. These films propose to communicate directly with their poten- tial audiences in Finland and Canada without failing to present a Latin American point of view toward the political struggle in Central America. The use of direct-address interviews and the counterpoint provided by songs and poems are consistent with the Latin American cinematic tradition. However, the modes of representation confront non-Latin American spectators with a reality with which they are familiar only through television journalism. Chilean documentary filmmakers have thus taken on the role of cultural intermediaries, reaffirming their com- mitment to the political vocation of Latin American cinema, even though their films are produced in Europe or in North America. Certain Chilean filmmakers have also produced experimental works with kinds of narrative structure unfamiliar to Chilean or Latin American cinema. Their films mark a clear departure from the conven- tions associated with Latin American documentary. These essay-films contain a fictional element that is an integral part of the perception of personal and collective reality, thus reformulating the traditional pat- terns of both fictional and documentary films with a new dramatic in- tention. El hombre cuando es hombre (A Man When He Is a Man, 1982), made in Costa Rica by Valeria Sarmiento, deconstructs the social, cul- tural, and historical codes of Latin American machismo. Sarmiento uses popular forms of expression, like songs and dances, to draw a kaleido- scopic portrait of Latin American romanticism in order to examine its oppressive social ramifications. In Under the Table (1984), made in Canada, Luis Oswaldo Garcia seeks to give a poignant account of the life of illegal immigrants in Toronto. The filmmaker stages their testi- monies as a means of bringing home to the viewer their anguish, fear, and loneliness. In the autobiographical Journal inachevd (Unfinished Diary, 1982), made in Canada by Maril' Mallet, the city of Montreal where the exiled filmmaker lives is a place of impermanence and the domestic environment the only setting in which creativity can predomi- nate. Mallet proposes a reflection on the fragmentation of the experi- Zuzana M. Pick 122 Chilean Documentary The subject as object, cinematic self-portraiture: Journal inacheve (Marili Mallet, 1982). Credit: Cinema Libre, Inc. ence of exile and on the ambiguity of a present solely defined on the basis of shreds of a remembered past. In Si vivieramos juntos (If We Lived Together, 1983), made in Germany by novelist-filmmaker An- tonio Skarmeta, Berlin is treated not as a backdrop but as the place where different cultures come together. A reunion of Chilean friends, all of them performers and artists, is the pretext for evoking experi- ences of diverse new environments. Constructed like diaries, the films of Marilui Mallet and Antonio Skarmeta record the artists' integration into new living spaces and their interrelation with individuals whose cultural and national experiences are different from their own. In this context, the contribution of the most prolific of all the exiled Chilean filmmakers is exemplary. Each of the documentary films made by Raul Ruiz, who lived in Paris, is a reexamination of film practice. No other Latin American filmmaker has been so adept at taking ad- vantage of commissioned work to further his own creative agenda. Rail Ruiz has made a series of documentaries for French television and the National Audiovisual Institute that have revolutionized traditional forms of didactic documentary. Les divisions de la nature (Divisions 123 Zuzana M. Pick of Nature, 1978), Sotelo (1977), Classification des plantes (Classification of Plants, 1982), Querelle des jardins (War of the Gardens, 1982), and foremost Des grands evenements et de gens ordinaires (Of Great Events and Ordinary People, 1979) all demonstrate the wealth of documentary's ludic possibilities. The palace of Chambord, the work of a Chilean painter, the world of botany and French gardens, and a national elec- tion campaign in a Paris neighborhood all become subjects for an in- vestigation into representation, language, and environmental percep- tion. Rail Ruiz has gone beyond the self-reflexive documentary as he questions the means by which reality is constructed. Des grands evenements et de gens ordinaires takes on the Grier- sonian conventions that characterize the Latin American didactic documentary. As the ironic and critical narrator of the film, Ruiz breaks away from the traditional means of achieving rhetorical coherence. What begins as an investigation into the social and political climate of a popular Parisian neighborhood ends up being a dialectical critique of traditional assumptions about documentary filmmaking practice. Ruiz's eloquent experiments blend heterogeneous and often contradictory ele- ments to acknowledge how dominant cultural practices are the result of a contest between diverse subcultures. The output of Chilean filmmakers in exile has grown more diversi- fied since 1980, stimulated in part by a greater awareness of its unique character. The intensification of oppositional film production inside Chile has added another dimension to the development of Chilean documen- tary, affirming the existence of differing cinematographic practices in- side and outside national borders. Documentary in Chile under Pinochet With the dismantling of Chile Films, the padlocking of ar- chives, the closing of film schools, and the forced exile of Chilean filmmakers, documentary production in Chile came to an abrupt halt after 1973. The junta's attempt to produce documentaries that would justify their actions backfired. The "cultural" project of the military regime initially consisted in silencing all opposition and trenchantly discouraging autonomous cultural expression in favor of the laws of supply and demand as defined by "los Chicago boys"- the technocrats who implemented Milton Friedman's brand of monetarism in Chile. As far as cinema was concerned, the success of the new social and economic order depended on the distribution and exhibition sectors because the junta was loath to countenance the resumption of national film pro- duction. By 1978, owing to the putative "economic boom" and to agree- 124 Chilean Documentary ments signed with the Motion Picture Association of America, Chile had become one of the most profitable markets in Latin America for the multinational film corporations.9 After a period of adaptation to the repressive tactics of the mili- tary, filmmakers and artists who remained in the country began the struggle to claim a small space in an environment dominated by im- ported cultural products. Traditional forms of cultural expression- music, folk art, and popular theater-were reborn in reaction to the massive importation of foreign products and official efforts to eradi- cate all remnants of the past. Two levels of artistic expression coexist in Chile today, one clandes- tine and another open, and although they do not share the same space, both partake of the same political commitment. It is essential to point out that all artistic practice has become an expression of resistance to the Pinochet regime. The role played by community groups in organiz- ing cultural activities in the shantytowns and the church's support of social activities, alongside the initiatives taken by artists' groups, have given rise to new forms of oppositional art, from street theater to avant- garde performance art. Being both militant and marginal, these cul- tural expressions have sustained a sense of Chilean national identity, filling the gap left open by officially endorsed culture.10 Film production in today's Chile is rigidly circumscribed by prevail- ing economic and ideological conditions and limitations on social and cultural expression. The production of feature films is hindered by the near-impossibility of realizing a return on investment, and advertis- ing and television work have become the major sources of employment for marginalized filmmakers. The massive importation of foreign pro- ducts has been detrimental to national culture, but accessibility to ver- satile new technologies - such as videotape recordings and Super-8 - has ironically benefited clandestine and oppositional production. As filmmakers have been denied access to official means of distribution and exhibition, they are compelled to reach their audiences through alternative networks. The public debate on censorship and culture in- tensified during a brief period of relative political liberalization in 1982, but subsequently repression intensified, in response to increased opposition to the military regime, with the proclamation of states of emergency.' Documentary filmmakers in contemporary Chile have surveyed the social and cultural environment, documenting those aspects of daily life systematically ignored by the official media. Like the documentar- ists of the sixties, they have gone into the countryside and into the shantytowns, searching out the eloquent voices of men, women, and 125 Zuzana M. Pick children struggling to survive. At first sight, this documentary cinema appears aesthetically poor and technically underdeveloped. Its elo- quence derives from a will to combat alienation and passivity. Films such as Pepe Donoso (on one of Chile's most prominent novel- ists), Cachureos (on poet Nicanor Parra), and Samuel Romdn, escultor y hombre (Samuel Romin, the Sculptor and the Man) shot in film and video by Carlos Flores del Pino, Guillermo Cahn, and Sergio Bravo, respectively, are more than simple portraits of some of the country's leading artists. The films preserve their particular artistic practices as an integral part of national cultural history. These voices echo those of a community that refuses to be silenced. With El Charles Bronson chileno o identicamente iguales (The Chilean Charles Bronson, or Exactly Alike, 1979-84), Carlos Flores del Pino drew a portrait of a Chilean Charles Bronson look-alike to inves- tigate the phenomenon of second-hand identity. Tantas vidas, una historia (So Many Lives, One Story, 1983), directed by Tatiana Gavi- ola; El Willy y la Maria (Willy and Maria, 1983), directed by David Benavente; and Forjando la esperanza (Forging Hope, 1983), directed by the La Pastoral Obrera collective, are accounts of life in Santiago's shantytowns.'2 Through direct-address interviews, the women and young people speak of the social and economic hardships of thousands of Chileans who in spite of the much vaunted "economic miracle" have been completely marginalized under the Pinochet regime. Their efforts to organize themselves and to overcome even the most difficult condi- tions are moving expressions of a people's renewed combativeness. Romance para el otro Santiago (Ballad for the Other Santiago, 1982), directed by Joaquin Eyzaguirre; Carrete de verano (Carting into Sum- mer, 1984), directed by Marcos de Aguirre and Patricia Mora; and Guer- reros pacifistas (Pacifist Warriors, 1984), directed by Gonzalo Justiniano, are films about the evolution of Chile's social fabric. The uneven mod- ernization of Santiago's urban landscape, the hollow aspirations of pam- pered adolescents who congregate at fashionable seaside resorts, and the mimetic behavior of Chilean "punks" are treated with empathy. These documentaries are characteristic of the younger filmmakers' dis- creet approach to potentially controversial subject matter. Other documentarists have defied the official coverup of one of the military's most brutal crimes by producing No olvidar (Not to Forget, 1982). Shot over a period of two years, this documentary is the chronicle of an abandoned mine, near the town of Lonquen, blown up in 1979 allegedly to erase all traces of the mass murder of peasants and coal workers that occurred there in 1973. The film constitutes the only tan- gible proof of the regime's ruthless tactics.13 While the aforementioned documentaries have been produced inde- 126 Chilean Documentary The culture of the simulacrum: El Charles Bronson chileno (Carlos Flores del Pino, 1985). Credit: courtesy Zuzana M. Pick pendently and have received only limited public exposure, they still belong to the open sphere of cultural production. Other films have been made secretly. Filmmaking in essentially clandestine conditions has developed hand-in-hand with political militancy in opposition to the regime. The anguish of the relatives of the "disappeared" first became known outside Chile through Recado de Chile (Message from Chile, 1979), shot by an anonymous collective. More filmmakers working in collectives have produced diverse types of documentary testimonios by videotaping events and situations suppressed in the information blackouts periodically imposed on the country. The immediacy of their subject matter, the political relevance of their "underground" modes of distribution, and their implications for political action make these short videos essential tools of resistance. The increased activity of unofficial opposition groups and the de- sire to mobilize international opinion around the Chilean situation have brought about a series of joint projects between filmmakers working inside and outside the country. The Cine-ojo (Cinema-Eye) collective produced Chile, no invoco tu nombre en vano (Chile, I Don't Take Your Name in Vain, 1984) as a means of documenting the successive "days 127 Zuzana M. Pick of national protest" organized in 1983 just before the tenth anniver- sary of the military coup. The film brings the spectator close to the street violence, as cameras and individuals defy the soldiers, while the sound track resounds wilth gunfire and angry slogans. Since then, exiled filmmakers have traveled to Chile to produce other documentaries of political resistance. Memorias de una guerra cotidiana (Memories of an Everyday War, 1986), directed by Gast6n Ancelovici and produced by the National Film Board of Canada, centers on the various manifestations of social and political violence that have con- stituted the daily experience of Chileans since 1983. Acta general de Chile (General Report from Chile), directed by Miguel Littin and pro- duced by Spanish television, documents the filmmaker's clandestine return to his country in a series of four hour-long segments. Though Littin's film has garnered greater international attention, thanks in part to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book La aventura de Miguel Littin clandestino en Chile, Memorias de una guerra cotidiana promises to be of lasting interest to exiled Chileans, international solidarity workers, and historians of documentary film alike. Chile's experience since the sixties poses unprecedented challenges to the concept of national cinema. The brief period of the Popular Unity government awakened a revolutionary enthusiasm that did not end with the coup d'etat of 1973. Chilean filmmakers in exile have undertaken a continuous redefinition of their artistic practice. The experience of exile, with all its social and political ramifications, has broadened the political dimensions of their work. Filmmakers who have remained in Chile are engaged in the search for alternative strategies through which to express their opposition to the military regime. Chilean documentary films, therefore, remain committed to cultural and social change, while political and geographical dislocations have prompted a reassessment of the social functions of cinema and video. Questioning its own cultural and political relevance, but still uphold- ing a strong sense of national identity, Chilean documentary articu- lates the political and social contradictions of contemporary Chile and contemporary Chileans. NOTES An earlier version of this article originally appeared under the title "La imagen cinematogr fica y la representaci6n de la realidad," in Literatura chilena, crea- ci6n y crntica 8, no. 27 (January-March 1984), 34-40. The present version, translated by Christina Shantz, was revised and expanded by the author in col- laboration with Julianne Burton. The section on documentary in Chile under Pinochet was written for this version. Reprinted by permission. 128 Chilean Documentary 1. Alicia Vega, Re-visidn del cine chileno (Santiago: Editorial Aconcagua, 1979), p. 204. 2. A group of feature films- Tres tristes tigres (Three Sad Tigers, 1967), directed by Ra61 Ruiz; El Chacal de Nahueltoro (The Jackal of Nahueltoro, 1968), directed by Miguel Littin; Valparaiso mi amor (Valparaiso My Love, 1969), di- rected by Aldo Francia; and Caliche sangriento (Bloody Nitrate, 1969), directed by Helvio Soto-seemed to show the way for a fictional production that was in tune with changing conditions in Chile. During the Popular Unity period, however, few fiction films were made. The most ambitious fiction project of the time -Manuel Rodriguez - to be produced by Chile Films and directed by Pa- tricio Guzmtn, was dropped in favor of the documentary project that eventu- ally became The Battle of Chile. The coup delayed the completion or prevented the release of films like La tierra prometida (The Promised Land, 1972-75), di- rected by Miguel Littin; La expropiaci6n (The Expropriation, 1972-74), directed by Raul Ruiz; and Queridos compan-eros (Dear Comrades, 1972-75), directed by Pablo de la Barra, finished in Cuba, Germany, and Venezuela, respectively. 3. The creation of the Experimental Film Group coincided with the found- ing of the Documentary Film School of Santa Fe in Argentina, as well as with the early documentary work of Nelson Pereira dos Santos in Brazil, and the production of El megano (The Charcoal Worker), a neorealist antecedent of revolutionary Cuban cinema. 4. These documentaries have been shown along with fiction films from the Popular Unity period in retrospectives of Chilean cinema organized in Eu- rope and in Latin America since the coup d'6tat; they are on deposit at the Cuban Film Archive (Cinemateca de Cuba) in Havana. 5. Chile Films, S.A., was established through CORFU (Corporaci6n de Fomento a la Producci6n) to produce feature-length fiction films for commer- cial distribution. In 1965, the Eduardo Frei administration appointed Patricio Kaulen director of Chile Films, and in 1967 legislation was passed favoring the development of national cinema. The technical facilities at Chile Films were made available during the Popular Unity period to filmmakers not employed by the company, which helped to encourage production of fiction films as well as documentaries. Following the coup d'etat, many employees were fired and the Chile Film archives were presumably destroyed. (The extent of the destruc- tion remains unclear because access to the archives is severely restricted.) 6. Many valuable documents on Chilean history were saved when mate- rials gathered for this documentary and other originals filmed in Chile were smuggled out of the country in the months following the coup. Los pufios frente al cadn includes footage from Sergio Bravo's Las Banderas del pueblo and the burial of the socialist labor leader Luis Emilio Recabarren as filmed by Pelle- grini in 1924. The original footage of these documentaries is believed to have been destroyed by the military. 7. See Guy Hennebelle and Alfonso Gumucio Dagr6n, eds., Les Cinemas d'Amerique Latine (Paris: Lherminier, 1981), pp. 226-27, which includes a com- plete filmography of films on Chile made by foreign filmmakers. 8. As of 1985, more than 176 films had been produced in exile, of which 58 are feature-length, 34 are medium-length, and the remainder are shorts. After 1983, video production increased dramatically. 129 Zuzana M. Pick 9. See Maria de la Luz Hurtado, La industria cinematogrdfica en Chile: Limites y posibilidades de su democratizaci6n (Santiago: Ceneca, 1985), which is the most comprehensive statistical study on the current state of distribu- tion and exhibition in Chile. Jorge A. Schnitman, Film Industries in Latin America: Dependency and Development (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Cor- poration, 1984) also contains relevant material on Chile. 10. Resistance through artistic expression is being fostered by organiza- tions as diverse as ICTUS, an important theater company that has diversified its activity with the production, distribution, and exhibition of films and videos; the Mapocho Cultural Center, set up by progressive journalists, artists, and cultural workers; the Vicariate of Solidarity set up by the Roman Catholic church; and Ceneca, an independent research center. The cultural branches of the French, German, British, and Canadian embassies have played an impor- tant role in the dissemination of cultural materials and exchanges between Chilean and foreign artists, writers, and filmmakers. 11. Between 1973 and 1985, more than 73 films and videos were produced inside Chile, (12 feature-length, 32 medium-length, and 29 shorts). Only 27 of the total were shot on celluloid; the others are videos. See Zuzana Pick and Fe- dora Robles, "Una decada de cine chileno, 1974-1984," Enfoque (Santiago), no. 5 (Spring 1985), 73-82, for a chronology of films and videos; and Jessica Ulloa, Video independiente en Chile (Santiago: Ceneca-Cencosep, 1985), for a detailed breakdown of video production in Chile. 12. The relative autonomy of the Vicariate of Solidarity has also permitted the creation of an alternative network for film and video, and in particular for materials used as complements to its social work. 13. This film, first shown outside Chile in 1982, was attributed to the Colec- tivo Memoria. When it was finally released by the censorship board in 1984, a few months before the imposition of a state of siege, No olvidar was credited to Ignacio Agfiero. 130 6 SANTIAGO ALVAREZ: FROM DRAMATIC FORM TO DIRECT CIMENA John Mraz This chapter discusses two poles of documentary cinema- "direct," based on the long take, synchronous sound, and minimal manifest di- rectorial intervention, and "dramatic," based on juxtaposition, contra- puntal sound, and blatant manipulations that foreground the direc- tor's role - as they are manifested in the thirty-year career of Cuba's premiere documentary filmmaker. Following Lukdcs, Mraz associates dramatic artistic forms with dynamic periods of history and descrip- tive forms with periods in which the impulse to change is frustrated. Alvarez's key works-from Cicl6n (Hurricane, 1963) to Mi hermano Fidel (My Brother Fidel, 1979)-illustrate the historical dynamics of the Cuban revolution. Mraz links his analysis of these films and Alva- rez's overall stylistic development to the domestic and international events that have shaped Cuban politics and ideology. For Mraz, Al- varez's most creative period- characterized by ideological intensity and stylistic improvisation, aggressive montages of music, sound effects, images, and intertitles - coincided with the sociopolitical effervescence of the 1965-1970 period. He views Alvarez's stylistic shift to more static forms after 1970 as consistent with the reorienta- tion of political priorities entailed in the "institutionalization" of the revolution. OVER THE past three decades, documentary has been the privileged mode of cinematic expression in revolutionary Cuba, consti- tuting some 90 percent of production. It is not surprising that the most renowned director of social documentaries in Latin America is a Cuban, Santiago Alvarez.' Restricted - but not resigned - to a spec- tator's role before the triumph of the revolution, Alvarez was a founder of Nuestro Tiempo, a leftist cultural society that combined film view- ing with political education, and on several occasions he was arrested 131 John Mraz for his participation in the struggle against the dictator Fulgencio Ba- tista. Shortly after the victory of 1 January 1959, Alvarez joined with other members of Nuestro Tiempo - Alfredo Guevara, Julio Garcia Es- pinosa, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Jose Massip, and Manuel Octavio G6mez -to form ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cine- matogr afico), the Cuban Film Institute. Founder and still director of ICAIC's Latin American Newsreel (Noticiero Latinoamericano), Alva- rez has directed some 80 documentaries and more than 500 weekly newsreels. Equally important, Alvarez and the ICAIC Newsreel have served as a school for Cuba's cineastes, training young filmmakers and production artists through a constant emphasis on material reality - the essence of the revolution's cinematic inspiration. Although he describes his cinema as an amalgam of Marxism- Leninism and Castroism, Alvarez has insistently refused to theorize about his work.2 Stating that he became a filmmaker by "handling mil- lions of feet of film," he asserts that his style is dictated by the par- ticular reality he is filming and the imperatives of making a weekly newsreel. Rejecting the idea of "objectivity" as a "false pretext that is used to fool the people," Alvarez believes that his documentaries must function not only as witnesses to the historical changes taking place, but also as protagonists defending and extending the gains of the revo- lution. The success of his work, he affirms, derives directly from his immersion in Cuban reality - "We don't have to use sunlight from other latitudes to illuminate the images of our cinema." Alvarez argues that films that do not communicate with the masses cannot be thought of as revolutionary. Though Alvarez resists theoretical formulations, he shows a marked preference for a particular formal device: montage, which he considers the "secret" of the filmmaker's art. The dominant characteristic of his style is its extraordinarily rhythmic blend of visual and aural forms. He uses everything at hand to convey his message: live and historical documentary footage, still photos, bits from television programs and fiction films, animation, and an eclectic range of audio accompaniment. Believing that "50 percent of the value of a film is in the sound track,"3 Alvarez mixes eclectic combinations of rock, classical, and tropical music, sound effects, participant narration-enhanced by periodic silence - to accompany the often furious pace of his visual images. He routinely listens to the music he has selected before editing each se- quence. For Alvarez, film has its own language - different from that of television or radio - and the essence of its idiom is constructed on the editing table. Alvarez is best known for the rapid-fire montage form he developed in the 1960s, and it is instructive to compare those films with the pre- 132 Santiago Alvarez vailing style of U.S. documentaries from that period. The dramatic editing structure of Alvarez's early works-for example, Now (1965), LBJ (1968), or 79 primaveras (Seventy-nine Springtimes, 1969), is dia- metrically opposed to the "long take" form of the "direct cinema" ap- proach that dominated U.S. production during that decade.4 As seen most clearly in the films of Richard Leacock (such as Happy Mother's Day, 1963), Frederick Wiseman (High School, 1968), and the Maysles brothers (Salesman, 1969), the proponents of direct cinema strove for directorial invisibility as a supposed guarantor of objectivity. Alvarez insistently makes his presence felt through the manipulation of sound and image and the imprint of his own undisguised revolutionary fervor. The style of montage that brought Alvarez such renown in the 1960s might be characterized as "dramatic form," following Sergei Eisenstein's definition of the "dramatic principle": "Montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots - shots even opposite to one an- other."5 Here meaning is essentially the result of the juxtaposition of independent shots, and a visual discourse is articulated through the relationships created in the evolving montage. This montage is further developed by the juxtaposition of sound-usually music-typically not derived from the visual source. This structure emphasizes how the mean- ing of any shot is determined by the set of relations-the cinematic context -in which it is placed. If this technique appears to be didactic (note its extensive use in the best U.S. television advertising), it also implies a more active and creative role for both filmmaker and viewer. Direct cinema relies on the long take, where the emphasis falls on the image as such, rather than on the relations between images. Inspired by the invention of lightweight synchronous-sound equipment, direct cinema makes greater use of the source sound coming directly from the image, as in interviews. This form appears to encourage viewers to come to their own conclusions; it is a cinema of observation and the "objec- tive" recording of reality. Obviously, one cannot consider the politics of form independently of the content depicted. Nonetheless, the differences between dramatic form and direct cinema shed light on the ideological implications of for- mal structure and its relation to historical context. Georg LukAcs pro- posed an interesting schema for analyzing literary creation through the concepts of narrative and descriptive methods. He believed that nar- rative (dramatic form) corresponds to dynamic historical periods. He points to the example of Leo Tolstoy, whose novels were written at a time when capitalism was triumphing over feudalism; his characters are defined by their deeds, by their roles in the struggle of contending forces. Lukacs contrasts this to the descriptive method of Emile Zola, whom he locates in the decadence of late European capitalism; descrip- 133 tion belongs to a period in which action becomes increasingly impos- sible. Thus - as in direct cinema - the emphasis is on standing outside of, observing, and describing social and psychological phenomena. Lu- kacs asserts that the descriptive mode becomes dominant in periods in which, because of social causes, the purposiveness of the "essential" - the world-historical- moment has been lost.6 The 1960s were Cuba's "essential moment." The triumph of the revo- lution created the first territorio libre and the only socialist state in the Americas. The excitement of constituting new political, social, and cultural forms carried beyond Cuba's borders. Challenging both U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere and the Soviet policy of peaceful coexis- tence, Cuba supported guerrilla focos throughout Latin America as well as linking itself to Asian and African struggles in an effort to create an independent Third World socialism. Cuba also hosted major con- vocations of the international left such as the Tricontinental Confer- ence of 1966, the Organization of Latin American States in 1967, and the Cultural Congress of 1968. Guerrillismo in Cuba focused on the gestation of Che Guevara's "new man" through the use of moral incentives and an emphasis on voluntarism - the belief in the primacy of will over material factors - that led to the "revolutionary offensive" of 1968 and the attempted but unsuccessful 10-million-ton harvest of 1969-1970. The exhilaration of "making history" produced a cultural exuberance that was particularly evident in the 1965-1970 period, when poster artists, historians, pho- tographers, writers, and - above all - filmmakers engaged in radical ex- perimentation in order to express the profound transformations then taking place and - for perhaps the first time - to discover an authentic Cuban voice after centuries of colonial and neocolonial subjugation. However, effervescence was not the only order of the day in Cuba of the 1960s, for the young revolution also suffered from its heritage of underdevelopment and aggression at the hands of the richest and most powerful nation in the world. The United States attempted an invasion of the island, and imposed an economic blockade that severely handicapped Cuba's efforts to reorganize the national economy and over- come underdevelopment. In addition, the U.S.-led campaign to isolate Cuba within Latin America was so successful that only Mexico refused to break relations with the new Cuban government. Such isolation made Cuba's strategy of forging a bloc of independent socialist states more difficult and more essential. This combination of revolutionary effervescence and economic dis- tress was the context for what might be called the twin pillars of San- tiago Alvarez's documentary aesthetic: urgency and improvisation. Im- provisation is, of course, a familiar phenomenon in the Third World. 134 John Mraz Santiago Alvarez If their expense makes spare parts or machine replacements hard to come by in countries like Mexico, the U.S.-imposed economic blockade makes them absolutely unavailable in Cuba and Nicaragua. For Alva- rez, urgency - the anguished desperation to end hunger, injustice, im- perialist warfare - is a primary motivation of a revolutionary filmmaker. Documentary films are useful to the Third World, he contends, precisely because of the speed with which they can be made. "Whatever fears exist that such immediacy, urgency, and dynamism may weigh down or damage the possibility of artistic creation are nothing more than prejudices against creating works of art that are also weapons."7 In Third World filmmaking, the relationship between the material base of production and aesthetic creativity is direct and immediate. Alvarez has often stated that his montage form is primarily the result of necessity: the demands of producing a weekly synthesis for the ICAIC Newsreel and the need to use still photos in a creative and interesting manner. The dramatic collages he has created are a product of the lim- ited access to archival footage caused by the U.S. blockade; this is a relatively economic filmmaking technique. The aesthetic effects of im- provisation can be seen, for example, in LBJ, where the lack of an anamorphic lens to "unsqueeze" Cinemascope footage produces a dis- tortion that serves as a powerful metaphor for the deforming misrepre- sentations of the "Hollywood Dream Machine."8 The relation between aesthetics and economics can be appreciated as well in the form Alvarez developed for the weekly newsreel. There, confronted by the reality that only a limited number of copies can be put into circulation at one time, and aware of the problem of "yester- day's news," Alvarez created a style that is both immediately efficient and durable. The monothematic structure of the noticieros - and the artistic force with which they are elaborated - makes them essentially indistinguishable from documentary films; and, in fact, many of Al- varez's best-known documentaries either are, or had their beginnings as newsreels: for example, Cicl6n (Hurricane, 1963), Now (1965), Cerro Pelado (1966), Despegue a las 18:00 (Takeoff at Eighteen Hundred Hours, 1969). Inspired by revolutionary commitment, Alvarez shows clearly how to use the limitations of underdevelopment to advantage. The first noticiero to give evidence of a ground-breaking filmmak- ing style was Cicl6n. Made in 1963, this twenty-two-minute black-and- white documentary dealt with the devastating effects of Hurricane Flora, which lashed the eastern portion of Cuba repeatedly over sev- eral days, and the rescue operations undertaken in Camagiiey and Oriente. Cicldn is a militantly dialectical work: rather than shedding liberal tears over the fallen, the documentary emphasizes organization and solidarity in meeting the needs of the stricken. Michael Chanan 135 PART I Establishing Shots John Mraz has argued that the central symbol of the film is not Castro (who ap- pears directing the rescue operations), but the helicopters whose blades serve as a "symbol of the command of socialism over the forces of na- ture"9 - a very different image from those of Alvarez's films of the 1970s and 1980s, which often overaccentuate the figure of Fidel to the exclu- sion of other elements and agents of the revolution. Cicl6n lacks the elaborate visual montage that Alvarez was shortly to develop, but the film shows great innovation in the use of sound. Concerned to make his documentaries more "fluid," Alvarez eliminated the stentorian nar- rator of his early films -for example, Muerte al invasor (Death to the Invaders, 1961), and limited his audio track to source sounds of trucks and helicopters and organ music, which eerily punctuates scenes of aid to the injured and burial of the dead. This was the first film in which Alvarez made extensive use of music to complement the images. How- ever, the most effective audio element in the work may well be the post- synched sound of helicopters. In unliberated Third World countries, and among the anticapitalist movement in the developed world, the helicopter is a terrifying machine that represents the arrival of the forces of repression. Even in Hollywood films - for example, Apocalypse Now and E.T. -it has come to connote awesome, abusive power. In Cicl6n, the noise of the helicopter blades represents medical assistance and signs of revolutionary solidarity in the form of food and clothing. Unwilling to leave the benefits of technological advance to the enemy, Alvarez here appropriates the helicopter as a symbol of the revolution. The expressive uses Alvarez made of still photos and music in con- structing his film-collages during the cultural effervescence of 1965- 1970 continued this process of "appropriation and recontextualizing." By using U.S. photos in his dramatic montages, he consciously "reappro- priated" images produced under imperialism, transforming their mean- ing and "restoring their truth" by inserting them into a revolutionary cinematic context. Alvarez performed a similar operation with music, using a variety of strategies - from the mocking association of U.S. tele- vision themes with counterrevolutionaries to the appropriation of rock and roll to express the energy and international solidarity unleashed by the struggle against imperialism both inside and beyond U.S. borders. In early 1965, Che Guevara articulated Cuba's militant anticolonial- ism when, in his last public appearance, he declared that it was time to throw off the yoke of imperialism "in this battle without quarter."10 The machine gun staccato with which Alvarez spelled out "NOW!" at the end of the film of that name echoed Che's anger and resolve. Now is a six-minute compilation of still photos and pirated newsreel footage dealing with the repression and resistance in the U.S. civil rights move- ment. The images are edited to the rhythm of the title song sung by 136 Santiago Alvarez Lena Horne." Produced in 1965, the film seems almost a compendium of that period's concerns. Not just a denunciation of oppression but a call to battle, Now fused art and ideology with a dialectical power hitherto untapped in Cuban cinema. By cutting from the chained hands of arrested blacks to the linked arms of protestors - black and white - Alvarez demonstrates that people are more than victims or products of their circumstances, that through collective struggle they can revolutionize their activity and transform their situation. The historicizing emphasis so characteristic of Cuban cinema is present even in this - the shortest of Alvarez's works - in the insertion of news clippings from the 1930s and the lyrics of the song: "I went and took a look I In my old history book I It's there in black and white / For all to see." In this work, the condemnation of racial op- pression is tied to internationalism and armed struggle with a force and an urgency that would characterize the following five years in Cuba: "'NO W is the struggle / NO W the truth / NO W the victory I/ ... because NOW is the moment."12 The succeeding year, 1966, was known as the "Year of Solidarity" - the first of three years to bear names attesting to Cuba's international concerns. January's Tricontinental Conference was the largest convoca- tion of Third World militants ever assembled. Among Alvarez's con- tributions to this international focus was Cerro Pelado, a thirty-four- minute chronicle of the Cuban athletic team's participation in the Tenth Central American and Caribbean Games held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Prompted by U.S. efforts to block Cuba's participation, Alvarez con- verted a theme of apparently little transcendent significance into a lasting denunciation of colonialism - thereby providing perhaps the clearest instance of his assertion that the scripts for his films are al- most always "written by the enemy" and that his style is a "hatred of imperialism." The United States attempted to prevent Cuban participation in the games, first by refusing visas, then by insisting that the Cubans enter Puerto Rico through another country. The Cubans rejected these con- ditions. The film depicts the voyage on the Cuban ship, Cerro Pelado (Bald Mountain). As the ship approached the neighboring island of Puerto Rico, the United States sent warplanes to intercept it. Alvarez cuts from the circling planes to scenes of air warfare in Vietnam, sug- gesting bonds between these Third World nations. Alvarez then pro- ceeds to document the miseries of colonial domination in Puerto Rico: starving children juxtaposed to signs in English promising the good life. At the core of the film is the theme of the colonial relation between the United States and Latin America. Alvarez portrays this not only through the misery of Puerto Rico, but also with documentary footage 137 John Mraz The militant art of image-recycling: First World social problems synthesized by the Third World spectator using First World sources in Now (Santiago Alvarez, 1965). Credit: ICAIC of the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic, where U.S. marines are seen humiliating and finally killing a Dominican. Alvarez also in- dicts the more subtle forms of imperial domination, as in his satiric use of the theme from the Lone Ranger radio and television series (Rossini's overture to William Tell) over images of a training camp for Cuban counterrevolutionaries - a trenchant comment that exposes the cowboy mentality of the United States and its mercenaries. The year 1967, named by Cuba the "Year of Heroic Vietnam," marked the apex of the period's emphasis on international solidarity, volun- tarism, and armed struggle. In April, one of the documents that most defined the era, Che Guevara's "Message to the Tricontinental," called for "two, three, many Vietnams."13 The cinematic counterpart to Che's vision of those struggles - "with their share of death and immense trage- dies, their everyday heroism and repeated blows against imperialism"- is Alvarez's Hanoi, martes 13 (Hanoi, Tuesday the Thirteenth), a thirty- eight-minute documentary film shot in Vietnam in 1967. The structure of Hanoi, martes 13, one of the director's masterpieces, portrays the tenacity of Vietnamese culture in the face of outside ag- gression. The film begins with color images of Vietnamese art, accom- 138 Santiago Alvarez The lyrical intimacy of cross-cultural solidarity: Hanoi martes 13 (Santiago Alvarez, 1967). Credit: ICAIC panied by a voice-over narration of Jos6 Marti's descriptions of the nineteenth-century Anamites (as inhabitants of Southeast Asia were then called). However, this sequence of idyllic etchings is disrupted by the birth of a deformed Texas monster, Lyndon Baines Johnson (who a year later was to be the subject of the searing eighteen-minute short by Alvarez entitled LBJ). Following a montage of well-known press photos of Johnson, the film displays images of U.S. antiwar protests and attempts to suppress them. Through this material, Alvarez em- phasizes a motif familiar to Cubans since the time of Jos6 Marti: the enemy is not the people of the United States, but the rulers. The tick- ing clocks of the credit sequence suggest that time is running out for this privileged class. The body of the film documents the quiet dignity and determina- tion of the Vietnamese in the face of U.S. bombardments. We see fisher- men delicately flip fish into holding tanks and rice farmers toiling in their paddies, ancient rifles strapped across their backs. Suddenly, the piercing roar of a jet interrupts these peaceful scenes and the exquisitely serene music (scored by Cuban composer Leo Brouwer). The farmers 139 John Mraz stop working and fire at the planes. The planes depart, the farmers re- turn to work, and the simple strains of music resume. A line of women pass rocks from hand to hand, rocks that will be used to build shelters. The film cuts to an intertitle: "We turn hatred into energy." Here, en- ergy takes on forms particular to the Third World: bare feet holding up under immense loads, bicycles heaped with impossible cargos, people weaving mats with toes as well as fingers, railroads built by human labor rather than by machines. The film returns to this intertitle, "Hatred into energy," and moves to Hanoi where, amid daily activities -children eating ice cream and families piled on bicycles - war is ever present. Helmets are visible through the sea of familiar pyramidal hats, and the backdrop for a col- lective photo in the park is a row of individual bomb shelters. Again, abruptly, the film cuts to bombs exploding. The streets empty. Chil- dren's eyes peer fearfully out of bomb shelters. The planes leave and we are confronted with the horrors of civilian bombing: people using small pans of water to put out fires in the little that remains of their homes, rows of children's coffins and tiny faces covered with sheets, death and destruction among those least able to defend themselves. Alvarez is never content to simply denounce oppression; he goes on to show the response to aggression. Captured U.S. fliers are paraded through the streets of Hanoi, and coffins covered with U.S. flags flash through an insert in Lyndon Johnson's head. The music changes its tone; without losing its tranquility, it becomes more determined- mirroring the attitude displayed by the Vietnamese troops as they march toward victory. This sequence demonstrates how far Alvarez had come from conventional newsreel treatments. In Muerte al invasor (1961) he had constructed a similar montage, cutting from children wounded as a result of the Bay of Pigs bombing to Cuban citizens marching through the streets. There, however, the bothersome narra- tion weighed down the visual dialectic. Hanoi, martes 13 is Alvarez at his best: deft and subtle, simple but powerful. The film ends with the same color images of Vietnamese paintings with which it began. The viewer has had the rare experience of seeing a work that is both re- portage and thoroughly committed art. In his influential "Message to the Tricontinental," Guevara had writ- ten that death would be welcome as long as his battle cry reached a receptive ear and another hand stretched out to take up his rifle. Death surprised the indomitable guerrilla in early October 1967, when he was captured and executed in Bolivia. Among the many funeral odes to Guevara was Alvarez's Hasta la victoria siempre (Ever Forward to Vic- tory, 1967), a nineteen-minute compilation that is the outstanding ex- ample of the director's concept of cine urgente. Made within forty-eight 140 Santiago Alvarez The poetic iconography of the everyday: Hanoi martes 13. Credit: ICAIC hours of Che's death, the film was shown outdoors to the multitudes of Cubans gathered to hear Castro's eulogy for his fallen comrade. Hasta la victoria siempre is essentially a demonstration of the im- portance of internationalism in counteracting U.S. penetration. As the work begins, footage and still photos of Che in the Sierra Maestra dur- ing the war against Batista dissolve into images of squalor in a Gulf Oil Corporation camp in Bolivia. The enemy is the same: U.S. imperial- ism and the poverty it produces for Latin Americans. The invasion of Santo Domingo, the failure of the Alliance for Progress, and the ubiqui- tous U.S. military advisors (such as those responsible for Che's death) are juxtaposed to statistics on Latin American illiteracy, presented against a background of photos documenting misery and destitution under neocolonialism. "The hope for a better world" evoked in an inter- title is shown to lie with the solidarity of Third World nations. The documentary ends with footage of Che driving a tractor in the cane fields, a celebration of his contributions to voluntary labor on the prac- tical as well as the theoretical plane. The musical score, characteristically, was a crucial element of the work. In this case - as Michael Chanan has pointed out - the director 141 John Mraz undertook to rescue a piece of music from the use made of it by its ar- ranger, Perez Prado, a Cuban who had opted to live in the United States. Chanan argues that Alvarez repudiated P6rez's sellout by linking the tune "indissolubly" in Cuban imagination with the memory of Che."'4 It is important to add, however, that the piece was not only rescued from Perez, but also it was reclaimed for the popular culture of Latin America. The music was originally written by the Brazilian Heitor Villa- Lobos, one of the first Latin American composers to find his inspira- tion in national themes. The use of Villa-Lobos's music was one more way to allude to the Latin Americanism of Guevara as Cuba approached 1968, which was named for him: "Year of the Heroic Guerrilla." The designation for 1969 -"Year of the Decisive Effort"-was an in- dication of a major shift taking place in Cuba. With Guevara's death, hopes of creating a Latin American revolution crumbled, and Cuba found itself isolated and besieged by economic difficulties and pressure from the United States. One response to this was a return to the Soviet fold, represented in Castro's defense of the USSR's invasion of Czecho- slovakia; another was the concentration on domestic problems and the attempt to end underdevelopment at one stroke. The "decisive effort" was directed toward producing a sugar harvest of 10 million tons, an arbitrary goal that became a national obsession. Alvarez participated in this endeavor with Despegue a las 18:00 (Takeoff at Eighteen Hun- dred Hours, 1969), a forty-one-minute documentary on the 1968 mo- bilization of workers in Oriente Province, prelude to the massive mo- bilizations throughout the country during 1969-1970. In this work, he drew the parallel (emphasized at the time) between production and de- fense, and he identified the problems Cubans had in obtaining consumer items - for example, the long lines for buying basic foodstuffs - given the U.S. blockade. Although Takeoff at Eighteen Hundred Hours was important in its time, it has not enjoyed the durability of another film from 1969, Seventy-nine Springtimes. A twenty-five-minute eulogy to Ho Chi Minh, this documentary begins by cutting ironically between time-lapse pho- tography of flowers opening and slow-motion footage of bombs fall- ing from U.S. planes. The flowers are life: the seventy-nine springtimes of Ho's existence and the fertility of Vietnamese soil as demonstrated in its capacity to germinate such a world-historical figure. The bombs are death in the form of imperialism imposed from a distance on this country. The historical aspect of this work, focusing on the life of Ho Chi Minh, is highly personalized: his participation in the founding of both the French and the Vietnamese Communist parties, his struggles against the invaders from Japan, France, and the United States. In 142 Santiago Alvarez Like blossom, like bomb: life-death similes in slow-motion refrain. 79 primaveras (San- tiago Alvarez, 1969). Credit: ICAIC presenting Ho's relation to the French Communists, Alvarez makes a point that he reiterates throughout the film: the enemy is not the people of imperialist nations, but the ruling class and its mercenaries. This idea is illustrated through parallel cutting between scenes of U.S. atroci- ties and U.S. citizens marching in protest against them, as well as by the use of music produced by the U.S. counterculture (Iron Butterfly) during Ho's funeral sequence. This distinction was typical of Jos6 Marti, and Alvarez compares the two poet-revolutionaries by choosing an epi- graph from Marti -"Death is false when a life's work has been well real- ized"- to counterbalance the fact of Ho's death. The power and grace of Ho's poetry enhances the film's message, and serves as well to coun- sel the Cubans to toughen themselves in this time of great demands: Without the cold and harshness of winter There could not be the warmth and splendor of spring. Calamity has tempered and hardened me, And turned my mind to steel. An intertitle with Ho's "last wishes"-"Don't let disunity in the social- ist camp darken the future"- may also reflect the Cuban situation, 143 John Mraz Ho Chi Minh, visual echo of Jose Marti: the liberator as philosopher-poet. 79primaveras. Credit: ICAIC specifically, that country's need to reach an accommodation with the established socialist world. At the end of the film, Alvarez goes to war against cinema itself, creating an extraordinary montage of scratched, torn, and burning film, mixed with battle footage and sounds of combat: machine guns, bombs, helicopters. The medium's realism can serve imperialistic interests - as with the U.S. soldiers who proudly pose for photographs with their dead victims as a demonstration of their "courage" - but the political and aesthetic expressionism of a committed artist like Alvarez denies the possibility or desirability of objectivity in a world split into op- pressors and oppressed. The beauty and force of this exceptional film make it perhaps the finest articulation in documentary cinema of the explosive energy that characterized the cultural effervescence of 1965- 1970-not simply in Cuba, but worldwide. The failure to achieve the fabled 10-million-ton sugar harvest in 1970 sealed Cuba's fate; romantic will gave way to realpolitik. As institu- tionalization replaced improvisation, Alvarez's documentaries took on a new form. The dramatic montage of the 1960s was supplanted by long takes and sync-sound recordings, and too many of his films grew lengthy 144 Santiago Alvarez The image enacts what the text deplores: graphic experimentalism in 79 primaveras. Credit: ICAIC and tendentious. Perhaps nowhere is this more clearly seen than in De America soy hijo ... y a ella me debo (IAm America's Son ... and Dedi- cated to Her, 1972), and... Y el cielo fue tornado por asalto (And the Heavens Were Taken by Force, 1973). The first is a three-hour, fifteen- minute record of Castro's visit to Chile in 1971. The second, a chronicle of Castro's tour of East European and African nations in 1972, lasts more than two hours. Long, static, and frankly tedious reprises of Castro's speeches, the films have been defended by Alvarez as challeng- ing capitalism's genre conventions and film-watching habits. Neverthe- less, even those who agree with Alvarez's intentions have criticized these documentaries for the degree to which the focus on Castro im- pedes any real analysis.'5 Perhaps the film that demonstrates most clearly the shortcomings of Alvarez's path after 1969 is Mi hermano Fidel (My Brother Fidel, 1979), a work that has been likened to the director's masterpieces from the 1960s: Now, Hanoi, martes 13, and 79 primaveras.'6 Mi hermano Fidel is essentially an interview between Castro and a ninety-three- year-old peasant, Salustino Leyva, who remembers meeting Marti and Maximo G6mez when they landed in Cuba in 1895. The style is basi- cally that of the long-take, sync-sound interview, with the camera pan- ning back and forth between the two men. The conversation, initially of little substance, takes a revealing turn. After reminiscing about the 145 John Mraz The unseeing campesino validates Castro's legacy of leadership in Mi hermano Fidel (San- tiago Alvarez, 1977). Credit: ICAIC meeting with Marti and G6mez, Leyva starts describing the economic difficulties he and his family face. Castro tells him that socialism will have to do more for them. What that "more" is becomes immediately clear, as it is "discovered" that the old man cannot read because of poor eyesight. Castro says that an opthalmologist will be sent for. The film cuts to the doctor's arrival, eye chart in hand. After Leyva's eyes are tested and he is given glasses, we "discover" that he had not previously recognized his interviewer. The old man had been speaking of Fidel in the third person, without "realizing" that he was actually speaking to him. The film's title derives from Leyva's assertion: "I am Marti's brother and Fidel is Marti's brother, so Fidel is also my brother." Aside from very real problems of credibility - for example, Leyva's failure to recognize Castro's voice or to be informed by his family with whom he was speaking - the film represents the personality cult of Fidelismo at its worst. Through the agency of the leader, all Leyva's problems are solved. Thus, the revolution is portrayed as functioning only because Castro has his hand in everything-precisely that aspect of his leadership that has been criticized by students of Cuban govern- ment. The personality cult is further enhanced by the slow and lyrical dissolves of Castro's face with which the film ends, lingering on his features as he asserts (in voice-over) that he is often confused with Marti because "We're brothers." This documentary thus serves to affirm Cas- 146 Santiago Alvarez Minimalist iconography: the essential Fidel. Mi hermano Fidel Credit: ICAIC tro's legitimacy, not only through his personal intervention at all levels of revolutionary society and government, but also in the almost mysti- cal historical continuity he claims as the direct heir of Cuba's most re- vered forefather, Jose Marti. Santiago Alvarez's oeuvre, then, appears to manifest a discernible movement from the dramatic form of the 1960s to a type of direct cin- ema beginning in 1970. This impression is reinforced by a statement he made in that year describing how he went about filming Piedra sobre piedra (Stone upon Stone, 1970), his documentary on the earthquake and the military reform government of Velasco Alvarado in Peru: "You can't write a script beforehand of what you don't know you're going to find, because reality is what is going to write things and what is going to dictate how you're going to have to make it afterwards.... The structure of my films is born of reality.""7 Of course, Alvarez had always contended that his films were based on reality. Here, however, there is an element of the "discovery of reality" that was necessarily absent in films compiled of still photos and archival footage such as Now or in documentaries that did not use on-the-spot sound record- ings, such as Hanoi, martes 13 or 79 primaveras. Although the politi- cal intentions of Alvarez differed greatly from those of Frederick Wise- 147 John Mraz man or the Maysles brothers, the form employed after 1969 was none- theless similar. Thus, as the general exhilaration of participating in a dynamic, ef- fervescent process in which all seemed possible, given enough tenacity, was replaced by institutionalization and Fidelismo, Alvarez's works re- flected this transformation. On the one hand, this sensitivity to his changing context is to be expected of an artist of Alvarez's stature; on the other, his refusal to attempt to theorize about his art may be one of the contributing factors to his surrender to "things-as-they-are." Of course, Alvarez's art did not become any less "true" because of his change; as Arnold Hauser has shrewdly pointed out, "Art is true not despite, but by virtue of the fact that it is ideological and because it is inextricably embedded in practice."18 Inextricably embedded in the practice of communicating the cultural effervescence of 1965-1970 and then of describing the institutionalization of Fidelismo, Alvarez's art has always retained its "truth." It did, however, lose much of the energy, power, and grace that placed it, for a number of years, in the forefront of worldwide documentary achievement. NOTES I would like to thank Eli Bartra, Julianne Burton, and Chuck Churchill for their comments and criticism, and San Francisco Newsreel and Zafra A.C., in Mex- ico City, for their courtesy in providing access to films. 1. The most comprehensive collection of Spanish-language interviews with and essays by Alvarez, as well as reviews of his work, can be found in San- tiago Alvarez: Cronista del tercer mundo, ed. Edmundo Aray (Caracas, 1983). In English, see the BFI Dossier Number 2: Santiago Alvarez, comp. Michael Chanan (London, 1980), which is particularly useful for its fine "Annotated Filmography." 2. This paragraph is based on Santiago Alvarez, ed. Aray. 3. "'5 Frames Are 5 Frames, Not 6, but 5': An Interview with Santiago Alvarez," Cineaste 6, no. 4 (1975). 4. On "direct cinema," see Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (New York, 1974), pp. 231-55; see also Thomas Waugh, "Beyond Veritd: Emile de Antonio and the New Documentary of the Seventies," Jump/Cut, nos. 10-11 (1976); rpt. in Movies and Methods, vol. 2, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley, Calif., 1985). 5. "A Dialectical Approach to Film Form," in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, trans. and ed. Jay Leyda (New York, 1957), p. 49. 6. "Idea and Form in Literature," in Marxism and Human Liberation: Essays on History, Culture and Revolution by Georg Lukdcs, ed. E. San Juan, Jr. (New York, 1973), p. 121. 7. Santiago Alvarez, ed. Aray, p. 110. See Alvarez's remarks on Third World 148 Santiago Alvarez cinema in "Arte y compromiso (Relaci6n del cineasta del Tercer Mundo con su realidad)," pp. 56-58, rpt. from Tricontinental and El Mundo of 1968. 8. BFI Dossier Number 2: Santiago Alvarez, comp. Chanan, p. 38. 9. Ibid., p. 32. 10. Che's speech at the Second Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian Solidarity in Algiers, February 25, 1965; rpt. as "Revolution and Underdevelopment" in Che: Selected Works of Ernesto Guevara, ed. Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdes (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 350-59. 11. The song "Now" is sung to the tune of "Hava Nagila," a Jewish folk- song; it was evidently prohibited in the U.S. South. The company holding the copyright demanded a fee for the use of the song, but Alvarez told them that he felt it was property of "the people." He did, however, write to Lena Horne asking for her permission to use her rendition, which was given him. 12. From Mario Rodriguez AlemAn's review of the film, which appeared in Cine cubano, nos. 31-33 (January-March 1966); rpt. in Santiago Alvarez, ed. Aray, p. 3. Aleman includes some of the song's lyrics in the article. 13. Che Guevara, "Message to the Tricontinental," Granma Weekly, April 23, 1967; rpt. in Bonachea and Vald6s, Che, pp. 170-82. 14. Chanan, comp., BFI Dossier Number 2, p. 37. 15. See the most interesting exchange between Alvarez and the audience at the Filmoteca Nacional de Espafia in Barcelona, rpt. as "Coloquio mantenido con Santiago Alvarez," in Aray, ed., Santiago Alvarez, pp. 268-89. 16. See articles by Romualdo Santos from Bohemia, March 23, 1979, and by Julio Antonio Vazquez, from El Caimdn Barbudo, May 1979, rpt. in Aray, ed., Santiago Alvarez, pp. 264-68. 17. "Santiago Alvarez, de Hanoi a Yungay," interview by Issac Le6n Frias and Juan M. Bullita, Hablemos de cine (Lima, Peru), nos. 55-56 (September- December 1979), 18. 18. "Propaganda, Ideology and Art," in Aspects of History and Class Con- sciousness, ed. Istvan Meszaros (New York, 1972), p. 137. 149 7 LEFT, RIGHT, AND CENTER: EL SALVADOR ON FILM Pat Aufderheide This chapter compares the rhetorical and representational strategies enlisted by partisan filmmakers of the right and left in the war of im- ages generated by the conflict in El Salvador and their relationship to the partial (in both senses of the word) accounts and hidden "mas- ter narratives" presented by the U.S. news media. Aufderheide as- sesses the resources, approaches, and effectiveness of anticommunist, prointerventionist efforts like Attack on the Americas and El Salva- dor: Romance and Reality and anti-imperialist, anti-interventionist films like Americas in Transition (a direct reply to Attack on the Americas), Roses in December, and El Salvador: Another Vietnam, as well as a number of films made by Central Americans. TELEVISION NEWS and documentary reporting on U.S. for- eign policy in El Salvador between 1981 and 1986 illustrates the par- tisanship characterizing the coverage of public affairs in the U.S. news media.' The evening news sets the parameters. In the early 1980s, the civil war in El Salvador, and U.S. intervention there, was a hot media issue in the United States. Television news broadcasts regularly cov- ered a conflict that had intensified with the guerrilla offensives in 1980- 1981 and increased U.S. military involvement. And yet the U.S. public appeared confused, not only about the U.S. role there and elsewhere in Central America, but also about the nature and even the geographi- cal location of the conflict. In a 1984 TV Guide article, reporter John Weisman analyzed 661 news spots from the preceding year.2 He concluded, "One ends up know- ing almost as little about Central America, and why the U.S. is involved there, as one knew before" watching the news. Network officials agreed with him that their "headline service" did little to explain what was going on, and a State Department official charged that TV news programs 151 Pat Aufderheide omit the basic background necessary to understand events. Weisman found that TV viewers, particularly on budget-conscious ABC, were shown unlabeled and undated footage "dozens of times" during this period. NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw told him, "I don't think anyone can get anything-enough information about anything-out of tele- vision to make a full, informed judgment." Weisman's report charged that the media had failed the U.S. pub- lic. American philosopher John Dewey would have agreed, with chas- tening qualifiers. Almost sixty years before, Dewey argued that true democracy was rooted in an informed public. But the dazzling new tech- nologies, he wrote, purveyed a "news" that, lacking context, allowed no intelligent formation of public opinion. "'News' signifies something which has just happened.... But its meaning depends upon relation to what it imports, to what its social consequences are. This import cannot be determined unless the new is placed in relation to the old." Instead, Dewey noted, news agencies focused on the catastrophic for its (saleable) shock value, while at the same time making decisions on the basis of immediate events. "The smoothest road to control of politi- cal conduct is by control of opinion," he argued. "As long as interests of pecuniary profit are powerful, and a public has not located and iden- tified itself, those who have this interest will have an unresisted mo- tive for tampering with the springs of political action in all that affects them."3 Dewey might have been talking about television network news, whose structure has been analyzed by communications and political science professor Dan Hallin.4 On network news, Hallin argues, pub- lic affairs is presented as part of the show business of American TV, "a key political institution as well as a seller of detergent and break- fast cereal." The news, he maintains, is not just a "headline service," but a story about ourselves, with news nuggets placed within a theme. He cites a 1985 "CBS Evening News" report that presented an item on El Salvador - "six Americans gunned down by leftist rebels" - as part of an overarching theme of "America held hostage," reinforced by news about Americans dying in Beirut. A year earlier, he suggests, the theme might have been "America's deepening involvement" in a Vietnam-like conflict. But at that subsequent juncture (1985), the theme fed into CBS's patriotic slogan, "We Keep America on Top of the World," a slo- gan intended to sell CBS, and its advertisers, to Americans who had shown an increasing appetite for the aggrieved-giant stance taken by President Reagan in public addresses and in foreign policy actions. The networks were following a standard of "objectivity" conditioned by the need to tell a story that could hold viewers until the commercial. Not all network coverage between 1981 and 1986 was news-nuggety. 152 El Salvador on Film Occasionally, more lengthy documentaries also appeared, structured not around expectations set by nightly news but by political reporting guidelines set by print journalism. The style was typically the essay form, focusing on a key question, and the angle was unpredictable. For instance, an NBC documentary Whatever Happened in El Salvador? (1982) framed an argument for increased aid to El Salvador in a real- politik analysis of "hard choices." The viewpoint of the executive pro- ducer, Bob Rogers, who has a background in the U.S. military and links to counterinsurgency programs, was reflected in the ending: "If we and our democratic friends in El Salvador can't change things our way, Castro and his friends will change things their way." A "CBS Reports" documentary, Guatemala, produced in part by filmmakers coming out of the typically liberal U.S. independent film community, aired at the same time. It asked, "Should the U.S. give aid to Guatemala?" The film cast doubt on the option, using candid interviews with Guatemalans and American politicians.5 Although both works stirred controversy on the fringes, low ratings - typical for public affairs documentaries - offered backhanded testimony to the power of mainstream news in shap- ing viewer expectations. They spoke well to the problem of a disorga- nized public, since public affairs questions posed during prime time - traditionally reserved for leisure-time entertainment-bear no direct link to citizen decision making. A four-part public television series, Crisis in Central America (1984), was directed by resolutely antiliberal Austin Hoyt. After a powerful beginning, "The Yankee Years," charting the history of U.S. interven- tion with much rare footage, the series cautiously followed the perspec- tive of prestigious dailies such as the New York Times and the Wash- ington Post. Highly controversial within producer circles while it was being made, the program was aired to only modest audiences with pro- motion that carefully avoided controversial angles. It came at a time when public television executives were increasingly wary about the cost, potential political problems, and low ratings of public affairs pro- gramming. The problems of both commercial and public television networks - the latter dependent on subscribers and foundation support -in find- ing audiences for politically anchored (rather than emotionally or per- sonally centered) coverage, for carefully framed arguments rather than a barrage of flashy, uncontextualized images, reflect both economic realities and the cultural expectations of the viewing audience. Of course, those economic realities and cultural expectations have in turn been shaped by longstanding traditions in news coverage, originating (as we see in Dewey) long before television. U.S. public opinion on involvement in the conflict in El Salvador 153 Pat Aufderheide was seen as critical by partisans on both the left and the right. Both sides shared an understanding of public affairs radically different from that surveyed on the nightly news. Both perceived that public opinion was not being shaped by political questions, although they disagreed on what those questions were. And both saw the mainstream U.S. media as deliberately (rather than structurally) biased - toward "the other side." "If you read just a little about it, you'd think the guerrillas in El Salvador were the good guys," complained Sandra Bradley, president of Wentworth Films and producer of several documentaries in 1982 for the right-wing American Security Council Foundation. "I think there's a well organized movement to make a case for them in this country. It's the post-Vietnam syndrome."6 At the same time, Diego de la Texera, a Puerto Rico-born filmmaker who produced a film with Salvadoran guerrillas called El Savador: El pueblo vencerd (El Salvador: The People Will Win, 1981), said, "We needed to break through the encirclement of the media. We have been surrounded by negative information about the [revolutionary] movement and its programs."7 Rightists and leftists addressed the problem using film and video, but with different advantages and tactics. Right-wing partisan films were produced early in the struggle to influence public opinion as part of a multimedia campaign funded by conservative groups in the United States. These were oriented, typically, not only toward changing pub- lic opinion but also toward building particular partisan organizations, and they depended on a simple anticommunist and anti-isolationist ideo- logical platform. Aesthetically, they were - sometimes deliberately- crude. Leftist films tended to be produced on a more ad hoc basis, re- flecting the lesser economic resources of the left, but often drawing on international support. Faced with a more complex problem of explana- tion, they also experimented more with style. The media strategies of both groups reflected political realities as dictated by the White House, which under Reagan exercised a particularly strong grip on foreign affairs policy. One early testing ground for partisanship in the media was Brad- ley's Attack on the Americas! (1980, 1982), a project of the educational arm of the American Security Council (ASC), an organization that en- dorses a cold-war perspective on foreign policy. The half-hour film was the third such effort by the ASC, following its highly successful SALT Syndrome (1979), widely credited with mobilizing public opinion against the SALT disarmament talks. Two versions of Attack were produced. The first-featuring presi- dential candidate Ronald Reagan and then university professor Jeane J. Kirkpatrick-was made in 1980 to combat Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign. The second, made in 1982, is milder and less critical of U.S. foreign policy and, said Bradley, "avoids placing blame."s 154 El Salvador on Film The film's message, in both versions, is simplicity itself. Central America is a pawn in the East-West conflict; Soviet aggressors- through Cuban surrogates and local political dupes - are taking over, threatening the United States' soft underbelly. According to Colonel Phil Cox, executive assistant to ASC's president, the film was made to jolt Americans out of a false sense of security. "There is an isola- tionist tradition in America," he said. "In the postwar years we moved away from it, but the Vietnam years tended to move us toward it again." Central America, he argued, is a particular blind spot because "we haven't fought any wars down there in a while. So you've got to grab their attention. You need some kind of hook. A sense of danger needs to be created."9 The hook for both versions is the Communist menace. The tech- niques signaling such a danger are effective and time-tested. The first version employs pulsating red blobs on a map, visual assertions of So- viet penetration. The red creeps northward as the narration-moving easily from the present to an imperiled future-draws a picture of a Communist menace spreading inexorably toward the United States. In a second version, maps with throbbing highlights also punctuate state- ments made by U.S. officials. But here the use of insistent visual cues, as well as the general tone, is less urgent. Instead, uneasiness and dread are telegraphed by the eerie music that overlays grisly footage. These techniques, encouraging emotional rather than analytical re- sponse, are enhanced by an editing style that depends more on mon- tage, jump cuts, and strategic placement of official statements than on show-and-tell arguments and interviews. Neither version dwells much on internal politics. Although the second celebrates the 1981 elections in El Salvador, it does not provide a way to evaluate their significance. In both, juxtaposition serves the purpose of proof and creates an atmosphere of terror. For instance, images of guerrillas filing down a hillside accompany a voice-over that says, "Since 1978 Havana has trained, armed and directed extremists in guerrilla warfare," although no evidence is offered of the Cuban-guerrilla link. Shots of street riots, bodies, and weeping women in quick succession create a sense of con- fusion, terror, and misery, suggesting a political disorientation so com- plete that the locals may be at the mercy of foreign influence. The Central American footage is edited from stock news footage of the BBC, Visnews, UPI, and U.S. TV networks.0 While the right wing excoriated the mainstream media, they bor- rowed some of their techniques from commercial sales tactics. The first Attack tried a hard-sell approach that matched its style: repeated flashing of a toll-free phone number with a plea to the viewers to call in contribution pledges. The ASC had tested this tactic, called "direct response" by advertisers, with SALT. The results were dramatically 155 1 TOWARD A HISTORY OF SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY IN LATIN AMERICA Julianne Burton Beginning with a "Provisional Typology of Social Documentary," this chapter proceeds to set the evolution of Latin American social docu- mentary in the context of parallel international developments in the medium, discussing the formative impact of specific events, figures, and technological advances. It stresses documentary's close associa- tion, in Latin America, with key historical events, political tenden- cies, and social movements - including the Mexican, Cuban, and Cen- tral American revolutions, populist and developmentalist ideologies, cultural nationalism, and regional solidarity. This introduction con- cludes with a summary of the central concerns and problematics that emerge from the historical overview and that inform the subsequent chapters in this collection. A Provisional Typology of Social Documentary THE FOLLOWING typologyI attempts to map the principal modes of social documentary: documentaries with a human subject and a descriptive or transformative concern. Each of the "modes" described below is most usefully considered as an emphasis or tendency in docu- mentary practice. Most filmmakers combine aspects of various modes in their work to achieve a particular effect, in a given cultural context, at a specific historical conjuncture. Two groups of examples accompany the first four modes identified below: Group A invokes works that are generally available and pre- sumably familiar to North American audiences; Group B cites specific Latin American examples. Most of the Latin American documentaries mentioned in this introductory chapter, as well as many of those dis- cussed in chapter 3, can be located below. Pat Aufderheide successful. The hard sell is familiar to American viewers. In fact, if films like these look like the kind of commercials that grew up to be home shopping networks, there's a reason. Direct-response advertis- ing for political causes draws on fifteen years of similar product ad- vertising. The A. Eicoff agency in Chicago, which pioneered "philosophy- oriented" or advocacy advertising, handled the account for Attack. Such accounts are not the preserve of any political belief. Account represen- tative Rick Sangerman, who had handled ads for the National Tax- payers' Union, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Animal Pro- tection Institute, among others, developed a checklist for success. A notion must have mass appeal, which means emotional appeal-baby seals, for instance. To overcome viewer apathy and suspicion that one's financial contribution might be misused, a spokesperson with credibility has to deliver the message. And, finally, a unique and urgent problem has to be defined, solveable by calling that 800 number. When a direct- response program is political, Sangerman argued, it has to go against the administration. "Otherwise people's attitude is:'They don't need my help. I don't have to get out of my chair."' The 1980 Attack was not the hit that SALT had been, and was withdrawn before the hard-sell fundraising strategy could really be tested. Part of the problem was timing. "Reagan was elected, the hos- tages were released, people felt sorry for Carter, and they lost interest in El Salvador," said Sandra Bradley. The new version, made at a time of aggressive presidential support for an anticommunist foreign policy in El Salvador, did not have a direct-response component. Instead, it was restructured, with a cooler tone, for nationwide satellite feed and small-group showings. "In some ways these have been more effective," said Cox. "The key is: who is there to comment wisely on it?" Whether or not these efforts rechanneled public opinion, they built mailing lists with the phone calls and pledges to the 800 phone number. And, as Washington Post political reporter Sidney Blumenthal, author of The Permanent Campaign, 12 pointed out, "Such films keep a constitu- ency in a state of perpetual mobilization. They're the Sunday sermon for believers." El Salvador: Romance and Reality was produced in 1981 by the stu- dent wing of the Unification church for use on U.S. campuses in the wake of 1981 student unrest and demonstrations against aid to El Sal- vador. The film, like Attack, takes an East-West view of the conflict, arguing that the country is being terrorized by "Cuban-backed" guer- rillas. Directed to idealistic students, it stresses that "the communists" betray ideals; the film leaps from Cuba to Vietnam to Cambodia to Nicaragua in its explanation of the Salvadoran crisis. The message, as 156 El Salvador on Film in Attack, is delivered with a careful match of images and narration, using juxtaposition to imply cause and effect. The film carefully chooses its authority figures: disillusioned idealists such as a freelance jour- nalist who recalls his early enthusiasm and later contempt for the Cuban revolution. Others include a Vietnamese student leader in exile and the Cuban widow of an American mercenary who fought with Fidel Castro and was later executed by the Cubans for treason. Never widely seen on television or in theaters, the film was primar- ily used in Unification church-sponsored campus debates. There dated material in it (for instance, Salvadoran government claims about land reform successes, later admitted to be falsehoods) did not compromise the film's utility. Like Attack, it was used to spur debate. Unification church member David Coprara praised its effectiveness. "It provokes an almost vehement reaction among Marxist-Leninists, because it's so damaging to their point of view."3 For leftists in this period of open discussion of El Salvador policy, the challenge was in some ways the same as for those on the right: to make urgent an issue left murky and dispensable in mainstream news reporting. But in crucial areas, it was different. Leftists saw the crisis in El Salvador as rooted in internal conflicts and aggravated by U.S. intervention. They therefore could not rely on the primary ideological and stylistic tool of right-wing films: fear. Their media had to create an understanding of El Salvador as a place with its own reality and offer a reinterpretation of U.S. foreign policy. To be effective, they needed to get off the East-West axis. They needed to arouse an em- pathy with foreigners in the notoriously provincial U.S. public. (And not just foreigners, but poor foreigners. And not just poor foreigners, but poor foreigners with guns.) A battery of leftist films on El Salvador were produced in the early 1980s, both by U.S. filmmakers who came out of the independent film community of the 1970s and who knew how to get patchwork grants for low-budget films, and by international crews with ties to Salvadoran leftists.14 El Salvador: Another Vietnam (1981), by Glenn Silber and Tete Vasconcellos - which began as a short news film using the same title with a question mark - and Obie Benz's Americas in Transition (1982) both address the issue of U.S. intervention in Central America, with Americas stressing the historical view. Nowhere to Run (1982), by Jon Alpert, Karen Ranucci, and Carlos Aparicio, sympathetically describes the lives of Salvadoran refugees in temporary camps across the border in Honduras. Ana Carrigan's Roses in December (1982) re- counts the life of American lay missionary Jean Donovan, one of four North American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador in 1980. Made as independent productions, sometimes with partial federal 157 Pat Aufderheide The audience as the accused: direct visual address in El Salvador: Another Vietnam (Glenn Silber and Tete Vasconcelos, 1981). Credit: courtesy First Run/Icarus Films funding, and aired on public or even commercial television, these films were treated more seriously as films than the overt and institutionally linked propaganda efforts of the right. Another Vietnam and Americas, for instance, garnered Oscar nominations, while others won awards at events such as the Chicago International Film Festival and New York's American Film Festival. Three films made by Salvadoran guerrilla collectives -El Salvador: The People Will Win (1981), Decision to Win (1981), and Carta de Morazcin (Letter from Morazdn, 1983) - analyze the crisis from the view- point of the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), the opposition coalition in El Salvador. These films were targeted to an already committed community of political activists and socially con- cerned religious and community groups, although they also had theatri- cal showings in key repertory houses, partly for their subject matter and partly for the cinematically effective ways in which the films used scanty resources to produce "militant cinema." Militantly leftist cinema as a category had been legitimated as innovative filmmaking in the 158 El Salvador on Film 1970s, not only through the turbulent 16mm filmmaking movements in the U.S. but also through international productions that self-consciously carved out a claim to autonomous Third World cinematic language.'5 The U.S.-based productions used a variety of styles, bonded by a thorough awareness of the media sensibilities of a broad American pub- lic. Roses in December, using a Missing-like strategy (that is, illumi- nating a foreign-affairs issue through the vehicle of a U.S. victim, as in Constantin Costa-Gavras's 1982 film about the Pinochet coup in Chile), traces the life of Jean Donovan from a patrician Connecticut girlhood to her rape and murder in El Salvador -widely attributed to government troops - at the age of twenty-seven. It assembles interviews with friends and family, home movies, letters, and diary fragments into a haunting film biography of a young person who gave her life for a people and a cause remote and unfamiliar to most North Americans. Filmmaker Ana Carrigan chose Donovan because she thought a comfortably middle-class girl who found something to believe in dur- ing her work in El Salvador was someone with whom many previously unconcerned Americans could identify. Carrigan, like the ASC's Cox, described Americans as typically ignorant of foreign affairs. However, she said, "I think the American audience has a great sense of justice - provided they're given information."'16 Her choice of Donovan reflected a calculation that in a mainstream media environment that depoliti- cizes political conflict, introduction to an issue needed to be made on personal and empathetic grounds. El Salvador: Another Vietnam and Americas in Transition, on the other hand, focus squarely on political questions, central among which is: should the United States give aid to El Salvador? (El Salvador at the time was the fourth largest recipient of American aid in the world.) They both deliberately use a mainstream news documentary style that zeroes in on front-page issues, includes conflicting opinions, and em- ploys a cool narrator's tone. "You just have more credibility when you present both sides," said the coproducer of Another Vietnam, Tete Vasconcellos, a Brazilian journalist then working in the United States, "And we have no reason not to, since the other side speaks for itself.""'7 Americas in Transition, made by Obie Benz, strives to invert the right's assertion that the El Salvador conflict is a struggle against Com- munism. It asserts that historically the United States, not the USSR, has been the destabilizer of Latin American political affairs. Historical recitation-for instance, citing U.S. intervention in Guatemala (1954) and in the Dominican Republic (1965)-is bolstered by newsreel and government footage that, in its undisguised chauvinism, makes the filmmaker's argument for him. The twenty-nine-minute film was origi- nally produced to be used in a Fairness Doctrine complaint-referring 159 Pat Aufderheide Generic jungle scenarios in El Salvador: Another Vietnam. Credit: courtesy First Run/ Icarus Films to the doctrine that broadcasters must air controversial issues fairly, nullified by the Federal Communications Commission in 1987 -in areas where broadcasters had aired Attack on the Americas or other pro- administration coverage of El Salvador. Therefore, the film's style was designed to fit into the expectations of mainstream broadcast viewers 160 El Salvador on Film Scene from Americas in Transition (Obie Benz, 1982): an uneasy Latin American general attending ceremonies at Fort Bragg. Credit: First Run/Icarus Films for objective reporting, but its essay form was structured around a tightly noninterventionist argument. Some foreign-produced material also reflected concern for the aura of legitimacy conveyed by a mainstream look. Who's Winning the War? (1982), produced by FMLN-associated filmmakers, looks like an inde- pendent documentary made by a European or North American producer. It uses a network news-style narration in its analysis of government and guerrilla military strength, critiquing the Salvadoran army's in- efficiency and corruption. Distributed in limited U.S. circles, the film's target audience was actually Salvadoran government officials, and its style was calculated to look like a North American indictment of gov- ernment policies. Alan West at El Salvador Film and Video Project, a leftist distribution service, claimed that the film had in fact created "consternation" among Salvadoran officials. All films on El Salvador confronted the problem of how to use foot- age of violence and death effectively. In right-wing films, images of in- timidation, blood, death, and grief were used like flash cards to register political chaos and the victimization caused by communist betrayal. Leftists faced a more complex challenge: to humanize the victims; to 161 Pat Aufderheide identify more precisely the source of violence; and, most difficult, to explain violent response by guerrillas, or at least make it politically and emotionally plausible. Among the techniques used were an avoidance of stock footage-which tends to conform to the shock-impact needs of nightly news nuggets - and experimentation with visual techniques that would distance a viewer from an immediate self-protective reaction of avoidance. Roses in December, for instance, uses one segment of horror-filled footage-the disinterment of four murdered American women in El Salvador -almost meditatively. It lingers on dirt-encrusted faces and keeps returning to the moment when Jean Donovan's body is pulled out of the shallow wayside grave. "By using that segment in a relent- less way, the purpose was to say, 'Be angry, be disturbed,"' Ana Car- rigan explained.18 Another Vietnam, like Americas in Transition, avoids an anonymous barrage of violent images because, as Vasconcellos commented, "people just get numb." So the filmmakers structured violent footage into two highly defined segments, one describing random, government-ordered violence and the other recounting "strategic killings," such as that of Archbishop Oscar Romero. These are followed by scenes from funerals and interviews with survivors because, said Vasconcellos, "we wanted to show the suffering that results. If they just see bodies, people block their reactions."'9 The FMLN-sponsored El Salvador: The People Will Win, attempt- ing to both make clear the humanity of those who side with guerrillas and also the necessity to take up arms, features a lengthy sequence portraying the funeral of a young father killed by government troops. As filmmakers circulate among mourners, the man's young son weeps. It is clear from his attitude and remarks that he is as concerned about finding food and shelter in the absence of his parent as he is about the emotional loss. Finally he breaks down completely, staring into the camera and saying, "My life isn't worth a shit." Left homeless, he signs up with the FMLN, which becomes his new family. With this boy's choices, the film argues, the slogan "Revolution or Death" is the brutal reality for many. Leftist documentaries searched out authority figures who would be as persuasive for their cause as those who carry the message in right- wing films. They used narrators likely to appeal to a liberal constitu- ency, capable of registering both personal compassion and mass-media credibility, not the sharply partisan perspective that so alarms view- ers used to mainstream news coverage. Mike Farrell (Another Vietnam) and Ed Asner (America) are prime examples. Carrigan explained her choice of actor John Houseman to narrate Roses: "If Professor Kings- 162 El Salvador on Film field of [the television series] The Paper Chase was speaking, nobody could dismiss it as the work of a couple of left-wing filmmakers."20 In- terviewees were carefully chosen. Americas, for instance, depends heav- ily for its anti-interventionist argument on the comments of Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican diplomat and author. Fuentes, who speaks idio- matic English and is seen at Princeton in casually professorial clothes, gracefully straddles the cultural line. (When I showed this film in 1985 in La Paz to a working-class audience, viewers asked whether Fuentes wgs an American official.)21 Leftists also were as acutely aware of the need for a conceptual "hook" as rightists were. Another Vietnam's hook, for instance, is stated in the title. In some cases, leftists deliberately used anticommunism and its visual correlatives as a foil. Attack's alarming map, for instance, is neatly inverted in Americas (whose style, after all, was elaborated in direct response to Attack). Americas repeatedly shows a map where throbbing green blobs locate right-wing Latin American governments and U.S. intervention, suggesting the proliferation of trouble spots. In the Name of Democracy (1984), produced jointly by North Ameri- cans in solidarity with the FMLN and by Salvadorans, and distributed by the pro-FMLN organization Commu-Sal, found its hook in the no- tion of elections.22 It challenges the idea that elections are elections are elections, by using verite footage from the 1982 Salvadoran contest. Scenes of the clear lucite boxes in which ballots were cast and armed guards at voting lines visually suggest that elections were skewed in favor of the government. Comments by Dr. Charlie Clements, the Viet- nam veteran and physician who worked in guerrilla-occupied zones, as well as footage from these zones, complement scenes from election day. Breaking with objective traditions of mainstream documentary, the film boldly asks viewers why the United States is supporting rigged elections. The more remote or abstract the subject, the harder it is to find the hook, a neat "high concept" on which to hang the argument. If the issue is not only U.S. involvement but also what's going on in El Salvador, the question of Salvadoran voice becomes important. Diego de la Texera tried to break through the cultural barrier with El Salvador: The People Will Win, made in a deliberately Latin American voice and style in the tradition of explicitly partisan and hard-hitting Latin American mili- tant cinema such as Patricio Guzman's The Battle of Chile (1975) and Octavio Getino's and Fernando Solanas's Hour of the Furnaces (1968). He explained, "We wanted North Americans to see and feel the way we felt and saw."23 The narration (supervised by an FMLN commit- tee) is in a heroic "we-the-people" first person. Rhetorical flourishes - "The insurrection is surging ahead like an unrestrainable river"- cause 163 Pat Aufderheide discomfort and estrangement because of their style as well as their content. Visually, the film is just as partisan. Long friendly takes of peasants contrast with surreal and objectifying shots of the Salvadoran middle class. At one point, for example, the camera tilts reprovingly from a young woman's high heels to her buttocks, squeezed into de- signer jeans. Leftists also experimented with a daily-life and cinema verite ap- proach in order to introduce North American viewers to the human con- text of a political issue. Carta de Morazdn (1983), produced by the Salvadoran film collective Cero a la Izquierda, associated with the FMLN, demonstrates the guerrillas' strength and popular support in a "you-are-there" style. For instance, during the guerrilla's on-camera release of fifty-two prisoners to the International Red Cross, twelve of the internees decided at the last minute to join their captors. Their deci- sion, made in the presence of a neutral third party, is a narrative en- dorsement of the FMLN. Decision to Win (1981), an earlier film by the same collective, ex- perimented with cinema veritd techniques. It offers a leisurely visit with residents in an FMLN-controlled zone. A lyrical rhythm carries the viewer through schools, clinics, food distribution centers, and a wed- ding. The nondirective editing, however, provoked impatience in U.S. audiences, particularly among liberal, community, and religious groups. It also evoked some criticism for what U.S. viewers perceived as a pa- tronizing view of women. Its sequence at the guerrilla radio station - which was in fact at the time a major source of news from the region, used by international news services -offended U.S. viewers by focus- ing on its bombastic signoff music rather than its provision of news. Bob Ostertag, a coordinator for the U.S. Committee in Solidarity with the Peoples of El Salvador (CISPES), which regularly uses leftist documentaries in its organizing, recognized this problem. "Often what sounds immediate, real, and tangible to a Salvadoran sounds rhetori- cal to a U.S. audience-in churches especially," he said. Diego de la Texera takes that problem as a responsibility that North American au- diences have to confront: "The cultural gap won't be bridged if we are always speaking in your language."24 A fourth documentary by the FMLN, A Time ofDaring (1984), was produced in a style that reflected changing political needs, increased sophistication, and the search for a middle ground between Salvadoran reality and the U.S. audience's expectations. Asked about questions of style, a FMLN spokesman explained, "Each of our films uses a dif- ferent style, because we have different things to say. We can't afford to be dogmatic, even aesthetically."25 A Time of Daring, unlike earlier efforts, is a tightly argued political 164 El Salvador on Film essay, with positions backed up with verite footage with minimal nar- ration. The film asserts that the FMLN can win militarily and enjoys wide support in spite of the perceived threat of U.S. intervention. Crisp editing compensates for the sometimes blurry quality of footage from 16mm, Super-8, and video sources. The material itself is testimony to the FMLN's ability to maintain film archives and close ties with inter- national journalists, and to enlist covert support within El Salvador. The Salvadoran government found the video challenge great enough to respond with its own video program in the countryside.26 An effort to find a middle ground between different expectations for political discourse is also a balancing act between targeted and mass audiences. The problem reflects not only cinematic strategies but also the continuing amorphousness Dewey noted in that loose entity referred to as "the public."27 The FMLN's films, like the clearly partisan right- wing films, were most extensively used in small group discussions. By contrast, Americas, Another Vietnam, and Roses in December found broad audiences on U.S. television. As political winds shifted in 1984-1985, the focus of coverage of Central America in the United States increasingly became Nicaragua. Many of the media's questions and answers - from left and right - about El Salvador were recycled regarding U.S. foreign policy in Nicaragua, though most North American viewers still appeared unable to identify which side the United States favored in each country. The administra- tion's control over the image of U.S. foreign policy was amplified by such agencies as the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, which successfully influenced media coverage of Central America.28 Controversy was also heightened by private pressure, such as the attack mounted by the Accuracy in Media lobby on Helena Solberg-Ladd's Nicaragua ... From the Ashes (1982), which portrayed a pro-Sandinista family in Nicaragua, and had been aired on public television.29 Such pressure created the conditions in which public television stations could broadcast an anti-Sandinista film sponsored by the Unification church, Nicaragua Was Our Home, just before a congressional vote on U.S. aid to the contras. This was an unusual move, since the Public Broadcasting Service has a long- standing policy of not accepting sponsored films.30 Liberal efforts such as Faces of War (1985), a direct-response film on Nicaragua produced by the Central America Television Organizing Project, and a series of call-your-congressman television ads opposing aid to the contras produced by a group called Neighbor-to-Neighbor capitalized - with some success - on media strategies pioneered by the right wing.31 The right has produced relatively little media work- understandably, since the political status quo strongly favors their posi- 165 Julianne Burton EXPOSITORY MODE Characterized by: " voice of omniscient narrator in direct verbal address " images of illustration " general predominance of nonsynchronous sound Emphasizes objectivity, generalization, economy of analysis, film- maker's privileged knowledge. Process of gathering and presenting that knowledge is omitted. Examples:* A. Why We Fight, 28 Up -conventional newsreel and much tele- vision news reporting B. The Sugar Mill, The Battle of Chile OBSERVATIONAL MODE Characterized by: . voice of observed in indirect verbal address " images of observation " general predominance of synchronous sound and long takes Emphasizes impartiality, intimate detail and texture of lived experi- ence, behavior of subjects within social formations (families, insti- tutions, communities), and at moments of historical or personal crisis. Interaction between observer and observed is kept to a minimum. Examples: A. Workers Leaving the Lumire Factory, Bitter Melons, High School, Seventeen B. Cicl6n, Carlos-for primarily technical and economic reasons, both lack synchronous sound; the former has no spoken sound track; the latter employs "indirect interviews" in voice-over. INTERACTIVE MODE Characterized by: " voice of filmmaker in relation to social actors " images of testimony and demonstration " general predominance of monologues and dialogues with varied use of interviews in direct or indirect address * Titles used here as examples are given in English translation except in those cases where the original foreign-language title is the more common form. Elsewhere in the text, each title is given in the original upon first mention, followed by an English translation. Pat Aufderheide tion. Advocacy advertising in general declined in this period, both for economic and political-primarily regulatory -reasons.32 Extensive work by Nicaraguan state film and television services was, in contrast to the work of Salvadoran guerrillas, rarely seen in the United States and not much noted when it appeared. The fiction feature Alsino and the Condor (1982), a Nicaraguan coproduction by Chilean director Miguel Littin, was positively received and eventually found a small niche in repertory theaters and educational circuits. Though the film's cen- tral character is a young boy who becomes a Sandinista, it was not seen in the United States as a film with political weight. Leftists, embattled during a period in which public attitudes were being shaped by the 1984 Reagan campaign slogan "Morning in Amer- ica," were increasingly unable to find broadcast or theatrical opportu- nities to display alternative perspectives. One example concerns a superlatively produced documentary entitled Living at Risk (1985), made by the celebrated photographer Susan Meiselas, with Alfred Guz- zetti and Richard Rogers. This film attempted to cut through U.S. ob- tuseness toward Central American realities by offering a week in the life of a staunchly middle-class Nicaraguan family that is pro-Sandinista. It made a wan theatrical debut in repertory and languished in media limbo. The increased availability of videocassette players allowed for widespread use of partisan media in meetings and conferences, but be- cause films and videos made for targeted audiences are not sold in re- tail outlets, it is difficult for such productions to reach casual viewers. However, partisan filmmakers who were willing to dedicate themselves to self-distribution found access to educational and special-interest markets.33 The question of Central American policy took on a new edge with the Iran-contra hearings in 1987. However, by and large, the mainstream media replicated the news-nuggets approach. The occasional exception proved the rule. The network news program "West 57th Street" aired a controversial segment boldly linking military aid to the contras with drug smuggling. However, the mainstream media (and not just broad- casting but the print media as well) let this tantalizing issue drop in favor of boilerplate reporting of daily hearings. Increased media focus on Nicaragua, on the one hand, diminished public attention to El Salvador, although the war and U.S. interven- tion there continued. On the other hand, news reporting fostered a gen- eral public awareness of the importance of U.S. Central American policy. Witness to War (1985), a documentary produced by Deborah Shaffer - a veteran independent filmmaker who also has credentials in network news work- and featuring Dr. Charlie Clements in Central America, was nominated for a 1986 Academy Award and was shown on U.S. television. 166 El Salvador on Film Leftist independent filmmakers continue to serve a targeted market of community and religious groups. Pamela Cohen's Dateline: El Sal- vador, a 1986 documentary on the mass mobilizing taking place that year in El Salvador, was made by Camino Films, which also produced several documentaries for liberal and leftist solidarity work. Beth Sanders's Making the News Fit, a thirty-minute documentary, con- cisely contrasts U.S. news coverage with critiques of it by authorita- tive American journalists and human rights activists. Ana Carrigan's Heartstrings: Peter, Paul and Mary in Central America (1987) follows the social-activist singing group on a Central American tour. Wynn Hauser's Sanctuary: A Question of Conscience (1987) introduces view- ers to North Americans who work with refugees from right-wing po- litical repression in Central America. These films and many others like them worked from a base of ex- pectations and distribution networks provided by an already well- established network of solidarity groups opposing U.S. intervention in Central America. Some of them experimented successfully with self- distribution in markets not traditionally left-oriented, such as non-PBS public television distribution systems and closed-circuit and targeted- audience educational networks. Experimentation resulted in formation of a thirty-member self-distribution cooperative located in Los Angeles called the Empowerment Project. The primary objective of such dis- tribution was access to audiences, rather than profits.34 With partisan expression well established, voices began to surface from an unlikely place: the just-the-facts mainstream. Perhaps most remarkable was a fiction feature, Salvador (1986), funded internation- ally and badly distributed in the United States until the success of di- rector Oliver Stone's subsequent Platoon (1986). The action-packed drama, told in the language of male-identified mainstream entertain- ment, drew on scenes and events long familiar to partisans of the El Salvador conflict: the death of Jean Donovan, the sight of body heaps left by right-wing death squads, the assassination and funeral of Arch- bishop Oscar Romero, among others. Its protagonist was also drawn from life: James Woods played the character of freelance journalist and notorious hustler, Richard Boyle. The photojournalist hero of Salvador discovers that objectivity is not enough; what he sees in El Salvador defies the terms in which he is used to reporting it. His involvement with a Salvadoran family, and his pursuit of a living-documenting a reality that the State Depart- ment, the U.S. military, and Salvadoran police forces prefer not be told - confound his expectations. He was just there to "get the story," but he ends up unable to extricate himself from it. Life - or at least documentaries - followed in the footsteps of art. Don North, a freelance filmmaker who had worked for three years in 167 Pat Aufderheide Vietnam as a network news correspondent, produced the thirty-seven- minute film Guazapa in 1984, with his own funds. North had reviewed his own work from Vietnam and was horrified by the superficiality of his coverage. Believing he was seeing a repetition of Vietnam in Cen- tral America, he entered the occupied zone of Guazapa in El Salvador with a few dozen cans of film. Over two months, he filmed scenes of daily life, training for battle, and finally an exodus from the village to avoid a government attack.35 Produced as a personal testimonial in a style that shows North's long training in network news, the film is deliberately naive and also resolutely nonpartisan, its tone intended to convince U.S. viewers that what they are watching is just like mainstream news, but with a strik- ingly different content. Its intense focus on the faces and characters of the people of Guazapa is intended as a frank introduction to the hu- manity of people unimaginable to viewers of network news. North dis- covered, however, that Guazapa was unpalatable to commercial TV and, as a highly personal project without the stamp of up-front federal fund- ing, out of format for public TV. Aside from a showing at one public- television station, the film was relegated to the sliding-screen circuit. Unlike leftist independents, North had to discover those circuits as part of his marketing strategy. The filmmakers of The Situation were undaunted by North's ex- ample. The crew was composed of seasoned war correspondents, in- cluding journalist Richard Boyle and producer Don Gomez; two of them (Ken Gomes and John Buff) were decorated Vietnam veterans. The photographer, Milt Graham, had served as personal photographer for Ronald Reagan. The group spent two years in a small war-wracked Salvadoran town trying to "get the story," and willy-nilly becoming part of it. The fact that, in the process, they also became marginalized from the mainstream media they had depended on did not escape them. The Situation, a feature-length documentary produced by Don Gomez in 1986, was their attempt to leap over media barriers.36 It is a peculiar amalgam of personal testimonial and just-like-the-networks reporting. Embarrassingly frank and touchingly naive, it contains within it the contradictions of reaching a mainstream audience with news that doesn't fit. The story is about North Americans, not Salva- dorans, about their amazement and sense of betrayal when reality de- fies their preconceptions. The film is earnest and crude. Its clumsy edit- ing and rough camera work give it a home-movie look. In spite of the intentions of the freelancers to capture objective reality, it becomes a partisan film, an indictment of the mainstream media's transformation of a wrenchingly divisive political process into a collection of evanes- cent news nuggets. 168 El Salvador on Film The Situation confronted the same problems of distribution and audience as earlier films. Like Guazapa, it found itself between main- stream audiences and committed ones. Nonetheless, like Guazapa and the ironically successful Salvador, it became testimony to fissures in the consensus-oriented media portrayal of foreign affairs. The media efforts of U.S. rightists and leftists to influence public opinion regarding Central American foreign policy testify to the domi- nance of mainstream news in shaping viewers' expectations. They also point up the difference between the category of general viewers and that of organized sectors of the public such as political or religious groups. Whereas a viewer of the evening news appears to expect a story about him or herself as a private citizen or as a participant in a moral (rather than political) drama, organized groups right and left use the media to mobilize political action directed toward elected rep- resentatives. The styles in which partisan public-affairs documentaries on this sub- ject have developed their arguments reflect the separate political prob- lems of the right and the left. The right was able to base its arguments on straightforward anticommunism (and so depend on reified images of the Other), a familiar barrage-style delivery, and tones of alarm to signal its message. The left's various experiments with form reflected the need to break through that reification, and to provoke the viewer to reconsider familiar assumptions. Experiments ranged from a care- ful borrowing of mainstream style, to a frank rejection of it in horta- tory rhetoric, to a human-interest approach to the daily-life context of political conflict. Emerging from these years of extensive and intensive media cover- age were works by nonpartisan journalists, whose styles echoed their expectation to reach a broad and uncommitted audience and also in- advertently revealed their difficulties in framing unexpected perspec- tives and information. If such works demonstrated cracks in the con- sensus, their problems with distribution hinted that such cracks were not necessarily openings. John Dewey would have been intrigued, but he would not have been surprised. NOTES 1. This overview is drawn from seven years of regular coverage of public affairs documentaries on foreign affairs for U.S. newspapers and magazines, especially for In These Times, and from interviews with producers and distributors. Citations provide a guide to original sources for my interviews and criticism. This chapter does not attempt a comprehensive overview of all 169 Pat Aufderheide production, but selects examples demonstrating trends and problems facing filmmakers with partisan viewpoints on foreign affairs. 2. John Weisman, "Why TV Is Missing the Picture in Central America," TV Guide, September 15, 1984, p. 2f. 3. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927; rpt. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, Ohio University Press, 1985), pp. 170-80, 182. The concern ex- pressed by Dewey runs through a vigorous current of political science analysis and research. Duke University political science professor Robert Entman's Democracy Without Citizens: The Dilemma of American Journalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) is one example. 4. Daniel C. Hallin, "We Keep America on Top of the World," in Watching Television, ed. Todd Gitlin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), pp. 9-41. 5. Both documentaries are analyzed in Pat Aufderheide, "The Angles of TV Accuracy," In These Times, September 8-14, 1982, pp. 20, 23. 6. Interviewed by Pat Aufderheide in "El Salvador, Bringing the War Back Home," American Film, June 1983, pp. 50-54. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Attack on the Americas filmscript, 1982, American Security Council Foundation, Boston, Va. 22713. 11. Rich Sangerman, interview, May 1982, quoted in Aufderheide, "Bring- ing the War Back Home." 12. Sidney Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983). 13. Interviewed in Aufderheide, "El Salvador: Bringing the War Back Home." 14. See Pat Aufderheide, "The Case for Anti-war Protest, in Living Color," In These Times, November 18-24, 1981; "Films Debunk Haig's Myths," ibid., March 31-April 6, 1982, p. 13. 15. For an overview, see Roy Armes, Third World Film Making and the West (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), esp. "Third Cinema," pp. 87-100. 16. Interviewed in Aufderheide, "El Salvador: Bringing the War Back Home." 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Pat Aufderheide, "The Other Face: Conversations in Latin America," Massachusetts Review, Fall-Winter 1986, p. 657. 22. Pat Aufderheide, "Voting El Salvador-Style," New Age Journal, June 1984, pp. 62-63. 23. Interviewed in Aufderheide, "El Salvador: Bringing the War Back Home." 24. Both interviewed in ibid. 170 El Salvador on Film 25. "Pablo," the pseudonym of a European member of the guerrilla video team, interviewed in Pat Aufderheide, "Demystifying El Salvador," In These Times, October 10-16, 1984, p. 14. 26. James Brooke, "Salvadorans Use Video in the Propaganda War," New York Times, August 27, 1984, C17. Brooke described the guerrilla videos as a "highly partial look at the war in El Salvador." 27. "The outstanding problem of the Public is discovery and identification of itself," Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, p. 185. 28. A General Accounting Office report on October 4, documenting the ad- ministration's "covert propaganda activities" designed to influence the media on Central American policies through the Office of Public Diplomacy was re- ported by Don Oberdorfer, "GAO Accuses Administration of Illegal Latin Propa- ganda," Washington Post, October 5, 1987, Al. 29. See Aufderheide, "Films Debunk Haig's Myths." 30. "Moon, the Contras and PBS," Extra!, Fairness and Accuracy in Re- porting, August-September 1987, p. 9. 31. Pat Aufderheide, "Dial-a-Fear or Dial-a-Hope," In These Times, May 15- 21, 1985, p. 16; Kit Miller, media director of Neighbor-to-Neighbor, personal correspondence on the "Just Say No to Contra Aid" campaign, April 18, 1987. 32. Special report on advocacy advertising, Advertising Age, October 5, 1987, esp. pp. S8-S9. 33. Pat Aufderheide, "Living at Risk in Nicaragua Today," In These Times, October 30-November 5, 1985, p. 20; Renee Tajima, "Video Power," The In- dependent, Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, October 1987, p. 20. 34. Renee Tajima, "The Video Trade: Part I, The Distributors," The Inde- pendent, October 1987, pp. 18-22; "Video Power," p. 20. 35. Aufderheide, "Demystifying El Salvador," p. 14. 36. Aufderheide, "Snafu; Situation Normal, All Fouled Up," In These Times, May 13-19, 1987, p. 19. 171 8 COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE, SYNTHETIC FORMS: EL SALVADOR'S RADIO VENCEREMOS John Hess This chapter examines the Salvadoran crisis as it has been represented from within. John Hess traces the genesis of three largely anony- mous groups -El Taller de los Vagos, Cero a la Izquierda, and Radio Venceremos (The Vagrants' Workshop, Zero on the Left, and Radio "We Shall Win")- suggesting links between them. He discusses each group's films, videos, and synthetic productions ("image works") in terms of how each relates to its specific historical-political context. Hess distinguishes between works produced in an urban milieu and those produced in the "liberated" rural zones and on the battlefield, between cinema verite and complex analytical montage styles. He discusses how the tactical need to produce very different works for internal and external consumption has resulted in multiple versions, negating the notion of an original or definitive version of any given work. These collaborative works also vitiate the idea of authorship: necessarily anonymous, their mode of production requires multiple and separate image-recorders; the final product can be fully concep- tualized only as it is assembled, on the editing table, safely outside the country. BEGINNING AS the clandestine radio of the Popular Revo- lutionary Army, one of five guerrilla forces united into the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front), Radio Venceremos (RV) has grown into an extensive network of information services for both internal and external consumption. Listeners' circles in El Salvador's cities, major print and electronic media, and solidarity groups around the world use their materials. U.S. ships off the coast of El Salvador try to jam the RV signal in noisy testimony to the system's growing 173 John Hess importance as a source of accurate information about the war in El Salvador.1 In addition to radio broadcasts and print materials, RV has produced numerous films and videotapes. I want to focus on these works and examine how some very unusual circumstances have produced some very interesting, creative media vehicles. We can clearly see how these collectively made, multiformat works both respond to a rapidly chang- ing political situation, in order to affect that situation, and also reflect contemporary life inside El Salvador's revolution. RV assembles footage in 16mm, Super-8, half-inch, and three-quarter- inch video. Nagra sound is mixed with that of cheap pocket recorders. The footage comes from a great assortment of people: combatants trained as media technicians by RV, sympathetic journalists, tourists, foreign supporters. These various image and sound tracks are whisked out of the country, to be edited abroad in three-quarter-inch video and then distributed in various formats. I will first put this work in its social-political context, then examine how the filmmakers have selected different forms to deal with different situations. Finally, I will try to assess the politics of these films in a larger framework. Context Somewhat ironically, revolutionary filmmaking emerged in El Salvador just as the military was viciously repressing the grow- ing, democratic mass movement taking place in the cities in 1980. This repression drove the popular forces into the rural areas, where for the next four years the guerrilla struggle took center stage. In 1981, the FMLN (a coalition of five separate guerrilla forces formed in November 1980) began to establish "zones of popular con- trol." In that year Radio Venceremos was founded by the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) in Morazn Province. (The ERP itself was formed in 1971 by dissident members of the Christian Democratic party, various people moved by their religious convictions, and indepen- dent leftists.) At about the same time, the FPL founded Radio Fara- bundo Marti in Chalatenango Province. (The FPL, or Popular Libera- tion Forces, was formed in 1972 by Salvador Cayetano Carpio, who had broken with the Salvadoran Communist party over the issue of armed struggle.)2 From 1981 on, cooperation between and integration of these various autonomous forces within the FMLN increased. However diffi- cult this unity has been to maintain, Radio Venceremos and Radio Farabundo Marti have both become official voices of the FMLN-FDR. In 1986 the FMLN-FDR founded La Unidad de Cine y TV (Film and 174 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos Television Unit) to coordinate the work of Radio Venceremos and the Film Institute of Revolutionary El Salvador. They screened their first short tape, entitled No apagardn mi sonrisa (They Won't Wipe the Smile off My Face) at the Havana International Film Festival that same year. Thus RV joins the Taller de los Vagos and Cero a la Iz- quierda groups, discussed below, as another step toward unified Salva- doran media production. This chapter will examine a series of films, beginning with Inter- tidal Zone (1980), made by El Taller de los Vagos, a group of political artists named in the film's credits. I will then discuss four films made by a successor collective called Cero a la Izquierda (Zero on the Left), and finally three films and ten videotapes made by the RV film and video collective. I cannot demonstrate the connections between these three groups of filmmakers. My assumption of a link between El Taller de los Vagos and Cero a la Izquierda is based on conversations with Salvadorans and North Americans who have had contact with or have worked with RV. Guillermo Escal6n, who (according to the credits) shot Intertidal Zone, helped to form Cero a la Izquierda and made Decision to Win. In an interview with Julia Lesage, Daniel Solis, a representative of RV, noted that "Radio Venceremos began audio-visual production with com- paieros from the film collective [Cero] a la Izquierda."3 It seems that one or more members from Cero a la Izquierda, excluding Escal6n, formed the nucleus of a film/video group within RV and began training new participants. A simultaneous filmmaking development took place in Chalatenango under the leadership of the Film Institute of Revolu- tionary El Salvador. Their best-known work is El Salvador: The People Will Win, directed by Puerto Rican filmmaker Diego de la Texera in 1981. Their excellent recent film, Road to Liberty, looks very much like Cero a la Izquierda's earlier Decision to Win.4 On July 19, 1979, the Nicaraguan people triumphed over the So- moza dynasty and its U.S. backers. On October 14 in El Salvador, in the face of rising protest in the streets and dissatisfaction within the military and the ruling elite, a coup d'etat overthrew General Carlos Humberto Romero and established a new ruling junta containing many progressive civilians as well as two future FDR leaders, Guillermo Ungo and Ruben Zamora. But the demands and demonstrations of the popu- lar organizations were met with increasingly vicious repression as right- wing military officers, supported by the U.S. embassy, gained the upper hand in the junta. In November and December hundreds were shot down in the streets, many more disappeared into the "clandestine jails," and scores of mutilated bodies turned up on garbage dumps. Nineteen-eighty was a fateful year in El Salvador. The military, po- 175 Social Documentary in Latin America Emphasizes partiality, interpretation, the lived experience of social actors as apprehended and conveyed through a process in which subjects and filmmakers are both instrumental. Filmmakers acknowledge the determining nature of their own inter- vention directly or indirectly. Latitude for self-presentation by social actors varies. Examples: A. Housing Problems, "man on the street" encounters," Chronique d'une ete, Sad Song of Yellow Skin B. For the First Time, Hablando delpunto cubano, Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later REFLEXIVE MODE Characterized by: . voice of filmmaker in metacommentary " images of "reflection" " predominance of strategies that generate an awareness of the cinematic apparatus Emphasizes epistemologial doubt, (de)formative intervention of the cinematic apparatus. Construes a critical stance toward all other modes of documentary prac- tice as a mode unto itself. Questions conventions of representational realism as well as the sta- tus of empirical knowledge, lived experience, and processes of in- teractive interpretation. Examples: A. Man With a Movie Camera, Daughter Rite, Reassemblage B. Of Great Events and Ordinary People, Unfinished Diary MIXED MODES Combinations of two or more of the above. Since few documentaries are pure examples of their form, this is the category in which most documentaries will fall- those from an oppositional tradition that en- compasses experimentation, innovation, and marginality all the more abundantly. For example: Tire did, The Hour of the Furnaces, Brick- makers, Man of Leather, A Time of Daring, A Man When He Is a Man. Additional categories of social documentary, which overlap with one or more of the preceding modes, include, among others: ethnographic (Man of Leather), biographical (Alicia, on Cuban prima ballerina Alicia Alonso; or Luis Felipe Bernaza's cinematic biographies of "everyday Cubans"), agitational (I Like Students), poetic (Letter from Nicaragua, John Hess lice, and death squads initiated bloody repression, assassinated Arch- bishop Oscar Romero, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered five FDR leaders, raped and killed four U.S. church workers, and finally shot down two AFL-CIO advisors in a hotel dining room in January 1981. The result of this carnage was the dispersal and driving underground of the popular organizations and the death of any hope for peaceful change. For the next three years, the focus shifted to the guerrilla war in the countryside and the establishment of zones of popular control. Intertidal Zone and Cero a la Izquierda's Violento desalojo (Violent Eviction) are about the repression in the city. The former, dedicated to assassinated teachers, counterpoints the body of a young male teacher, lying on the beach just where surf and sand meet, with scenes from his life in school, at home, and reading in a hammock. It is a mon- tage of beautifully composed and photographed images accompanied only by music and source sound. Intertidal Zone demonstrates that a group of talented artists with access to resources and contacts with the mass organizations existed in San Salvador at this time. On the basis of this film, one could easily imagine the development of a na- tional, politically committed cinema based in the cities, drawing on a wide range of artists, made in association with the mass organizations. Violento desalojo and A Song are two films made by Cero a la Iz- quierda, a collective of about four people, including one or more from Taller de los Vagos. The first film concerns the rout and murder of un- armed young people who had occupied the headquarters of the Chris- tian Democratic party. (I have not seen this film, nor have I been able to learn anything at all about A Song, which apparently has never been shown in the United States.) Before this effort to document and aid the urban movement - to de- velop a Salvadoran national cinema, drawing on the combined talents and resources of an urban center - could really develop, the urban popular movement and its culture were forced underground. Cero a la Izquierda's next film, Morazdin (1980), documented the preparations for the stepped-up guerrilla war, especially the manufacture of weapons in small workshops and weapons training. This expulsion of documentary activity from the urban center had tremendous implications and consequences. To begin with, only the heartiest and most committed artists could continue in these new circumstances-only artists who could live among the peasants and march with the guerrillas. Cut off from resources, they had to develop, just as the guerrillas did, supply lines to get film, tape, cameras, and sound equipment in and the film footage out for processing, editing, and distribution. They had to rethink the purpose of their films. With- out the large popular organizations as a logical distribution and ex- hibition structure, they had to address and figure out ways to show 176 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos their work to mostly illiterate rural audiences, usually in areas without electricity, and also to get the work out to an international audience. The changes can be seen clearly in the films. A simple, cinema verite aesthetic replaces the more complex, analytical, montage-based earlier films. Cero a la Izquierda's last two films, Morazdin (1980) and Decision to Win (1981) and Radio Venceremos's first film, Letter from Morazdn (1982) concentrate on the guerrilla war and especially on the conscious participation of ordinary peasants. Letter is also the first work made in a combination of Super-8 and half-inch video. Daniel Solis says they switched "for economic reasons and for easy movement, for example in ambushes and in actual fighting."5 But they also quickly discovered that video "allows much better and more participation of the people themselves." So while 16mm films were appropriate to urban resources and the possibility of mass exhibition, video became more appropriate to the fluid, flexible, dispersed conditions of guerrilla warfare. For Letter (1982), Sowing Hope, and Time of Daring (both 1983), and Braz (1984), as well as two recent works in progress, Tras la grieta en la guerra (Through an Additional Crack in the War) and Centro- america: el volcdn (Central America: The Volcano) and various short videotapes, all the material, whatever the source, was copied onto three- quarter-inch video and edited in that format. Then technicians trans- ferred the final product back to half-inch video for use as an organizing tool in El Salvador and also for solidarity work abroad, where it is also available in other formats. Readers of Walter Benjamin will note the obvious theoretical implication: the creation of a way to instantly re- produce an earlier method of mechanical reproduction has once again destroyed the notion of an original. A "film" like A Time of Daring was shot in Super-8, half-inch and three-quarter-inch video, perhaps some in one-inch video, and 16mm film; it was transferred to three-quarter- inch video for editing and then transferred to various formats for dis- tribution. In some cases, different versions are made for use in differ- ent countries. We are thus faced with increasingly synthetic images and sounds. A further implication of making films under conditions of guerrilla war is what I choose to call the "Vertov syndrome," after Dziga Ver- tov, who edited Soviet newsreels during the 1918-1920 civil war. A variety of people in different places record images and sounds without being able to conceptualize a finished product or even to articulate an organizing principle. All this material is then gathered in once place and, on the basis of written or oral suggestions, instructions, and very limited participation from the recorders, the editors have to assemble something that fulfills the needs of various political constituencies at home and abroad. The early films have a very simple structure. Morazdn, Decision to 177 Win, and Letter cover a specific period or campaign: Morazin, June 1980; Decision, July-August 1981; Letter, the Commander Gonzalo Campaign (July-August 1982). At one level they are war documentaries. Yet, as we will see, they are much more than that. Sowing Hope (1983) represents another stylistic change, one aris- ing from political need. The title refers to the legacy of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in his cathedral in March 1980; to the pope's visit to Central America in March 1983; and to the community- based or grass-roots church, based on the tenets of liberation theology. The only one of these films with an extensive voice-over narration, it seems made to explain the rural-based religious communities to urban Salvadorans as well as to present current events in El Salvador to a foreign audience. The narration explains a lot of recent history, detail- ing the persecution of the church, including the assassination of Arch- bishop Romero. At the same time, it explains the importance of the popular church. Made quickly and designed to serve too many purposes, it is the least successful of the films in the series. It demonstrates both the limitations of the previously used verite-style films - they show but cannot explain or analyze very much- and how difficult it is to make a clear, analytical film without proper archival material and enough time to work through the difficulties inherent in guerrilla cinema. A Time of Daring brings it all together in many ways. Without giv- ing up the freshness and immediacy of the verite footage, it uses a con- trapuntal structure to make sharp and lucid comparisons between the Salvadoran regime and its U.S. backers on the one hand and the libera- tion forces on the other. It is an extremely sophisticated documentary, the culmination of four years of struggle, in nearly complete artistic isolation, to find appropriate styles and structures for both an illiterate peasantry and predominantly urban foreign audiences regarding whom building solidarity with the rebel movement is a leading priority. The change in style also represents a return to the city. In fact, by 1983 the guerrilla movement had become strong enough to influence events in the urban centers. Both Sowing Hope and A Time of Daring demonstrate this new strength by using footage shot in the cities, under the noses of the enemy, and by contrasting the urban-based govern- ment forces with the rural-based guerrillas. From the point of view of the FMLN-FDR, a situation of dual power exists in El Salvador, "a coun- try where, in order to live, produce, conduct business and partake in political life, all must deal with two existing powers, with two distinct authorities. There are two opposing enemies that project two distinctly different lines with regard to the entirety of the economic, social, cul- tural, political and military structure."6 Braz, a short (35-minute) portrait of the FMLN's Rafael Arce Zablah John Hess 178 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos Brigade, harks back to the earlier war documentaries. It examines the relationship between the brigade and the people on the one hand, and between them and the government army on the other. Tras la grieta en la guerra examines the impact of the recent earthquake in the major cities, especially San Salvador, and points up the weaknesses of the government's relief efforts compared to those organized by various trade unions and the mass organizations. Centroamerica: el volcdn puts the war in El Salvador in the context of the larger Central American situation. Radio Venceremos has also made-or at least distributes in the United States -several works shot exclusively in video. These short works (8-29 minutes), more specific in their focus, are made mostly from the same material used in the longer works, so an exact distinction be- tween film and video is hard to make. The "films" are transferred to 16mm film for theatrical distribution in the metropolitan countries, while the "tapes" are intended to be used inside El Salvador and by metropolitan support groups in small exhibition situations. The "tapes" are not as carefully made, not as thoroughly composed, as the "films," and are more pointedly political. Recent tapes clearly identify Radio Venceremos with the ERP, which suggests that they are primarily made for internal consumption, for political education, and for building the movement for liberation inside El Salvador. They use more of a TV aesthetic, with lots of interviews and close-ups of speakers. There is much more talking in the tapes than in the films. More than anything else, however, they demonstrate the enormous flexibility of the Super-8/Betamax technology and of the Radio Ven- ceremos filmmakers. RV filmmakers use images and sounds in a number of ways, replay- ing footage after they shoot it as part of an educational effort directed toward the general public, using it in major works as well as in shorter, more specialized works. They clearly understand from their own prac- tice that major works are important for building public support in the outside world and that shorter, more specialized works are more effec- tive for political education. To look more carefully at these revolution- ary "image works" is to see an amazing growth and maturing under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. To move from the war documentaries of 1980, through A Time of Daring, and on to the most recent RV works is to traverse film history - Lumiere to Santiago Al- varez and beyond, so to speak. We can best describe Morazdn, Decision to Win, and Letter from Morazdcn as war documentaries, a self-description used in Letter. These films use a modified cinema verite aesthetic: hand-held camera, lots of sync sound (voice and source sound), and an emphasis on the spoken 179 John Hess language of ordinary people. Though some of the scenes are set up for the camera, this seems less the dramatization of an effort to create fic- tion than an effort to make economic use of scarce resources. Primarily they are films of witness, providing evidence that certain things exist, that certain things have happened. See these homemade weapons! See these people supporting the war effort! See this battle we won! See these prisoners of war! Yet it is clear that this style of film was not sufficient; the filmmakers felt the need for a more sophisticated, complex, and analytical form. Across these three films there is tremendous formal growth and change, which minimizes but does not dispense with the cinema verite-based style. Morazdn: Steps on the Road to Liberation, completed in December 1980 by the Cero a la Izquierda collective (16mm, color, 15 minutes), documents the training of peasant guerrilla fighters and the manufac- ture of various kinds of bombs in clandestine workshops. The filmmak- ers mix synchronous and nonsynchronous sequences. Sequences show- ing various kinds of training routines use nonsync guitar music and humming on the sound track. These serve as transitions between the sync-sound sequences, which show a given activity with one of the peas- ant participants speaking on screen about the activity and his partici- pation in it.' In some of these sync-sound sequences, the speaker is addressing other guerrillas: for example, a trainer giving a class. The filmmakers cut or pan between the speaker and listeners. These reaction shots show the rapt attention of the trainees and the great range of people involved: men of various ages and some young women. In other sequences offscreen questions posed by the filmmakers can be heard; the interviewee answers in direct address. All these sequences are quite short. This is a fairly crude film, the first after the move to the country- side. Perhaps the Cero group made it quickly to respond to U.S. charges of massive arms shipments from Nicaragua to the guerrillas in El Sal- vador. We see no evidence of such shipments, but instead poorly armed peasants and homemade weapons. There seems little effort to compose images beyond getting the best newsreel-type shot of the activity. Yet a lovely transition sequence near the beginning of the film indicates the talent that will flourish in later films. After some introductory material and the titles, there is a shot of two uniformed, armed guerrillas walking away up the road, clearly inviting us to follow. Then the camera approaches four armed peasants sitting and kneeling on the edge of a cliff. We look over their shoulders and down to a clearing where recruits are being trained; then the film- makers cut to shots of the training routine. The images are lovely in themselves, and the camera position and editing incorporates us into the point of view of the guerrillas. This sequence also signals the ar- 180 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos rival of the filmmakers from the city to join the guerrilla forces and the peasants, to become trainers (in media skills) and combatants. Through these films we see an increasing symbiosis between the film- makers and the guerrillas. Decision to Win, finished in December 1981, is the last film cred- ited to Cero a la Izquierda (16mm, color, 75 minutes). In structure and purpose it resembles Morazdn. Here they focus on all the support activities - digging bomb shelters, dispensing medical care, food, and clothing, and producing radio programs. In most cases a participant explains the activity and tells why he is involved. Most of these se- quences begin in medias res with the filmmakers coming upon some activity. Once the activity and its natural environment are visually and aurally established, a spokesman explains the work and its contribu- tion. Unlike Morazdn, the film is marked by a slow, even leisurely pace, expressing a sense of security and stability. During the explanation, the camera rarely stays on the speaker for long, choosing instead to wander over the scene, using lots of close-ups of the people and the pro- cess they are engaged in. One particularly lovely sequence shows sugar production: a bubbling vat of sugar, people stirring, licking sticks, laughing. A sense of warm contentment and community suffuses this scene. A sequence of Radio Venceremos shows the place of media, its in- tegration into all the other support functions. This sequence has the same structure as the rest - broadcasting is a necessary task and is per- formed just as other tasks are. Rather than a speaker/interviewee, however, the radio broadcast itself plays the narrative role. "Today the tenth of July, 1981, we have completed six months on the air, breaking the dictatorship's information blockade." The camera pans over labeled cassettes going back to February 1981. At the end of the film, the RV announcer addresses the assembled troops and peasants at a celebra- tion of the Nicaraguan revolution. Though this man is clearly an im- portant leader, he is never identified, and the camera abandons him to focus on the assembled people listening to his talk. Letter from Morazdn is the first film credited to "a collective of cameramen, soundmen, and editors of Radio Venceremos." They shot the material in July-September 1982 and released it in November. Com- pared to earlier films, this was produced much more rapidly because it was shot in Super-8 and Betamax and edited in three-quarter-inch video (image work, color, 55 minutes). The film has a voice-over narra- tion in the form of a letter from "El Flaco" and "Maravilla," who shot the material, to their friends outside the country who will edit the footage. Solis explained to Lesage how they chose the commentary for this film: "The advantage was that a letter could describe situations 181 John Hess we couldn't film, such as things that happened at night. Later we real- ized that this narrative strategy of a letter let us use and valorize people's everyday vocabulary."8 The film reveals many other advantages. The relatively simple cinema verite form of Morazdn and Decision to Win made it impossible to present any historical or political analysis. Those films simply show a series of activities in no very meaningful order. In the beginning of Morazdcn, guerrillas hand out rifles and pistols to recruits; at the end men are learning how to use a rocket launcher. There is a narrative ex- pansion from light arms to heavier arms. Decision to Win begins with a mass and a wedding, moves through various support activities, and ends with a brief battle and a celebration of Nicaraguan independence. Letter from Morazdn is more specific. It presents the elements of an actual historical campaign: the second stage of the Commander Gon- zalo Campaign in July-August 1982 in Morazan and San Vicente prov- inces. Here the film details the planning, training for, and execution of a major campaign. At the end, prisoners of war are turned over to the Red Cross. The exchange of prisoners has become a scene obligatoire in these films for several reasons. It shows the strength of the guerrilla forces; it also demonstrates their humanitarian concern, especially since the government forces take no prisoners. Finally, interviews with some of the prisoners show that they are poor peasants who joined because they had no work or were conscripted against their will. These are ex- tremely embarrassing scenes for the government and its U.S. backers. The letter-narration is a retrospective commentary on the events covered by the film. The "letter" accompanies the raw film and tape materials out of the country and functions both as instructions for cut- ting the film and as narration. The letter can also explain and fill in events that could not be filmed. We see part of a battle, but are informed that most of it occurred at night. We are told about Colonel Castillo's capture before the film's interview with him. The prisoner exchange is "narrated" by the letter because there is no sync sound available for that scene. The letter also functions as an economical way to person- alize the participants: "Javier's people approach the city." "Licho's column is preparing to ambush the army reinforcements." Because it is a personal letter rather than a conventional voice-over narrative (although it is voice-over), these comments seem more informal and intimate - people commenting on their friends' activities. So the letter device puts the events we see into a historical context. It weaves the three events together, producing a more coherent and more forceful film. The personal, unhurried tone of the letter and the ease of contact with the outside world also suggest the power and extent of the guer- rilla movement; the guerrillas are not the "scattered band of terrorists 182 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos without popular support" described in the Salvadoran and U.S. media. Sowing Hope (image work, color, 29 minutes) was rushed to com- pletion for the pope's visit to Central America, which coincided with the third anniversary of Archbishop Romero's assassination. The film's title refers to the legacy of Romero, to the pope's visit, and to the popu- lar church, the most authentic source of hope to Salvadoran Christians who have recognized the "special option for the poor." According to Solis, the tape was shown to small groups in San Salvador, creating "a lib- erated space, a decolonized territory," as called for by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in their famous manifesto of the 1960s, "Towards a Third Cinema."9 Sowing Hope was not made simply to prove the existence of a popular-based liberation movement. Instead, it contributes to the ex- tensive and complex debate about the role of the church in Latin Amer- ica and links the persecution of the church with the general repression of mass movements in El Salvador. Sowing Hope is the first film since the early Cero a la Izquierda works in which editing plays a major role, in which two different realities are juxtaposed. This film foreshadows A Time of Daring and also reflects the revival of the urban movement. By early 1983, the power of the guerrillas has led to a stalemate in the field- the end of any expecta- tion that the guerrillas could be easily and quickly defeated - and fo- cused attention again on the urban situation. Whereas previous war documentaries showed a rural realm separate and isolated from the urban zone, Sowing Hope and A Time of Daring contrast the success of the rural-based revolution to the frustrated urban-based effort to crush it. Sowing Hope opens with a church service in a "liberated" zone. Lov- ing close-ups of the attentive worshipers blend with the priest's words and a song in unison about Archbishop Romero. All this is in the style of previous films - activity, portraits of participants, and a spokes- person. But then the film cuts on movement to a hand dispensing wafers. The new image is darker; light lyrical music and ambient church sounds replace the peasant song. The voice-over narration begins as the camera draws back slowly to reveal Archbishop Romero. In one sense this is a flashback, but more to the point it is an example of thematic editing: combining images, irrespective of time and place, because of their thematic associations. The filmmakers compare the crude communal service in the liberated zone to the sacrament of communion in San Salvador's cathedral. The narrator speaks of the community of Catholics in El Salvador, in the country and in the city, and how "simply encouraging Christian hope for a more just life represents an intolerable threat to those who 183 John Hess wield power." The next images show marching boots, soldiers in front of the cathedral, military officers reviewing troops. Again the method is juxtaposition; the narrator merely elaborates on the images: the army with U.S. support has been able "to occupy temporarily the streets of San Salvador, taking from the people part of their national territory." From here the film details the repression in the city and the country- side: death-squad activity, bombing raids on civilians, funerals, the murder of Romero, the attack on his funeral procession, the murder of U.S. church people, the death of FDR leaders. Again we have a mon- tage aesthetic based on thematic editing of shots and sequences that serve only to indicate the type and extent of the repression. In part, because the fact of repression no longer needs proof and also because many of these images or ones like them have been seen in many other films, this section seems perfunctory in style, overdone. It feels more like a series of images used to illustrate the narration and interview material about repression. The rest of Sowing Hope concerns the practice of religion in the liberated zones. This part of the film also seems perfunctory. What are now stock images of death, fighting, prisoners of war, church services, and rallies are put together to support the narration and the views of several priests being interviewed. This may well have been a good film for use in El Salvador just before and during the pope's visit, and per- haps it works well in Catholic circles around the world. It also sug- gests a new direction for Radio Venceremos films, forced by the FMLN- FDR's successes to deal with broader, more complex issues. This new direction, not very successful in Sowing Hope, comes to fruition in A Time of Daring. A Time of Daring (image work, color, 55 minutes) is also a film of daring - aesthetically, technically, and politically. It uses a precise mon- tage technique to compare the two contending forces in El Salvador. It makes extensive use of footage shot under the nose of the enemy - the Miss El Salvador pageant, Caspar Weinberger's visit to San Vi- cente, Salvadoran government troops in action. (It would seem that the filmmakers got this footage from local TV or from foreign crews who would have access to these places. In that sense, it is standard documentary/newsreel footage. But seeing how it fits into the film, it is hard not to imagine that the camera people knew they were shooting for oppositional use.) And, for the first time in this series of films, the filmmakers criticize an earlier military strategy. Though primarily rhe- torical, a critique of the past as a spur to the future, this self-criticism demonstrates the growing maturity of the FMLN-FDR and the RV filmmakers. A Time of Daring has six sections, three representing various as- 184 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos pects of the U.S. military presence in El Salvador, each followed by a section representing the people's response. First, we see the power of the Salvadoran oligarchy and their military establishment and then the popular response, first peaceful, then with arms. The filmmakers subsequently concentrate on the government troops and their weak- ness in the field, comparing them to the less-equipped but more humane guerrilla forces, their integration with the people, and their growing success. Finally, we see evidence of extensive U.S. involvement com- pared to the increasing power of the guerrillas. The scene is set for a showdown; this time, the film implies, the people will have the audacity they lacked during the mass demonstrations of 1980. These comparisons provide both a chronological and developmen- tal movement. The editing continually makes the point that imperial- ist intervention is unnatural, separate from the people, impersonal, and mechanical- whereas the guerrilla's world is natural, personal, and at one with the people. After initial titles about the negative impact of U.S. aid on El Salvador's population, the film opens with helicopters ominously approaching over the lush green countryside - images con- sciously reminiscent of the Vietnam War. The film cuts to the Miss El Salvador pageant attended by a well- dressed, predominantly male audience. A uniformed officer goose-steps across the stage and into the audience. Although Miss El Salvador is being announced, the camera remains fixed on this officer's movement. This shot then leads to a sequence of troops on parade. It is all cold, formal, and official-the power of the oligarchy on display. At the end of this part, the camera picks out a poor, confused-looking street ven- dor shouldering his brooms as the soldiers shoulder their weapons. The filmmakers then cut from this potential victim of military prowess to an image of two young boys climbing a dirt road. They are following a team of oxen pulling a cart away from the camera, inviting us to fol- low. In a long shot we see a group sitting around an open area and one man presents "Jorge," a representative of the People's Commission. "Jorge" looks very much like the broom peddler. He too is a poor man, oppressed by the oligarchy. But he lives in a liberated zone, he has de- veloped himself, he now participates in democratic self-governance. So the move from the stiff, formal world of the oligarchy to the natural, warm world of the liberated zones is also a move from oppression to liberation. This transition is not just a formal editing device but a comparison that symbolically and concretely contains all of Salvadoran history. Dialectics cannot get any finer than this. The impoverished, uncompre- hending broom peddler represents all the awful oppression - economic, social, intellectual, and physical - of the Salvadoran oligarchy and its 185 Julianne Burton Prayer for Marilyn Monroe), celebrational (Men of Mal Tiempo), per- formance (Simparele), compilation (Now, Memorias de un mexicano), collage (Seventy-nine Springtimes), reconstruction (Muerte y vida en El Morillo), and hybridized fictional/documentary forms (Memorias de un mexicano, Patriamada). Today in the United States, documentary is a vital and varied form that has, during the past decade especially, enlisted renewed interest on the part of filmmakers, audiences, and critics. This resurgence in "nonfiction" filmmaking is the product of many converging factors: the rise of independent film and video efforts; the proliferation of social movements and special interest groups that see documentary as a tool for communicating their specific concerns to a larger constituency; the growth of community television as well as educational and other alter- native outlets; the increasing accessibility of new technologies, par- ticularly video. With the enhanced visibility and versatility of Ameri- can documentary filmmaking, there emerges a heightened interest in the nature and uses of documentary not only in our own society but also in other places, other times. Nowhere have the manifestations of documentary been as multiple and their impact so decisive as in Latin America. From its inception in the mid-1950s, the New Latin American Cinema movement accorded to documentary privileged status. Socially committed filmmakers em- braced documentary approaches as their primary tool in the search to discover and define the submerged, denied, devalued realities of an in- tricate palimpsest of cultures and castes separated and conjoined by an arbitrary network of national boundaries. This documentary impulse, and the frequent aesthetic preference for a raw realism that replicated the compelling immediacy of certain techniques of reportage, has marked much of the fictional production throughout the region during the last three decades. Today's Latin American artists and activists continue to embrace documentary as an instrument of cultural exploration, national defini- tion, epistemological inquiry, and social and political transformation. Documentary provides: a source of "counterinformation" for those with- out access to the hegemonic structures of world news and communica- tions; a means of reconstructing historical events and challenging hege- monic and often elitist interpretations of the past; a mode of eliciting, preserving, and utilizing the testimony of individuals and groups who would otherwise have no means of recording their experience; an in- strument for capturing cultural difference and exploring the complex relationship of self to other within as well as between societies; and fi- John Hess Helicopters as harbingers of horror in Time of Daring (Radio Venceremos, 1983). Credit: courtesy First Run/Icarus Films U.S. backers-not just as visual symbol, but in his actual person. In the same way, "Jorge" symbolizes and embodies the liberation of the Salvadoran people. Their physical similarity indicates that they are the "same" person on different levels on the continuum of potential. The broom peddler can and has become "Jorge," just as "Jorge" was once the broom peddler. Swift, fundamental human change takes place every day in the revolutionary situation as long-suppressed and alienated talents, needs, and skills emerge from a liberated people. This first section on the guerrillas ends with a list of successful cam- paigns rolling up the screen over images of long columns of fighters filing through a recently captured village. These images once again con- 186 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos tradict the "scattered bands of terrorists without popular support" that Ronald Reagan and Napoleon Duarte talk about. While the names on the screen are heroic - "Heroes of October," "Revolutionary Heroes," and "We Vow to Win" - the images qualify this heroism. It is sundown, the tired troops carry heavy packs and weapons. They have been through a lot. Although the Radio Venceremos war documentaries never show dead guerrillas, these images act as a kind of elegiac commemoration of those who have given their lives for their people. The transition from these thoughtful, reflective images to Salva- doran elite troops jogging through San Salvador in matched sweat pants and tee-shirts is striking. These are well-fed, well-trained troops, formed in the image of their U.S. creators. They chant, "I'll drink your blood!" We see them preparing for battle and finally going on patrol. But then the slick facade begins to crack. The wounded start coming in; they call for reinforcements. More wounded. Some troopers nervously boast about verbal exchanges with the guerrillas. More wounded come in. The medivac choppers arrive and the wounded are hastily loaded aboard. All this action is shot at very close range and edited quickly. The se- quence has a power that evokes TV newsreel material about Vietnam in the 1960s. We sense the mounting panic of these "elite" troops as they face defeat at the hands of the guerrillas. A title at this point in- dicates that the Salvadoran army suffered 8,200 casualties in one year - fully one-third of their strength. From these images of medivac helicopters taking out the wounded, the film cuts to the guerrillas carrying a young man in a primitive sling to a medical station where his wounded leg is tended by a female doc- tor. Here there is none of the panic of the previous sequence. The guer- rillas' small field hospital is crude, but personal. The doctor addresses the young man affectionately and other guerrillas assist her. The rest of the section shows an easy interaction between the guerrillas and the people and ends with one soldier commenting that they will win even if the United States intervenes. An abstract, revolving grid becomes a big radar dish as the camera tracks back to reveal U.S. helicopters swarming in to land on an open field. U.S. Secretary of Defense Weinberger arrives in San Vicente (1983) and goes into a tent to meet with Salvadoran officials and their U.S. advisors. All this is shot at very close range and is rapidly edited, creating a sense of tension and mechanical precision. This section goes on to show U.S. trainers and equipment, as well as U.S. maneuvers in Honduras. Ominous electronic music accompanies this whole sequence, which builds to a crescendo as heavier and heavier equipment is given the Salvadoran army by the United States. The guerrillas match this display of hardware with one of their own. 187 John Hess We see an homage to the earliest armed insurgents. We see the Rafael Arce Zablah Brigade in training. The film ends with a fascinating bit of self-reflection. Someone takes a Polaroid picture of a group of young guerrillas, who gather around excitedly to see the photo. Then we see the photo through a camera's shutter. As the shutter closes from each side, one onlooker says, "These pictures are historic." This is a fitting end to a series of films that have documented the rise of the guerrilla movement, the expansion of the liberated zones, and the spread of their influence over the entire country. These films are historic in their docu- mentation of events in the Salvadoran revolutionary struggle and for their cinematic ingenuity and resourcefulness. Conclusion: Political Limitations In this chapter, I have discussed the issues of form and content, their interrelationship, and how they occur in the context of Radio Venceremos films. But I have reserved until the end a direct in- terrogation of the politics of these films. Since they were made in the heat of battle, in a culture not my own, I must be careful to assess them in terms appropriate to their origins and intended use. Although I ad- mire them very much, and prefer them to the TV-style documentaries on Central America made in the United States, I feel that two criti- cisms are in order.10 First, neither the Cero a la Izquierda nor the Radio Venceremos films give adequate space to the participation of women in the Salva- doran struggle. Although images demonstrate the active participation of women, including those in armed combat and the military leader- ship, women never speak. The films don't present female points of view even though a woman, Comandante Luisa, directs Radio Venceremos. In her interview with Daniel Solis, Julia Lesage argues for the par- ticipation of women in the filmmaking process: "It's an issue of build- ing women's participation. In order to do that, you have to come to see things from the perspective of women's lives, so as to understand how women might conceive of their own roles. Often a woman enters into the revolutionary process through a completely different path than a man." 1 The recent videotape, Political Prisoners/Comandante Clelia (image work, color, 29 minutes, 1984), indicates a strong sense of women's spe- cial relationship to the revolutionary struggle. In one sequence, returned to several times, a group of women, seated together on a small patio, some with children, discuss their experiences as political prisoners and how they survived. This sequence suggests the kind of solidarity among women that underlies and strengthens the revolution in El Salvador. 188 El Salvador's Radio Venceremos Radio Venceremos would grow if it could train women filmmakers to document and explain women's participation. In an article on radical political documentaries in the United States, Chuck Kleinhans outlines four ways in which documentaries work. They bear witness and affect us emotionally. Beyond that, however, they must interpret and analyze a situation by dealing with its structure and the contradictions that indicate how things change.12 The films I am study- ing certainly do bear witness to both the terrible persecution of the Salvadoran people at the hands of the oligarchy and various aspects of the guerrilla war against that oligarchy. By portraying the full ex- tent of this persecution, yet also the heroic response, the films also affect people deeply. At the level of interpretation and analysis, however, the films seem limited. Certainly the brutal conditions of guerrilla war, the lack of resources and time, and the rapidly changing situation are partly to blame. It is clear that for these filmmakers and their political institu- tions, the major contradiction lies between themselves and imperial- ism. This struggle is intense and all-encompassing - a matter of life and death. Dealing with this grand contradiction, they vividly show the par- ticipation and power of the people set against their tormentors. The filmmakers' full participation in the struggle and the clarity of their revolutionary analysis produces fine, dialectically sophisticated films like A Time of Daring. Yet concentration on the major contradiction, however understand- able and even necessary, tends to produce one-dimensional images. The filmmakers clearly perceive this problem and attempt to address it by presenting so many spokespersons for their position rather than only a few leaders. Conditions of war and the obvious need for security also play a role here, as memorably illustrated in Under Fire, when the sub- jects of photographers' pirated pictures begin to turn up dead, victims of a death squad. Anyone who appears in the documentaries I have described must consider herself or himself marked for death by the oligarchy. Nonetheless, showing particular, individual contradictions would greatly increase the group's ability to demonstrate how people change, how they come to join the revolutionary struggle, how the broom peddler becomes "Jorge." Certainly, what people say about their participation and what we see of their lives helps us and helps them understand the material con- ditions that lead to change. Giving more specific information on how Poder Popular (People's Power) is structured, how it functions, how recruiting and political education are carried out, would explain more of the process of change. When anyone is involved in a life-and-death struggle, it is both difficult and frightening to examine one's own inter- nal contradictions. Yet I feel that such an examination would ultimately 189 strengthen rather than weaken the fight for national liberation in El Salvador. And I hope that the struggle is won soon, for their sake and for my own, since I believe that they are fighting for my liberty as much as for theirs. NOTES A condensed version of this chapter was presented at the Society for Cinema Studies Conference at New York University, June 14, 1985. 1. Radio Venceremos publishes a magazine six times a year called Seial de Libertad. An English language version is available from El Salvador Infor- mation Center, P.O. Box 421965, San Francisco, CA 94142. A special English edition of this magazine, no. 24 (1983) is dedicated to RV. Finally, see Jane Creighton, "Radio Venceremos Film Collective," The Independent, April 1985, pp. 15-19. 2. The best introduction to the revolution in El Salvador is Robert Arm- strong and Janet Shenk, El Salvador, The Face of Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1982). 3. Julia Lesage, "Interview with Daniel Solis: Betamax and Super-8 in Revolutionary El Salvador," Jump/Cut 29 (February 1984), 15. 4. The El Salvador Film and Video Project distributes all the films of Radio Venceremos, Cero a la Izquierda, and also Intertidal Zone. (Violent Eviction and A Song are not available.) Addresses are as follows: P.O. Box 1006, San Francisco, CA 94101; P.O. Box 57441, Los Angeles, CA 90057; and 799 Broad- way, Suite 325, New York, NY 10003. Icarus Films distributes Decision to Win, Letter from Morazin, Sowing Hope, and A Time of Daring. Their address is 200 Park Ave., Suite 1319, New York, NY 10003 (212-674-3375). The Cinema Guild, 1697 Broadway, New York, NY 10019 (212-246-5522) distributes The Road to Liberty and El Salvador: The People Will Win, by the Film Institute of Revolutionary El Salvador, along with several other films on Central America. For information on films from and about El Salvador, see Jump/Cut 27, 28, and 29. 5. Lesage, "Interview with Daniel Solis," p. 15. 6. "Dual Power: An Analysis," Signal of Liberty (English version of Seial de Liberdad), no. 4 (January-February 1985), 11. 7. I use the masculine pronoun because, unfortunately, even though women clearly play an important role in the revolution in El Salvador, they play hardly any role in these films. This is a major problem that I will discuss below. See two debates on the issue in Lesage's interview with Daniel Solis and in John Mraz's and Eli Bartra's interview with Lucerio Lleras, Jump/Cut 27 (July 1982), 37f. 8. Lesage, "Interview with Daniel Solis," p. 17. 9. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, "Towards a Third Cinema," in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), p. 61. 190 John Hess El Salvador's Radio Venceremos 191 10. See Julia Lesage's comparison between Central American films and those made about Central America in the United States in "For Our Urgent Use: Films on Central America," Jump/Cut 27 (July 1982), 15-20. 11. Lesage, "Interview with Daniel Solis," p. 16. 12. Chuck Kleinhans, "Forms, Politics, Makers, and Contexts: Basic Issues for a Theory of Radical Political Documentary," in "Show Us Life": Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary, ed. Thomas Waugh (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984), p. 320. 9 ON THE TRAIL OF INDEPENDENT VIDEO Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton Under the title "Democracy in Communication, "Karen Ranucci col- lected, edited, subtitled and introduced into U.S. distribution the first pan-Latin American collection of contemporary video production. Here she recounts the genesis of the project, provides background to many of the selections, and assesses the first year of distribution efforts. As A freelance journalist for North American television news agencies (particularly NBC) who has frequently been sent to Cen- tral America, I have had ample opportunity to observe first-hand how television reporters working in Latin America gather news for the North American audience. I was appalled to learn that our "news-gatherers" write their scripts without making an effort to include the words of the citizens of the countries whose events they are reporting. Reporters arrive in a given country when something "hot" is going on, equipped with only meager knowledge of that country and of the background relevant to the event which brought them there. Their command of the local language, if they speak it at all, tends to be rudimentary. They do much of their reporting without leaving their hotel, attending government-sponsored press conferences and receiving press releases from the U.S. embassy or interests section. Once they have written their story, they send a camera crew out to get pictures to illustrate it. If they incorporate local spokespersons, they must be English speakers, since the networks refuse to use subtitles on newscasts. Such practices perpetuate a North American perspective on Latin American events and prevent U.S. audiences from getting a sense of what Latin Ameri- cans have to say about their own realities. The opportunity to see how Latin Americans visually interpret their own reality is also scarce in North America - generally restricted to the limited number of films by Latin Americans currently in U.S. distribu- tion. And film itself is an increasingly beleaguered medium in North 193 Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton as well as South America, given rising costs and diminishing audiences. Video avoids, or has the potential to avoid, many of the economic con- straints that currently plague the film medium. A film collection entitled "Democracy in Communication: Popular Video and Film in Latin America" is a modest attempt to begin rectify- ing this cultural imbalance by providing increased access to Latin American visions and voices that express and interpret their own reali- ties from their own perspectives. An eight-hour sampling of indepen- dent video and film produced by Latin Americans from nine countries ranging from Mexico to Uruguay, the collection is the result of a year's travel throughout Latin America. My purpose was to seek out indepen- dent media producers and community groups who had turned to video as a tool for expressing their concerns. Though video production was my primary interest, I decided that the collection should encompass both film and video, though once back in the United States, distribu- tion would be exclusively in the latter medium. Once I started trying to locate Latin American video producers, I found that videomaking activity was more widespread in the region than I suspected. The video movement in Latin America is quite re- cent. Except for Brazil- which has had portapaks almost as long as they have been available in the United States and now boasts a very large and well-organized community of videomakers, with national video festivals, journals, production guides, and so on-video seems still to be in its infancy in most of Latin America, especially in those countries where repressive governments or restrictive state control of the air- waves discourage the circulation of independent views. It is rare for independent videowork to be broadcast nationally in Latin American countries. The question of cost is very important. In the United States, video is a very inexpensive medium. In Latin America a Beta tape that would cost us $5 costs $20; a three-quarter-inch tape that would cost us $15 costs $45 - the equivalent, for large sectors of the population, of an en- tire month's salary. Thus economic factors often combine with politi- cal ones to discourage or limit independent production. But somehow individuals and groups, determined to utilize the medium, are surmount- ing these obstacles because for many of them video, unlike film, re- mains within the realm of the possible. The exhibition that I put together is an effort to break through the cultural barrier that has compelled North Americans to look at Latin America through a North American optic. This is not a scientific or systematic sampling. I simply sought out and collected as much ma- terial as I could. I wanted to represent a wide range of categories - documentary, fictional, experimental. I was not looking for "hits," for 194 On the Trail of Independent Video works which would knock audiences off their feet. I was more interested in the cumulative impact of often uneven examples of diverse video prac- tices, each one having particular values to offer. Inevitably, however, my selection was shaped by my sense of what North American audi- ences would find viewable - and what they would not. The sampling contains thirty separate programs assembled in such a way that programmers can select and recombine the components ac- cording to their particular needs and interests - whether women's tapes, work from specific countries, experimental or community productions, music video, etc. The entire program therefore contains more material than any one programmer could expect to show in a single event. Several of the tapes have been edited down. In most cases where tapes of potential interest seemed to need some modification in order to be more accessible to North American audiences, I worked on-site with the producers to reedit the tape. In other cases, they agreed that I should simply excerpt the material as I saw fit. In doing this, I chose to keep the natural flow of the material rather than, for example, in- serting "black frames" to mark the deletions, and I tried as well to keep half-hour and full-hour TV slots in mind so as not to preclude any of the material being programmed for North American broadcast tele- vision. North Americans tend to lump Latin American countries together; there is little appreciation or acknowledgment here for the fascinating heterogeneity of Latin American societies and cultures within and across national boundaries. My hope is that people who see these programs will begin to have some sense not only of the variety of video being produced in Latin America, but also of the region's cultural diversity and richness. The program begins with a selection of off-air broadcasts from Mexi- can television which I edited together into a humorous montage. Be- cause television has become such a pervasive backdrop to our daily lives, we tend to regard it as innocuous; it has become almost "invisible." North American audiences who view Cross Section: One Afternoon of Mex- ican TV tend to laugh at things that do not induce laughter when viewed on U.S. television. The "distancing" produced by the fact that these fragments from programs and advertisements are being broad- cast in Spanish, and the estrangement of seeing North American per- sonalities and products as they are viewed by Latin American audi- ences, inevitably produce laughter, which I interpret as an important step toward a critical perspective on television and its impact on our lives. Few Americans are aware of the extent to which North Ameri- can culture is packaged and sold abroad, or of the social implications such "value-transferring" practices involve. The fact, for example, that 195 Social Documentary in Latin America nally, a means of consolidating cultural identifications, social cleavages, political belief systems, and ideological agendas. These functions go far beyond conventional conceptions of docu- mentary as an educational medium that "simply" packages and trans- mits information to passive receivers. The uses of documentary in Latin America over the past three decades have redefined the social function of cinema (and video). Latin American documentarists have both ap- propriated and challenged transformations of the form elaborated else- where, as well as the technology (16mm, sync sound, Super-8, video) with which it is produced. These various documentary practices have left a deep imprint - not only on fictional filmmaking and literary dis- courses but also on social, political, and cultural life. Yet in existing English-language documentary histories and theoretical-critical anthologies, references to Latin America, when in- deed they exist at all, are scattered, vague, perfunctory. The single ex- ception, Thomas Waugh's "Show Us Life": Toward a History and Aes- thetics of the Committed Documentary (1984), dedicates five out of the seven selections in its third and final section, "Contemporaries: The Third World," to Latin American examples. Earlier books strike a very different balance. Louis Jacobs divides The Documentary Tradition (1971, rev. 1979) into six periods spanning the years 1922 to 1978. The anthology's Euro- American emphasis admits Asia, Africa, and Latin America only as locations for the activity of European or American filmmakers: Mexico as site of Eisenstein's ill-fated Que Viva Mexico! project (1931-1932), Fred Zinneman's and Paul Strand's The Wave (Redes, 1933), and Her- bert Klein's The Forgotten Village (1941) (all fictional films with docu- mentary dimensions); Cuba as the location of Len Giovannetti's Cuba: Bay of Pigs and Cuba: The Missle Crisis (both 1964). The presence of Alberto Cavalcanti, the only Latin American filmmaker included in the volume, is motivated not by any activity in his native Brazil, but rather by his work in France in the 1920s and especially with John Grierson in England during the following two decades. Only in Jacobs's intro- duction to the final section, 1970-1978, added for the revised edition, is there mention of a Latin American documentary by a Latin Ameri- can director. Patricio Guzman's three-part La batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile, 1974, 1977, 1979) elicits the following paragraph: A frankly partisan film, but impressive nonetheless, was a chronicle of the overturn of the Allende government in Chile by right-wing forces. The Battle of Chile (1977, [sic]) directed by a young Chilean Marxist, Patricio Guzman, and put together in Cuba with the assistance of Chilean and Cuban associates, was an enterprise of cinematic excellence, convey- Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton 100 percent of the cartoons seen on Mexican television are purchased from the United States has a tremendous social effect. Without being didactic, the incongruities captured in this five-minute tape lead audi- ences, through laughter, to begin thinking about these issues. This "pi- rated montage" is the lead item in the Democracy in Communications program because it provides a glimpse of the commercial television context within and against which the other works in the collection - independent, popular, noncommercial, national rather than imported - are being made. Amas de casa (Housewives, 1984), made by the Colectivo Cine Mujer, is an example of how groups working in a country like Mexico - where, because of monopolitic television practices, the chances of getting in- dependent work broadcast on TV are virtually nil- choose to produce their tapes according to different standards and paradigms. Here, as elsewhere, independents recognize the limitations they have to face and creatively evolve other forms and uses for the video medium. Although it would be a wonderful organizing tape for women interested in form- ing a housewives' union, this tape was not in fact used in this way by the people who made it. The Colectivo Cine Mujer, like women's mediamaking collectives elsewhere, was a volunteer effort without financial stability or a firm distribution of responsibilities. Such groups are hard to sustain, since their members must hold down other jobs to earn their living. Even when they successfully produce one or more valuable tapes, most have great difficulty channeling the effort needed to put their work into effec- tive distribution, a task that must usually be undertaken by the pro- ducers themselves in the absence of organized alternative distribution. Amas de casa was not made in the context of a national housewives' organizing movement, but instead on an ad hoc basis, for and with a specific group of women in a specific Mexico City neighborhood. More than other kinds of video production where the finished product is the most important consideration, this is a case where the process of production is paramount. Amas de casa is representative of the way in which videomaking can catalyze and represent an empowerment process - in this case, among people who have been historically taken advantage of by landlords, evicted from their houses and turned out onto the streets without legal recourse. There was no need to write a script for these women; they devised their own dialogue from personal experience. The emotion they display is clearly the product of long smoldering frustration. In the process of collaborating on the video- tape, they are unleashing their emotions in a very positive, unifying direction. The role-playing involved in the making of this tape does not put anyone at risk, yet in the process of participating, the women of 196 On the Trail of Independent Video this community get a taste of their own strength. As they view the tape, they perceive and take pride in that strength and also prepare themselves for the next time they will have to confront unjust author- ity in real life. Another tape from Mexico also exemplifies the role of video in com- munity empowerment. Nuestro tequio (Our Tequio, 1984) is a tape made by a group of Zapotec Indians from the state of Oaxaca who have been tenaciously hanging on to their culture in the face of persistent pres- sures to become integrated into contemporary Mexican society. Their method of governance involves asambleas (assemblies) where whole communities come together to discuss important social and economic questions. Recently, groups of Zapotecs have been using video to docu- ment their community assemblies, not only for purposes of historical record but also as a means of encouraging their people to look at them- selves and their political process in a more self-conscious way. Nuestro tequio is a bit of a departure from their other works be- cause it attempts to depict a physical corollary of their communal process - the collective repair and reconstruction of a community build- ing in Yalalag. Working without any official support, relying completely on their own limited human and material resources, they labored on the building over a three-year period. The video depicts hundreds of Zapotecs proudly coming together from the surrounding villages to put on the new roof. I was very impressed by the camerapeople's understanding of the video medium as I watched them move around throughout the day, seeking new angles from which to shoot the building process. After their workday was over, the entire community assembled to watch the video footage - three full hours' worth. Though everyone must have by that time been thoroughly exhausted by the day's activities, they watched the tape in fascination and, when it was over, they all seemed to have the same reaction: Can we see it again? Other regional communities that viewed the tape demonstrated the same kind of patient fascina- tion. For them, three hours of unedited videotape was not overlong. The videomakers eventually edited those three hours of raw mate- rial down to forty minutes. We then worked together to edit that sec- ond version down to ten minutes. The Democracy in Communications version consists of very detailed shots of the construction process fol- lowed by sequences at the assembly where people evaluate the day's accomplishments and discuss the problems which remain. In retrospect, I think we edited this tape too severely, that we should have retained more of the assembly sequences given their importance in illustrating indigenous, communal democracy in action. The producers told me that the original tape was very important to them because they could use 197 Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton Video parodies the discourses of television: Varela in Xingu (Olhar Electronico, 1984). Credit: Democracy in Communications it like a mirror within their community, looking at themselves from a different perspective and generating a renewed sense of appreciation for their customs and their traditional commitment to the welfare of the group. The Zapotec video group, which has been operating since 1980, grew out of a contact with a video group from Mexico City who went to Oaxaca at the invitation of several community members to conduct a media workshop. They subsequently lent their own equipment to the Indians, who shoot in half-inch, then take what they've shot into Mex- ico City where it is bumped up to three-quarter and edited. The four people who make up this group - three men and one woman - are sea- sonal migrants to the United States. They use the wages they earn as farmworkers to buy what they need to keep their video production going. From my investigations, I have concluded that there is little video art being produced in Latin America. It seems to be perceived as a lux- ury which few can afford or a "distraction" from the social concerns that occupy most Latin American videomakers. Still, a small number of art- 198 On the Trail of Independent Video Marley Normal (0:Ohar Electronico, 1984). Credit: Democracy in Communications ists and filmmakers are turning to video as a form of visual expression. The video art I saw, however, tended to reflect experimental video pro- duction in the United States a decade ago and thus seemed rather primitive and static by today's standards. Video Road (1985), another of the tapes collected in Mexico, is ex- ceptional in that the filmmaker, Sara Minter, originally shot in Super-8 and then edited on video, producing an interesting example of combined media. Shot on a journey across Mexico, often using time-lapse photog- raphy, the finished ten-minute tape has some one thousand edits. Video Servicios is a group of young Mexican video producers who have pooled their resources and talents to create a community video center. Their activities are limited, since they have no outside sources of funding. (Government and private funding agencies such as exist in the United States and Canada are rare in Latin America.) Members of Video Servicios share and circulate videotapes among themselves and have access to production and editing equipment at lower than com- mercial rates. They have occasionally been contracted by Mexican state television to produce specific programs. This is, in fact, the only way the state works with independents. Networks will take "bids" from in- 199 Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton Music videos as a subversive activity: Algo de ti (Boa Productions, 1985). Credit: Democ- racy in Communications dependent producers on certain stipulated programs, often determin- ing not only the general topic but the actual script beforehand. In this way, Video Servicios has produced a number of tapes for Mexican educa- tional television, subsequently channeling any financial return from this activity into the production of tapes of their own choice. El Triunfo (The Triumph, 1985), is a thirty-minute educational tape Video Servicios made on its own. (The Democracy in Communications version has been cut down to fifteen minutes.) It grew out of concern over environmental destruction in the jungles of Chiapas. The tape has been widely shown by environmental groups in an attempt to educate the population to the consequences of short-sighted government policies in the region. It argues, for example, that the creation of preserves is merely a stop-gap measure. El Triunfo delineates the problems with- out proposing solutions; it aims instead to generate concern and in- volvement among those who view it. Brazil, as I have indicated, is the most advanced of the Latin Amer- ican countries in terms of its video production. Its assets include Luis Fernando Santoro's Boletin de Video Popular (Popular Video Bulletin); the Candido Mendes Cultural Center in Rio, with its video theater; 200 On the Trail of Independent Video The mother orphaned by her offspring: Desaparcidos (anonymous music video, Peru, 1985). Credit: Democracy in Communications and Olhar Electr6nico (Electronic Look), a leading independent group which has won a number of prizes and successfully manages commer- cial broadcast for much of its work. In conjunction with the Candido Mendes Center, Olhar Electr6nico published a guide to all national in- dependent video producers and productions. Brazil's is thus a much more organized and prolific video community than exists anywhere else in Latin America, the center of highly imaginative work. Brazilian videomakers have been very inventive in expanding and challenging the generic boundaries of their medium. Marley Normal (1985), by Olhar Electr6nico, uses erratically rhythmic montage to con- dense a day in the life of an urban working woman into five minutes. The result - comic, poignant, and uncannily familiar - is the product of an unusual combination of documentary, fictional, and experimental modalities. Varela in Xingu (1985) caricatures a TV correspondent and parodies traditional network newsgathering techniques. At the inaugu- ration of a new tribal chief on the Xingu indian reserve in the Amazon jungle, Varela spouts his clich6, Eurocentric view of the Indians while offering the Xingu an unusual opportunity to retaliate by giving their impressions of (Westernized) Brazilians. 201 Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton Beijo ardente: Overdose (Passionate Kiss: Overdose, 1984), by the Porto Alegre video collective Olho Magico (Magic Eye), deals with the process of turning an old gas plant into a local cultural center. The tape was an effective tool in generating community backing and enabling the artists to win the necessary local and official support. Instead of a "straight" documentary about the artists' struggle to convice com- munity officials to donate the building to their cause, Olho Magico sub- stitutes an allegorical vampire story. Made with local actors and broad community participation, this forty-minute tape is a very successful example of an offbeat approach to videomaking as a catalyst for social change. Panama has an annual National Music Video Competition sponsored by Maxell Corporation. Preferring messages to mindlessness, the or- ganizers of this festival are interested in alternative music videos. Algo de ti (Something About You, 1985), by Luis Franco and Sergio Cam- befort of Boa Productions, was one of the winners of the 1985 event. Using the same surreal, dreamlike visual language familiar in American- made videos, Algo de ti turns a love song into a visual parable of the horrors of life under a repressive military regime, underlining the pas- sive complicity of individuals and institutions. Another music video in the collection comes from Peru. Desapare- cidos (The Disappeared Ones, 1985) uses images of Ayacucho, the re- gional center of the struggle between the Shining Path guerrillas and Peruvian government troops, over Ruben Blades's song "Desapareci- dos." Fragments of interviews with relatives of disappeared persons disrupt Blades's poignant lyrics. Images of mass graves and troop con- voys evoke a hyperrealism that stands in diametrical contrast to the approach used in Algo de ti These two disparate examples indicate how Latin Americans are using the music video genre to express the horror of political realities of which we North Americans have little if any awareness. Two exceptional fictional tapes in the collection were produced in Uruguay by Juan Jose Ravaioli of Estudio Imagen, a nonprofit circu- lating video library of over 300 Latin American films and videotapes that also engages in independent production. One of Ravaioli's tapes, Sen-al de ajuste (Signal To Adjust/Test Pattern, 1984) is a comic-dramatic meditation on the social alienation produced by television. A man buys his wife a television in hopes of enriching their relationship, but he is soon utterly displaced as she is increasingly absorbed into this new elec- tronic union. El sol deljuez (The Judge's Coin, 1983) is a kind of video- poem adaptation of a legendary historical incident that led to the larg- est popular uprising in Bolivian history. 202 On the Trail of Independent Video The work of El Salvador's Radio Venceremos is very important in any discussion of the role of video in making a revolution. In addition to their activities in radio broadcasting, the group produces films and videotapes for internal consumption and also for export. Their internal tapes inform Salvadorans of war-related developments in other regions of the country as well as initiating a dialogue on the current juncture, giving isolated communities the sense of a more generalized connec- tion. They also use video in very practical ways - for teaching subjects like battlefield surgery or weapons maintenance, as a means of circu- lating important messages from the military leadership. Radio Ven- ceremos uses any kind of video they can get their hands on-VHS, Beta, three-quarter-inch, off-the-air - as well as 16mm and Super-8 film. Tiempo de audacia (A Time of Daring, 1983), an intimate behind-the- lines look at both sides of the military conflict, impressively testifies to the effectiveness and polish that is possible using "conglomerated" media. In both content and form, A Time of Daring provides an illuminat- ing contrast to A tlacatl, the companion piece from El Salvador in the collection, a publicity tape made by the Salvadoran military forces about a U.S.-trained special forces brigade. The Salvadoran military has turned to video as an important propaganda tool, making music videos, for example, to convince young people to join the army. Needless to say, these promotional tapes are frequently seen on broadcast TV. Coming on the heels of Atlacatl, which glorifies- almost deifies - the skill and bravery of this U.S.-trained unit, A Time of Daring presents the Sal- vadorean guerrillas' view of this same special forces brigade - not only the exaggeratedly macho bravura of their training but most notably their utter bewilderment, collapse, and despair in actual battle. One of the strengths of A Time of Daring is its ability to show how the war overwhelms individual fighters on both sides. Its unwavering partisan- ship does not obviate a candid, honestly critical assessment, which often assumes an ironic or wistful tone. In neighboring Nicaragua, as is now generally known, there was no independent video production before the coming to power of the Sandi- nistas in July 1979. Since that date, many videomakers from Europe and the Americas have set up their own companies in Nicaragua. Vari- ous international sources have provided funds to train, equip, and sup- port independent video production groups staffed by Nicaraguans. The Timoteo Velasquez Popular Video Workshop grew out of the Super-8 workshop organized in Managua by Bolivian Alfonso Gumucio Dagr6n under the auspices of UNESCO. Testimonios (1982) consists of the testimony of rural Nicaraguans about how their lives are affected 203 Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton by the contra attacks. Las mujeres (The Women, 1985), another short tape by a women's video workshop, examines the disparity between male and female salaries on cooperative farms. Focusing on one farm where the men joined with their female coworkers to demand equal pay for all, the tape questions government policy and suggests an alternative. Because of the hardships and shortages imposed by the war, the work- ers were reluctant to stage a conventional strike because it would put further strain on an already beleaguered economy. Instead, they con- tinued to work, but refused to accept their salaries. By this means, they embarrassed the administration of the cooperative into recognizing and eventually granting their demand. "Aqui en esta esquina" ("Here in This Corner," 1985) a weekly pro- gram produced by the Nicaraguan government network, Sistema San- dinista de Televisi6n, adopts the form of a U.S. game show with one key difference: rather than being studio-produced, the show is broad- cast live from a different community each week. The format pits one community organization against another in a friendly contest - arm wrestling, dance competitions, tug of war, races to reassemble a rifle, or whatever. The other component is a kind of talent show where local people get a chance to perform. Many people have acquired national recognition as a result of an appearance on "Aqui en esta esquina," the Nicaraguan equivalent of "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour." iQue pasa con el papel higienico? (What's Going on with Toilet Paper? 1983) is a good example of how the government ministries of Nicaragua are trying to use video in their own work. In this case, the Ministry of Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA) takes a critical look at ques- tions of supply, demand, and distribution (including issues like hoard- ing and black marketeering), all related to one of the more humble but necessary commodities of daily life. Dozens of ordinary Nicaraguan citizens address the camera, giving their response to the shortage and opinions about what can be done to correct it. A rebuttal to dominant North American assumptions about the propagandistic tendencies of Nicaraguan government media, this tape is an excellent example of official self-criticism through video. Chile offers many examples of how video can be used as an alter- native means of communication. In a situation where the military ex- erts rigid control over all aspects of civic life, particularly the commu- nications media, the spread of underground video activity is impressive, particularly given high national unemployment and severely depressed wages. Despite political repression, despite the exorbitant cost of im- ported equipment and tapes, Chileans continue to produce. CENECA, a progressive research institute, has compiled a video 204 On the Trail of Independent Video directory of all independent producers in Chile and their works. One of the most important producers is the Ictus Theater Group, which has adapted a number of their theatrical works to video-not by simply pointing the camera at the stage, but by adapting their scripts for the small screen. Many of these works use symbolism, allegory, or other indirect means to transmit political messages through the tight net of ideological control. Chile's Forbidden Dreams (1983), a coproduction with the BBC, includes a lot of clips of Ictus's onstage theatrical and video work, focusing on the political context in which this work is gen- erated and used - largely through small gatherings in private homes. Hasta Vencer (Until Victory, 1984), a documentary by the same group, follows for one year the founding and development of a squat- ters' settlement on the outskirts of Santiago. Despite repeated attempts by the police to drive them away, the makers established an ongoing presence in the community, and their documentary bears the added authority - the visual and aural demonstrations - of that long-term en- gagement. The tape demonstrates an organized alternative to the gov- ernment's efforts to repress and destroy these displaced populations: a self-governing community that organizes to meet its own needs for food, health care, the accommodation of new families of squatters, and so on. Ictus is far from the only Chilean group working in video. Filmo- centro, a recent organization, makes films as well as videos. Women Make Movies in New York distributes Tantas vidas, una historia (So Many Lives, One Story) by Tatiana Gaviola, a member of that group. Teleanalysis makes news-style reports covering important historical and political events. Their distribution is of course forbidden, but they circulate throughout the country all the same. Teleanalysis also puts a good deal of energy into getting its tapes shown outside Chile, in order to convey an insider's view to international audiences. Video in Chile clearly continues to be an extremely important tool of political and cultural resistance. I have recently learned that inde- pendent filmmakers and videomakers have formed an association. One of their first concrete projects is the construction of a theater where they will exhibit their work. Given the dearth of distribution outlets, they decided that their best option was to band together in a formal association that would construct and control its own exhibition space. Chile's northern neighbor, Peru, has had a long history of film pro- duction and, since the early 1970s at least, a relatively well-organized film community, with an association of independent filmmakers. Grupo Chaski, composed of some thirty independent filmmakers, is to my knowledge the largest production collective in Latin America today. 205 Julianne Burton ing the sweeping drama of this historic event with an astute selectivity of material and an emotional texture that gave it startling dimensions and made it one of the major political documentaries of the period.2 In the absence of any reference to the long tradition of political and social documentary that preceded the remarkable achievement which is The Battle of Chile, a token paragraph such as this one tends to con- firm rather than dispel the impression that Latin America has offered few contributions to "the documentary tradition." Richard Meram Barsam's Nonfiction Film: A Critical History (1973) makes passing mention of Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, the Zinneman- Strand collaboration on The Wave (the original Spanish title, Redes [Nets]), is inexplicably rendered Pescados [Fish]) and Bufluel's Los olvi- dados (The Young and the Damned). The volume contains no references to films made in the region by Latin Americans. In his anthology Non- fiction Film Theory and Criticism (1975), Barsam restricts the scope of his earlier work still further, confining his selections to the Anglo- American documentary tradition with but three exceptions: Leni Riefen- stahl, Joris Ivens, and Alberto Cavalcanti. Again, Cavalcanti's Euro- pean contribution is emphasized, but in this case the writer is a fellow Latin American (the late Uruguayan literary critic Emir Rodriguez Monegal) who tries to render an accounting (still difficult in 1955, when the essay was written) of Cavalcanti's unsuccessful attempt, between 1949 and 1954, to reroute his career to his native Brazil. In the acknowledgments for Documentary: A History of the Non- Fiction Film (1974), Eric Barnouw informs us that, while researching the book, he traveled "to some twenty countries, visiting film archives and studios and interviewing documentarists."3 The United States, England, Canada, and the nations of Western Europe account for less than half of the countries studied. The inclusion of several Eastern Euro- pean and Asian nations (among the latter, Japan, India, Hong Kong, South Korea), as well as Egypt, confers a rare geopolitical balance to this study. Though concrete references to Latin American films and filmmakers are few, their range reaches beyond the cursory references of the earlier volumes. Far more important, however, Barnouw's care- fully conceptualized and judicious analysis of the development of docu- mentary on a more genuinely representative international scale provides a serviceable framework to which specific studies of the uses of docu- mentary in Latin America - or Africa, or elsewhere - can be anchored. The obstacles to constructing a history of documentary in Latin America, though perhaps not insurmountable, remain staggering. First, geopolitical boundaries divide the region, which includes the Caribbean, Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton Their Gregorio (1983), a bittersweet, neorealist chronicle of a young An- dean boy's struggle for survival in Lima, is the only feature in the Democracy in Communications collection. Video in Peru is still in its infancy, but two recent organizations testify to an impressive degree of interest and potential. The Videoteca Alternativa was organized in 1986. In 1987 several members traveled to New York to purchase equipment, so they have only recently begun to function. They plan to conduct videomaking workshops, to build a postproduction facility that will be available to other independents, and to assemble a video archive. IPAL, a Peruvian research institute simi- lar to Chile's CENECA and dedicated to media and new technologies, has been working to organize a video network, not just in Peru but throughout Latin America. It recently received a grant from UNESCO to publish a bilingual (Spanish/English) quarterly newsletter called New Communication Technologies that addresses topics such as computer use, cable television, and video in the classroom. Video Alternativa and IPAL collaborated in 1986 to organize Peru's first video festival. Reflecting the relative immaturity of video produc- tion in Peru, the main prizes went to works produced for broadcast television. The music video Desaparecidos took second prize at that festival. Though there is not a great deal of videomaking activity in Peru at this time, signs for the future look promising. I will conclude by describing the distribution and exhibition of Democracy in Communications. Thanks in large part to a grant from the film and video department of the New York State Council on the Arts, which made distribution of the collection possible, programs were exhibited at forty-eight locations in more than a dozen states and five foreign countries during the first year of the collection's existence. In the United States, venues vary -libraries, museums, video centers, com- munity groups, schools and universities, festivals and conferences, as well as cable television stations - and range from established institu- tions like the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Long Beach Museum of Art, to local groups like Philadelphia's Free Space and the Hispanic Work- ers Group at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Libraries and schools offer a limited market that is exhausted rela- tively quickly, but new markets for this material are constantly com- ing to my attention. After a surprising response from a little notice that appeared in PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Associa- tion, I have begun sending catalogues to the entire membership of various college-level teachers' associations. Community groups that could use this material abound, though 206 On the Trail of Independent Video getting the initial word out to them poses certain difficulties. Commu- nity cable stations are another important outlet. When these kinds of organizations are unable to pay, I have made arrangements to copy material onto tapes which they provide. Since I have undertaken this entire project in addition to the work I do to earn my living, I cannot dedicate as much time as I might wish to promotion and distribution. I just plug along, little by little, when I have the time. I feel quite gratified by the new relationships that I have been able to form through this work. Many people have made me feel that this is an important project that benefits a lot of people and have offered ideas and resources to help the project grow. For example, Ramapo College in New Jersey has won a grant to assemble the first Latin American video archive. Their proposal, on which I collaborated, grew out of their interest in the Democracy in Communication mate- rial. The idea is to develop models for using this kind of material in curricula, not only for language classes, but also in communications, political science, and Latin American Studies courses. Up until now, the big bottleneck has been how to get the material translated and subtitled. The initial process was costly and time-consuming. The Ra- mapo model solves this problem by using language students as trans- lators and communications students as subtitlers. We hope that other universities will imitate the Ramapo model, using their own student and faculty resources to prepare new video materials from Latin America for wider distribution and use. There would then be virtually no limit to our ability to guarantee Latin Ameri- can producers that their works will reach non-Spanish speaking audi- ences in the United States. Another very promising affiliation that has emerged involves the Deep Dish TV project. Deep Dish uses satellite technology, and makes its materials available for viewing and/or rebroadcast by alerting asso- ciates as to when specific materials will be available off satellite in their area. This tactic is the opposite of the distribution method I have used. Whereas I have been making and mailing hundreds of copies, the Deep Dish project requires only one copy to make a videowork available to thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of viewers. Phase II of the Deep Dish experiment will include a Latin Ameican component from the De- mocracy in Communication collection. Last, I'd like to mention an important outgrowth of my work on Democracy in Communication which involves the collection of infor- mation on producers and resource groups in Latin America. I have recently been asked by the American Independent Video Foundation (AIVF) to turn this data base into a three-part, country-by-country guide to video resources in the Third World -Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 207 208 Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton The potential impact of such a guide for putting users in contact with producers, and producers in contact with one another, is hard to over- estimate. It could be a key step in the internationalization of indepen- dent video. NOTE An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Global Television, ed. Cynthia Schneider and Brian Wallis (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988). Reprinted by permission. PART III Texts in Close-up 10 THE VOICE OF THE PRESENT OVER IMAGES OF THE PAST: HISTORICAL NARRATION IN MEMORIES OF A MEXICAN Margarita de Orellana Margarita de Orellana examines figuration and fictionality in Carmen Toscano's monumental archival compilation. In Toscano's historical documentary, which spans the years 1897 to 1950, static newsreel- style images of the regimented pageantry of the Porfirio Diaz regime are supplanted by the reckless iconography of the revolutionary up- risings of 1910-1920, captured in sweeping tracking shots from moving trains. De Orellana's analysis is less concerned with the nature of such images than with their ideological function, in particular how they are sutured into a unified representation of national history through the (imaginary) autobiographical discourse of an unseen, unidentified narrator. De Orellana is interested in Memories of a Mexican as an example of the narrativization of history as a quasi-mythological op- eration. Her analysis of the fictionalization of history in the film/text gives way to an analysis of the historical fictionalization of the film/ text, then of Mexican cinema in general, and, finally, of national his- tory itself- the "great national fiction" refigured by each successive regime in accord with its particular ideological imperatives. National Fiction and Its Heroes THE PROBLEM Of figuration always plays an important role in the great history of power. Every hero has his standardized image that must be echoed and underlined in any commemorative film. Emili- ano Zapata cannot but appear with the distinguishing traits conferred upon him by the official mythology. This is why compilation documen- tary has to be seen as another kind of fiction; it cannot continue to be fetishistically venerated on the basis of its reality effect. Memorias de un mexicano, made in 1950 under the direction of 211 Margarita de Orellana Carmen Moreno Toscano, with Te6dulo Bustos as editor, and declared a national monument by an act of Congress that same year, aspires to be - and is - a documentary. Yet it is not the past that it documents, but rather the present through images of the past. In this great documented fiction, all the heroes must have the stan- dard traits that make them despicable or exemplary.' Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Venustiano Carranza, Francisco Madero, Porfirio Diaz are merely characters, fictional personages - and not only in the film being discussed here, but also in that great fiction that is history as illustrated by a regime through various representational media. It is no coincidence that the Mexican state has cultivated its mythology par- ticularly in those media-such as mural painting and film-in which figuration plays a privileged role. The great national fiction involves a whole conception of history in which heroes move society. According to whatever regime is in power at the moment, the hierarchies of these characters undergo modifica- tion: some figures are given more prominent outlines; others are shaded over. Since these are after all merely figures of the reigning fiction, the powers that be at any given moment simply apply the makeup that suits their purposes. Memories of a Mexican not only faithfully followed the great na- tional fiction but also the details introduced in the myths of the par- ticular presidential period in which it was made. Miguel Aleman's re- gime (1946-1952) ushered massive North American capital investment into Mexico. "We are going to initiate the economic phase of the Revo- lution" was Aleman's slogan. By this he meant making things as easy as possible for foreign investors and U.S. interests. This was the in- auguration of the myth of development, and Memories of a Mexican climaxes its narratives with images of "modern Mexico in full indus- trial progress." Twenty-six years later, in 1976, Carmen Moreno Toscano announced that she was preparing a new version called Ronda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Round) in which certain figures (such as Plutarco Elias Calles) "no longer appear" and others (such as Lizaro Chardenas) are es- pecially exalted.2 These changes are in perfect accord with the altera- tions in the figuration of historical personages introduced by the offi- cial history of the era. Historical Narration and the Editing of Primitive Documentary Footage In Memories of a Mexican there is a sharp and significant split between image and sound track. We see, on the one hand, a chrono- 212 Historical Narration in Memories of a Mexican logical succession of "views"- vistas made in Mexico from 1897 on, some dealing with life under the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship, the vast major- ity dealing with the events of the Mexican Revolution (military phase: 1910-1920; political phase: 1920-1940). The sequences continue until 1950, the year in which the film was compiled, the more recent period featuring the presidents and heroes of the government "which emanated from the Revolution." We hear, on the one hand, a man's voice telling his historia (a term that means both story and history in Spanish). The Mexican to whom the title alludes "remembers" his family history and speaks of familiar personages whom we naturally never see, since the story he tells of his family is illustrated with "historical documents." In this way the narrator familiarizes us with "history" which is thus assimilated as some- thing personal, something familiar. At the same time, the invisible nar- rator is imposing his authority on the spectacle: what he recounts is true because he "lived" it, and here are the "real" images, filmed on the spot to prove it. Paradoxically, through the participation of an obviously fictional personage (the narrator), the documentary images multiply their "real- ity effect." Instead of a desirable narration that might affirm the subtle fictionality of the "documents," this operation works in reverse. The voice of the "Mexican" in this film is only an echo of the official version of history. But like all echoes, this one cannot extend itself in space with- out breaks, without intermittences. And so the images, through and despite this dense sonority, are capable of functioning as a line of flight, escaping the voice that claims to subject and condemn them. The words pronounced by the voice-over assume authority, obliging the images to conform to an official, monolithic point of view. But although the voice does not succeed in being powerful enough to exterminate the multiplicity of meanings that the images offer, the film is still con- demned to be relegated to the mythological order. The use of the voice- over narration thus imposes its order on the whole. Memory and Commemorative Voice There is a simulation of "collective memory" that mani- fests itself in this cross between the voice of the "Mexican" and the documentary images. All to whom this (hi)story is shown are positioned in this intermediate space, which presumes a memory beyond that of the speaker and his family. Between the voice and the document, a si- mulation of a common past is evoked, assumed, described as unques- tionable - even more unquestionable when the film tries to commemo- rate it. 213 Margarita de Orellana As with all monuments, the principal value of the historical image is commemorative: The lengthy repression exercised by the culture on top has meticulously destroyed the forms of culture and memory of those below, substituting others and thus producing this culture of amnesia which authorizes com- memorations ... without producing theoretical reflection or the mise-en- fiction of power and rebellion with their material reversals.3 The memory of this Mexican serves as a form of amnesia, as a com- memorative image machine. And in order to make what conceals for- getfulness pass as our memory and our past, there is an ambiguous voice - that of the narrator who is situated between us spectators and the heroes whom we see filing across the screen: an intermediary fig- ure, assimilable by both sides, witness to the past while always the voice of the present, offering a narration that is at once of the family and of the nation. This official version is assimilable by each of us as our own in the act of seeing these images commented upon by our inter- mediary. Thus the voice we hear, besides imposing order on the narra- tion, is also obliged to assume specific traits as a character -in other words, to constitute himself as a figuration. The man with the voice is a character whose traits are audible, if invisible. He portrays himself as telling his (hi)story (personally experienced) which also pretends to be our (hi)story (nationally shared). To accept the traits of this figure is to immediately accept his role as mediator between ourselves and official history. The History of Mexican Cinema: A Parallel Fiction Like one more echo of the mechanisms of historical simula- tion put into gear by the film is its own history as film and a good por- tion of the history of Mexican silent film as a whole. Carmen Moreno Toscano made the 1950 version using the footage that her father, Salvador Toscano, left her. In fact, the film was in part presented in homage to him as one of Mexico's film pioneers. On the basis of the film's presentation and credits, however, it was widely assumed that all the footage it contained had been shot by Salvador himself, and he consequently assumed the status of a central figure in the history of Mexican silent film. Twenty years had to pass before researchers would discover that this was far from the case, and that many of the se- quences attributed to him in Memories of a Mexican actually belong to other important filmmakers of the period- the Alva brothers, En- rique Rosas, Jesis Abitia, as well as a great number of unknown North 214 Historical Narration in Memories of a Mexican American newsreel cameramen.4 But this is just a side effect of that mechanism through which filmed history is only problematically the full restitution of the past while almost always the production of mean- ings adequate to the present. Fiction is what we call it here and now; "imaginary elaboration" is what it should always be called. NOTES "Una voz presente sobre imagenes del pasado" originally appeared in Imdgenes delpasado: Cine y la historia, una antologia, ed. Margarita de Orellana (Mexico City: Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematogrificos, UNAM, no. 7, May 1983). The chapter has been translated and slightly restructured by the editor. Reprinted by permission. 1. Zapata and Villa are the popular heroes of the revolution, the former revered as the incorruptible leader of the southern peasantry, the latter as the alternately brutal and benevolent, brilliant and blundering chief of the north- ern forces. Porfirio Diaz ruled for thirty years before he was forced to resign in 1911. Madero succeeded him, only to be overthrown and murdered in 1913. His enemy, Carranza, seized the presidency and held the office until he too was overthrown and murdered in 1920. 2. Elias Calles was president 1924-1928; Lazaro Cardenas was president 1934-1940. The film was not released for several years. 3. Jacques Ranciere, "La imagen fraternal: La ficci6n de izquierda, ficci6n dominante," in Imigenes de pasado, ed. de Orellana, p. 6. 4. See Margarita de Orellana, "Histoire d'un faux t6moinage: Le cinema de la 'guerre americaine' dans la tradition des nouvelles film6es," in Guerres revolutionnaires, ed. Sylvie Dallet (Paris: L'harmattan/Publications de la Sor- bonne, 1984). 215 Social Documentary in Latin America into more than thirty separate nationalities whose populations speak half a dozen Indo-European languages and scores of indigenous ones. Second, only an infinitesimal proportion of the region's silent films sur- vived into the sound era. Subsequent cinematic endeavors have barely been more fortunate. Few countries have managed to allocate the funds and equipment that proper archives require. Fires have devastated two of the most important repositories - the Cinemateca del SODRE4 in Montevideo and Mexico's Cineteca Nacional. Military regimes dis- mantled other important national collections - the Cinemateca del Tercer Mundo in Uruguay, numerous Chilean archives -upon seizing power in those countries in the early 1970s. While a centralized archive for documentary production from throughout Latin America has yet to be created, the Cinemateca de Cuba has the most complete collec- tion in the Americas. In Europe, that distinction belongs to the Parisian Mediatheque du Tiers Monde. The sample of Latin American documen- taries currently in North American distribution is lamentably incom- plete and shrinking, as many important works continue to be gradu- ally withdrawn from circulation. (See "Guide to Distributors" at the end of this volume.) A third limitation to attempting a history of Latin American docu- mentary involves the dearth of secondary sources. Reliable scholarly histories of national film production are only now coming into print for a number of countries (for example, Michael Chanan's The Cuban Im- age, 1985, and Alfonso Gumucio Dagr6n's Historia del cine boliviano, 1983). Too many of the earlier national histories, where they exist, pay scant attention to the role of documentary in the development of na- tional cinemas.5 A further obstacle to constructing a full history of Latin American documentary lies in the difficulty of tracing the "traffic in documen- taries" between countries and regions. Political and economic barriers to commercial distribution often dictate that Latin Americans cannot view documentaries from other countries in the region on their home soil. Even the most renowned documentaries must usually be seen on the festival circuit or in video format if they are to be viewed at all-a process that may, in fact, take decades.6 Finally, a growing proportion of documentary production is becoming increasingly conjunctural, stra- tegic, intentionally short-lived. The newer formats, both Super-8 and video, lend themselves to carefully circumscribed uses; they do not have to recoup enormous financial outlays through efforts to find distribu- tion beyond the specific social, political, or regional sector for and with whom they were conceived and produced. Though these new technolo- gies offer greater latitude to filmmakers and their target audiences, the increasing tendency to exhaust Super-8 prints without striking new I 11 THE SOCIOLOGICAL MODEL, OR HIS MASTER'S VOICE: IDEOLOGICAL FORM IN VIRAMUNDO Jean-Claude Bernardet This essay, by one of Brazil's foremost film critics, offers a close read- ing of an innovative and celebrated documentary produced in Sao Paulo in 1965. Bernardet analyzes the internal mechanisms of Vira- mundo's construction, questioning the "natural coincidence" between its signifying mechanisms and the "innate" structure of the realities of urban migration and proletarian life that its director, Geraldo Sarno, set out to record. In Bernardet's analysis, Sarno's apprehension and representation of urban migration are constrained by a "sociological model" that posits production as the central structuring agency of so- cial life. Yet the critic also detects the seeds of a "postsociological" vision. The essay is of particular interest because it applies the methods of 1980s-style ideological criticism to a 1960s-style text produced not by "one of them" (producers of dominant or mainstream cinema) but by "one of us" (in this case a member of the the incipient, oppositional Cinema Novo group). Bernardet's analysis attributes a kind of conjunc- tural tendentiousness to a work that he still recognizes as a master- piece. Other critics, enlisting a similar approach, might find an analo- gously ideological agenda (or lack of agenda) underlying Bernardet's impressively detailed critique. VIRAMUNDO Is a landmark film because it introduced some- thing completely new, not only to the field of documentary but also to the entire Brazilian film tradition: working people.' In its early phase, Cinema Novo was almost exclusively interested in rural thematics. Be- fore 1964, neither the industrial bourgeoisie nor the proletariat received much attention. Immediately after the 1964 coup d'etat,2 Paulo C sar 217 Jean-Claude Bernardet Saraceni began O Desafio (The Challenge, 1966), the first Cinema Novo feature about the urban bourgeoisie, in which members of the working class also make an initial, timid appearance. In Luis Sergio Person's Sdo Paulo Sociedade Anonima (Sdo Paulo, Inc., 1965), which focuses on the world of industry, working people also appear, but again on a secondary plane. With Viramundo, the working class becomes the sub- ject of the film. Afterward it disappeared again from the screens for many long years, the result of severe political repression. How are we to understand this eruption of the proletariat in a 1965 documentary? It is certainly not due to the dynamism of the working class, since it had just been crushed by the newly installed military dic- tatorship. Besides, the dynamism of the working class is never itself sufficient to explain its presence or absence from the screen. As a mat- ter of fact, neither the 152 work stoppages in 1962 nor the 700,000 workers on strike in 1963 were ever dealt with by films of the period. What happened, then, to make Viramundo possible? I propose the following hypothesis. The ideology of the Cinema Novo movement linked up with the notion of "developmentalism" as formulated by cer- tain ideologues from the Institute of Advanced Brazilian Studies (ISEB). This was a bourgeois industrialist ideology that proposed a kind of dynamic native capitalism with a human face. Its two greatest enemies would be international capitalism on the one hand and the old Brazilian agrarian structure, the latifundiarios, on the other. It would be misleading to speak of an ideological accord but not of a tacit pact between the progressive filmmakers and this bourgeoisie, national or nationalist as it was called at the time. This explains why the films of the period attacked the landowning oligarchy and the miserable condi- tions of the peasantry without touching on what this bourgeoisie would regard as more "delicate" themes, that is, the industrial sector and the proletariat. The 1964 coup d'etat not only dissolved this unspoken pact, but also revealed that this bourgeoisie lacked both the power and the social role attributed to it by the ideologues, and that, furthermore, its very existence was debatable. Among the various consequences of this situation within the film movement can be included the advent of the proletariat as a cinematic theme. For a brief moment, the working class ceased to be taboo, although it would quickly resume that status - this time as a result of the military dictatorship. And so we have Viramundo, made in Sdo Paulo, as the first example of Geraldo Sarno's long and brilliant career as a documentarist. The film's title refers to a famous character in northeastern folk literature. As his name suggests (virar: to turn; mundo: world), Viramundo roams the world. It might seem strange that a film about the working class in Sao Paulo should carry such a title, but in fact that class was largely 218 Ideological Form in Viramundo Wary arrivals trapped between an inquisitive camera and the factory gates in Viramundo (Geraldo Sarno, 1965). Credit: courtesy Cinemateca Brasileira made up of northeastern peasants who, because landholding patterns denied them the means of survival in their native region, had to search for work in the industrial centers - S Ao Paulo foremost among them. Thus Viramundo opens with the arrival of a train full of migrants. We see a group of men, women, and children enter the city after being searched by the police. The following sequence focuses on the construc- tion sector, where workers' salaries are barely adequate to maintain their families. The third sequence juxtaposes two workers who are inter- viewed about these and related themes. (The skilled worker enjoys a certain minimal level of comfort, which he values highly; the unskilled worker, who moves from place to place, is unemployed at the time of the filming.) The opening of the next sequence shows a crowd of men waiting for work at a factory gate, followed by shots of a beggar and examples of religious and secular alms-giving. A long sequence then records a Pentecostal gathering in a public square intercut with a gather- ing of followers of Umbanda.3 The concluding sequence takes us back to the railroad station. Unemployed migrants who have failed to make it in Sdo Paulo are going back to the Northeast. The film closes with 219 Jean-Claude Bernardet Rural families file out of the station into the vast urban maze in Viramundo. Credit: cour- tesy Cinemateca Brasileira a coup de thdatre as a new train full of migrants arrives at the station. The cycle begins all over again. Viramundo was a revelation. A filmmaker whose language revealed a surprising level of maturity had made his debut, taking up a theme that had been almost totally absent from Brazilian filmmaking, and doing so at a time when the dictatorship had already begun to repress intellectuals (though not as severely as it would repress them after De- cember 1968)4 and had already crushed the working class and the union movement. Though the film felt the effects of this repression (one se- quence from the original treatment, which dealt with the question of unionization, was never shot), it constituted a great victory neverthe- less. No other documentary from the period, not even the three others produced simultaneously by Viramundo's producer, Thomaz Farkas,5 attained the success of the Sarno film in either formal or thematic terms. Discussions of Viramundo often refer to multiple voices and differ- ent levels of discourse. I will attempt to specify them and establish their interrelationship. We hear the voice of someone we do not see, the voice-over narrator. The voices of the retirantes (migrants from the drought-stricken Northeast arriving in Sao Paulo in search of work) seem somewhat taken by surprise as the camera picks them out de- scending from the train or as they are being screened and processed. Other workers and a mde de santo (priestess of popular African-derived 220 Ideological Form in Viramundo religions like Candomble and Umbanda) are interviewed in their homes. We also hear the voice of a factory boss responding to questions posed by an offscreen interviewer. No questions are posed to the clergy, but the microphone records their sermons. Finally, there's the voice of another unseen person, the singer. These various voices do not speak of the same thing or in the same way. The interviewees speak only in response to direct questions. The interviewer-who never appears on the screen save one or two times at the beginning of a sequence, shot from the back-poses questions about living and working conditions. Responses are limited to what has been asked. Questions and answers are recorded in direct sound, voices mixing with background noises. Those being interviewed hesitate; their phrases often remain unfinished and don't always respect official rules of grammar; their pronunciation is distorted. Their speech rhythms and accents are varied - from chopped off and jerky to songlike and recita- tive, as in the case of a construction worker who lists basic foodstuffs and their rising prices. The interviewees speak of what they know first- hand: their lives, why they left the Northeast and came to look for work in S o Paulo, living conditions in their homes or industrial working con- ditions. The ma-e de santo speaks of the saint whom she incarnates. Theirs are the voices of experience. They speak only of what they have lived. They never generalize or extract conclusions -because they do not know how or do not wish to, or because they are not asked to do so. If by chance a worker makes a generalizing statement, it's only to say nonsense like "our brothers from the North think only of killing, while people from the South work ten to twelve hours a day." Because this is merely one point of view, it is not to be taken as a viable gen- eralization or as a piece of information, but simply as a datum about the person who expressed the idea. In expressing his point of view, the interviewee provides information about himself without departing from the terrain of experience. The narrator's voice is different. The interviewees' voices are numer- ous; his is unique. His speech rhythms are regular and smooth, adher- ing to the norms of cultured speech; his phrasing is grammatical; there are no background noises. This is a studio voice. The narrator never appears on screen. He belongs to another aural and visual universe, one that remains unspecified. The master of this voice-over is never identified. In contrast to the interviewees, no questions are posed to him. He speaks spontaneously, never of himself but of the others (the migrants)- not only of those interviewed in the film but also of the mi- grants to Sao Paulo in general, only a fragment of whom are represented in the film. The narrator does not speak like them. They speak in the first per- 221 Jean-Claude Bernardet son; he speaks in the third person. They speak of their particular situa- tion; he speaks of them in general. He offers figures, statistics: so many came to Sdo Paulo between 1952 and 1962; such and such a percentage were channeled into agriculture, such and such a percentage into in- dustry. Brusquely he defines the region they came from as "the most backward social zone" and their destination as characterized by "the most rational and advanced social and urban forms" in Brazil. His is the voice of knowledge - a generalizing kind of knowledge that derives not from experience but from sociological studies. He dissolves the individual in statistics and reveals things about the interviewees which they themselves don't know. The interviewees speak of individual history. They don't see themselves in terms of percentages, as coming from the "most backward" zones, or as heading toward more "rational" areas. They simply come from places where they cannot manage to till the earth and subsist, so they head for a place where they hope to be able to survive. If the narrator is the voice of knowledge, the inter- viewees have no knowledge on the subject of themselves. If we conceive of knowledge as an abstract, generalizing construc- tion, it is the narrator who informs the spectator about "reality," since from the interviewees we only obtain individual and fragmentary his- tories. Thus is the relationship between interviewees and narrator es- tablished. The former provide only immediate experiential data; they have no access (within the film) to the general, social, deeper signifi- cance of their experience. The narrator works outside experience, re- ordering profound meanings from immediacy. This elaboration does not take place during the film, and nothing is said about the guiding con- ceptual apparatus or about the origins of this invisible narrator. The resulting relationship between the narrator and the interviewees con- strues the latter as a sample that illustrates the former's discourse and proves its basis in "reality." ("I do not speak to you in vain: here is the proof that what I say is true.") This veracity is enriched by the weight of physical presence, facial expression, distinctive voices, and so on. The interviewees are used to confirm the authenticity of the narrator's discourse. In fact, the narrator stands upon two supports to assure the spec- tator of his credibility: one is the lived experience represented by the sample; the other is the intertitle that opens the film. This intertitle (missing from some prints) gives the impression of having been added after the production and cast credits. It acknowledges the collabora- tion of various sociologists, professors of the University of Sio Paulo, thus confirming the scientific character of the narrator's discourse. It speaks of lived experience (le reel vecu), as the sample confirms, not merely at the level of immediacy but deliberately and carefully selected 222 Ideological Form in Viramundo by a scientific method of analysis that reveals the meaning of the lived experience to us. This sociological stance justifies the narrator's ex- teriority with relation to the experience depicted. What's more, it ren- ders it necessary, since those who live it cannot manage to speak about more than surface impressions. The migrants, the interviewees sampled, are the object of the discourse of the narrator, who also situates him- self as the subject who holds knowledge. For him, to participate in the experience would mean negating his knowledge, since from inside the experience one can only obtain individual, partial, fragmentary data. The subject's exteriority in relation to the objects to which he is obliged to reduce those people he speaks about is one of the props of his knowl- edge. The narrator's absence from the screen and the aural substance of his discourse express that exteriority. Let's go back to the sample. To accomplish its task, it must meet certain conditions. What the interviewees say should not exceed the boundaries of the universe defined by the narrator's discourse; other- wise, that discourse would cease being the interpretation of reality which, in turn, would cease to authenticate it. Therefore, only certain questions are put to the interviewees, and if their answers fall outside the fixed universe, they must be cut in the editing. All the reasons given by the migrants to explain their move to Sao Paulo refer to the land question. Without denying the lack of adequate farmland as the prin- cipal motive, one can still suppose that these people have multiple rea- sons. Thus the man who was sent to Sao Paulo by his father, who con- tinues to look after their little farm in the Northeast, could also have had a falling out with his father, so that the move to Sao Paulo might be a way to solve two problems. But to go beyond the agrarian issue would be to go beyond the narrator's discourse. If this system is to work properly, one must prune the real in order to shape it to the conceptual apparatus. This pruning process is what allows the film's principal mechanism for the production of meaning to function: the relationship between the particular and the general. The film works because it is able to furnish information concerning not just the individuals we see on the screen, nor even a larger number, but an entire class of individuals and a widespread phenomenon. In order for us to pass from a group of individual histories to class and phenome- non, all the specific cases presented must contain the elements neces- sary for generalization and nothing but those elements. The peasant who migrated for family reasons, for example, will be excluded. Others must reduce their motives to a single one. This process of "cleaning up" the real dictated by the scientific discourse allows the general to be the expression of the particular, the particular to support the general. The general loses its abstract character and is embodied-or rather, 223 Jean-Claude Bernardet illustrated -by lived experience. Since we are not informed about the cleanup operation, we find ourselves in the presence of a system that functions beautifully, where the general and the particular reciprocally complement, support, and express each other. There is one other generalizing verbal level: the song about the mis- fortunes of Viramundo searching for work in the city. This is not sociol- ogy. The singer belongs to the sphere of popular poetics; he hails from the same cultural universe as the migrants being interviewed. The song is composed in the first person, like the interviews, and provides a con- trast to the commentary. The origin of Viramundo and the first-person lyrics draw us closer to the migrants; their effect is empathetic. Here generalization is accomplished through the mediation of a mythic per- sonage who gives voice to a collective experience. The singer reelabo- rates, in mythic and therefore general general form, a group of simi- lar individual experiences from which he retains only the common denominator. One line of the song, surely written after the poet was familiar with the interviews, says "Chuva da e chuva come." (Literally: "Rain gives and rain eats.") The line picks up a statement made by one of the peas- ants at the beginning of the film: "Mas a chuva deu e a chuva mesma comeu" ("But the rain gave and the same rain devoured.") The trans- formation of the phrase is significant. The "migrant" is referring to a specific storm season that made the seeds sprout but whose excess ruined the harvest, which in turn ruined him and forced him to migrate. The poet eliminates the definite article and the past tense, and the words "even" and "but" that attach the sentence to the preceding one. Thus transformed, the phrase isolates itself from its context, becomes general, acquires a well-designed symmetry and a distinct rhythm. Clean, clear, strong, it has lost its character as ordinary speech. The phrase has become a formula. If the scientific narration generalizes the experience of the migrants- converted-into-objects from the outside, the song generalizes that same experience through empathetic reelaboration of it. Meanwhile it pre- serves numerous points of contact with the narration: it is also in voice- over, sung by someone who is not seen on the screen, who does not iden- tify himself and who - apart from his poetic talent - does not reveal to what degree he belongs to the world of experience. It is also studio sound. Candido Portinari's paintings, which accompany the credits, func- tion in a similar manner. His 1944 series, Os retirantes (The Migrants), can be seen as a cry of pain in response to the misery of the Northeast. The paintings depict the initial stages of the migrants' trip, prior to boarding the train. The train noises that accompany these images re- 224 Ideological Form in Viramundo mind us of this diegetic function, but it is hardly emphasized. The paint- ings are principally used as an introduction to the film. What seems important is not so much that one sees them (they stay only a short time on the screen) but that one recognizes them (as long as one has the necessary cultural information). Their role is not to denote as much as to be a cultural symbol, an elite cultural product dealing with the extreme poverty of the peasantry which Portinari's vigorous expression- ism renders as a social scandal and a tragedy of mythic dimensions. The narration, the song, and the paintings aspire to the lived expe- rience of the migrants through the mediation of sciences and art which (at least in the case of the paintings) do not belong to their cultural universe but which interpret their experience in a cultivated way. Of the migrants themselves, nothing but experience is requested. How are the interviewees treated in order to make the particular/ general system work? Based on Sergio Santeiro's ideas for establish- ing a dramaturgie naturelle,6 I discern three stages. First we have a person with whom the documentarist makes contact. Depending on what that person has to say, on expressiveness and willingness to talk, the documentarist will decide whether or not to film him or her. This stage can be more or less developed. For the brief interviews filmed dur- ing the processing of the new arrivals, it is reduced to the minimum, since people are passing through and one must be quick. In contrast, the interviews shot in the workers' homes are the result of a careful selection process on the part of the filmmaker, who has had the time to choose among several people. These involve more active participa- tion on the part of the interviewees. The second stage involves the natural (nonprofessional) actor. The behavior of the person engaged and disposed to be filmed and inter- viewed becomes a function of the shooting process. He or she will re- peat what has been more or less established during the initial phase, accepting certain indications from filmmaker and crew: where to sit, what to repeat if necessary, and so forth. Those who play their own roles as a function of the filming play themselves. In Viramundo, the framings and interviews at the workers' homes are good illustrations of this situation. Three shots in a sequence filmed at the home of the unskilled worker reveal the shooting method: in the first, inside the house, the worker begins to put on his jacket and picks up a bird cage; in the next shot, he goes out and hangs the cage outside; in the third shot, he finishes putting on his jacket. In the first shot, the camera is inside, facing the door; in the second it is outside, also facing the door; in the third, in- side again. The worker could have been filmed in a single movement if there had been two cameras, but the editing tells us that there was 225 Julianne Burton copies, and to recycle videotape recordings, reduces still further the documentary "sample" available to the historian. In view of these obstacles and the limited scope of this introduc- tion, I can only attempt to lay out here the most general and tentative outlines of the evolution of documentary practices in Latin America as they converged with and differentiated themselves from international developments and tendencies. Louis Lumiere's cinematographe was a model of technological self- sufficiency. Lightweight, hand-cranked (thus independent of electricity), and capable of transforming itself from camera to projector to labora- tory and back with only a few simple adjustments, this ingenious in- vention offered its operators a mobility and independence unrivaled until today's porta-paks. The prototype of those first pioneers, itinerant arti- sans in full control of every aspect of their production and exhibition, is still compelling to the Latin American social documentarist. This artisanal paradigm stands in diametrical opposition to the industrial model initiated by Lumiere's rival, Thomas Edison, which soon came to prevail as the normative mode of film production - even in those "periph- eral" regions like Latin America where, with the single and problematic exception of Mexico, studio-based film production has never been effec- tively sustained. To the degree that the documentary impulse in Latin America responds to an independent stance and an oppositional vision, it has retained an affinity with the artisanal mode, which returned to prominence in the avant-garde experimentation of the late 1950s, in the cine urgente of the 1960s, and again in the current video era. The first decade of film history, 1896 to 1906, was in Latin America (as elsewhere) characterized by the predominance of nonfictional (or prefictional) modes of filmmaking. Early cinematographers, a dispro- portionate number of whom were trained by Lumiere as part of a con- certed campaign to introduce his cinematographe in countries around the globe within the short span of two years, concentrated on "views" and "actualities" - notable sights that would render themselves "exotic" when screened for non-nationals or citizens who resided in more re- mote areas - and civic events, generally presided over by heads of state or other dignitaries. In Latin America, as in other peripheral regions, many first- generation cinematographers had been born and bred in Europe. Opt- ing for permanent residence in the New World, they tended to retain a European cultural matrix and to seek out European affinities in their new environment. Their Eurocentric attitudes replicated those held by the creole oligarchy in the countries where they settled. The patronage of this powerful sector, and of the military hierarchy, was essential to 10 Jean-Claude Bernardet only one. In the first shot, when the worker interrupts his dressing to pick up the cage, his jacket collar is standing up; in the reverse shot, his hands are occupied with the bird cage and the collar is down; in the final shot the collar is standing up again and he puts it right. This error in continuity leaves no doubt that the act of carrying the cage outside was done (at least) twice in order to film both shot and reverse shot. If it was not sufficiently clear that this worker is acting in re- sponse to the filming, these matches indicate that he is behaving like an actor, performing actions expressly for the camera. The third phase involves editing. The rushes obtained in the second phase are joined in accord with the ideas and expressive requirements of the film. The scenes with worker and bird cage, for example, are edited into a parallel montage where they serve as counterpoint to others with a "skilled" worker. The goal of this montage is to juxtapose two work- ers in contrasting situations. The "skilled worker" (the one who speaks of "our brothers from the North") has made it. He is satisfied with his living and working conditions. He owns two small houses and defends the stability he has found. The other worker never manages to find more than intermittent work. He goes from job to job and is currently un- employed and about to be thrown out of his house. The editing con- trasts two types or categories, or rather creates two types of workers because it constructs a relationship between the two that sets them against one another. The worker with the bird cage is not especially predisposed to incarnate a particular type in opposition to the other. This is the result of the elaboration of the discourse and the require- ments of the scientific apparatus. Thus the workers serve as raw mate- rial for the construction of types. They lend their person, their cloth- ing, their facial expressions, their tone of voice to the filmmaker who will use them to shape certain types - abstract constructions detached from the people whom he encountered during the first stage. The socio- logical type is dressed in the concrete appearances of the raw material extracted from specific people, the result being the dramatic character. The original people have no responsibility regarding the sociological type or the dramatic character produced by the editing. Again, for the sociological model to work properly, only the ele- ments necessary for the construction of types are retained. If the worker with the bird cage changes jobs constantly due to psychological insta- bility rather than to labor market conditions or to his lack of special training, this component cannot be retained because it would be in- appropriate to a type that takes only working conditions into account. The type being constructed determines the raw material that one seeks to elicit beforehand from the person in question. Nevertheless, this per- son's singular traits (expressions, gestures, etc.) cover the type with 226 Ideological Form in Viramundo a layer of reality that makes us take the dramatic personage who em- bodies the sociological type as the expression of the actual person. But in reality the manner of treating him has been predetermined by and dissolved into the type being constructed. We have the impression of a perfect harmony between person and type, whereas in fact the type - both abstract and general - is all-powerful over the person whom it has annihilated. Some further considerations regarding these two workers whom I have called "unskilled" and "skilled." Why have I designated them in this way, since neither of them employs such expressions with refer- ence to themselves or to anyone else? As part of the parallel montage of the two workers, a third interviewee appears who is differentiated from all the others. This is the boss, whom the interviewer addresses as "Mr. Manager," although he never calls the others "Mr. Migrant" or "Mr. Worker." In contrast to the other interviewees, the boss is like the narrator: he does not speak of himself but of the workers. Ques- tions are posed to him that clearly determine the area in which he should respond. "When production declines, which sector of the labor force is affected first?" He answers, "When production declines, unskilled laborers are the first to be affected because they are easier to replace, because they are more available." This exchange thus partially deter- mines how we should interpret the contrasting relationship between the two workers, and provides us with concepts we can use to desig- nate them. Within another value system, these same workers could be seen differently - according to the moralizing model of the ant and the grasshopper, for example: irresponsibility versus the diligence and per- severance that makes accumulation possible, or according to the con- trast between one who has succeeded in life versus one who has failed. This interplay between the interviewer and the boss confers a privi- leged position to the latter within the film. We see him on the screen with his expressive particularities while an offscreen filmmaker asks him questions in voice-over. He represents a concrete social situation, and what he says is recorded in direct sound, as are the other inter- viewees. But, like the narrator, he doesn't speak of himself. He is out- side experience; he speaks of the workers generically. He is not the film's object of study, but contributes to the smooth functioning of the film's particular/general system. All this gives him a mediating position be- tween the migrants and the narrator, though closer to the latter - a posi- tion I will call auxiliary narrator. His role is to assist the narrator in expressing ideas and transmitting concepts. His designation as Mr. Manager is a sign of competence. He relieves the voice-over commen- tary, which thus takes up less time, and relates the general informa- tion to the "real." If he didn't speak of skilled and unskilled workers, 227 Jean-Claude Bernardet in fact, the narrator would have to do it. Thanks to him, the narration intervenes only at the beginning of the film, ceasing as soon as the mi- grants reach the city. In general, auxiliary narrators are situated in positions of power, either because of their knowledge or their job, as well as the power conferred by the dramatic situation they occupy in each film and the role attributed to them in its information system. Their relative proximity to the interviewers, however, is not with- out contradiction. Returning to the parallel montage of the two work- ers, we find another device that allows passage from the particular to the general- a fundamental problem not only in Viramundo but also in documentary in general and all forms of realism. This type of mon- tage leads to a comparison between the parallel series, which is ori- ented and intensified by how the fragments of each series are assem- bled. These particular fragments are grouped in such a way that each worker engages the same questions in the same order: stable versus unstable work; the skilled worker who has two houses versus the un- skilled worker who is about to be evicted; the skilled worker who thinks the union is overpoliticized, under the thumb of Russia or Cuba, and wants the union delegates to make the workers work harder, versus the other who thinks that the union does not reach beyond the limits of public assistance and does not defend the rights of workers. We have divergent points of view on the same topics, a device that leads us to retain only those images and declarations that serve the comparison. Our tendency-or rather, the work the film requests of us-is to dis- card what is useless to the comparison. Our work is therefore to con- struct types by eliminating what is not comparable or else by attempting to compare everything. We can disobey the film, ignoring the compari- son and concentrating on the gaze of the interviewees, for example, but we would be making another film. If we accept the comparison, we will be led to keep only those portions of each series that, in one way or another, are reflected in the parallel series. We will carefully clean off the singularities of each term, retaining only what is subject to gen- eralization. This cleanup process has obviously been undertaken by the editing, which has eliminated shots that disturb or fail to contrib- ute to the comparison. But certain elements that could distract our at- tention (gestures, lighting intensity, and so on) remain in the shots. Guided by the film, we will interpret the singularities as much as pos- sible in terms of the comparison, disdaining the others without even realizing it. The skilled worker is filmed at home, in a little dining room that hardly allows the camera any mobility. It is generally placed perpen- dicular to the back wall against which the family in medium shot or the worker in closeup is pressed. The shots are severe in that skimpy 228 Ideological Form in Viramundo space. In the first shot, the family - father, mother, and three children - is immobile; only the father makes those movements necessary for talk- ing. The few objects we see are plastic flowers, the traditional wedding portrait, the embroidered tablecloth. The interviewee is under constant tension, and the others' immobility can be interpreted as a sign of the father's authority. The unskilled worker is filmed in a much more humble dwelling, but one that seems more spacious. The worker moves around and out of the house. He seems more at ease, smiling while being allowed or being asked to do various things that are superfluous to the strict economy of the interview (the jacket, the bird cage). In his last speaking shot, outside, a cat jumps from the roof onto a wall, adding a certain spon- taneity to the mood. Still other elements could be cited: the unskilled worker speaks stand- ing up; his jacket has white vertical stripes against a dark background; the door of the house is used several times as part of the composition. All this gives an air of verticality and lightness to the shots of this worker that contrasts to a heavy, horizontal tendency in the parallel scenes, especially in the first shot, which presents the petrified family group trapped between the table and the wall. The skilled worker most often speaks in direct address, which gives him a slightly conceited air, while the other has a more discreet gaze. Though the interviewees them- selves do not take these elements into account, the spectators, without fully realizing it, tend to enlist them into the comparison, organizing them into binary oppositions: tension/ease, closed space/open space, interior/exterior. This generalizing parallel montage can work by contrast, as in the case just described, or by similarity. The latter involves perceiving what various elements have in common, leaving aside what differentiates them. This is what happens during the religious sequences, where scenes of Pentecostal and Umbanda cults alternate. The differences between these two cults are stifled by the meaning the film attributes to them both: workers and the unemployed, lacking the social organization that would allow them to fight, or else stuck in an ideology dismissed by others as petty-bourgeois, immerse themselves in religion - trances, catharses, alienation, opium of the masses. The Pentecostal meeting is held in a public square, the Umbanda at various sites, including the seashore. The final scenes are accompanied by the sound of the waves, a sound carried over throughout the last shot of the Pentecostals. This is the only instance in the film where live footage is not accompanied by realistic sound. The prolongation of the sound of the waves over an urban scene explicitly demonstrates the will to unite these two dif- ferent religious forms under a single meaning. 229 Jean-Claude Bernardet In addition to the devices already described for signifying the real, the film uses another: linking sequences according to a logic that com- bines analysis of the phenomenon with advancement of the action. The train full of migrants arrives; they are searched by the police; they go into the city. Arrival is followed by work. Agricultural labor is men- tioned in the narration but visually excluded from the film, which only deals with the urban question: first come the least skilled forms of labor (construction work), then more skilled forms (factory work). This se- quence ends with the unemployed worker. The consequences of unem- ployment follow: workers seeking jobs at a factory gate, beggars, the Salvation Army, a soup kitchen, public charity. The religious sequence follows: desperation and trance. Finally we return to the railway station. An unemployed worker who has given up hope of finding work in Sdo Paulo is returning to the North. A long take that shows the train pull away and disappear announces the end of the film. But another train is on the platform and a new group of migrants disembarks. These sequences are linked in a logical way, each leading to the next: arrival in the city leads to work; bad working conditions lead to unemployment; unemployment leads to charity and marginality; marginality leads to religious catharsis and trance; the lack of resolution through the preceding means leads to the return to the Northeast. In addition, great care has been taken with the formal linkages that lead from one sequence to another. Arrival in the city is described by a series of shots of the migrants walking down the streets with suit- cases and bundles. In the first shot, an enormous building, new at the time of filming, fills the screen. This is the last stop - the monumental city, cold and overwhelming, which the migrants must confront. From the facade of that building, the camera, shooting from a neighboring building, pans down to reveal the construction site. Cut to a closer shot of the construction site with a workman in the foreground. This is the opening of the construction work sequence. The building facade serves a dual purpose: it marks the end of the arrival in the city and begins the construction sequence. The transition from one sequence to another is a subtle slippage which carries us smoothly along with it. Various construction workers are interviewed. The last one, in close- up, declares that if he could, he would work in industry. The last word announces the next cut - to a long shot of a factory. The transition is accomplished with a single word. In the factory shot, a man whom we cannot see too well occupies a central position. In the poor light of the factory, there are then some medium shots of the same skilled worker who will reappear throughout the film, whose interview begins here. And so on. Viramundo is edited in such a way that the exposition of 230 Ideological Form in Viramundo ideas, the themes launched by certain words, the linking of images, con- stantly compose a discourse that is very rich in interconnections. In contrast to the example cited above, there is another kind of ver- bal interconnection in which the relationship is one of opposition, but which is no less logical. In the first shot of the arrival in the city, we see a man walking down the street with a suitcase on his back. The previous shot, at the screening point, showed a peasant being asked whether he would have stayed in the North had he been able to. He answered "I would have stayed there." The man walking down the street counters the idea of staying home. Another device enters in play to cement the language of the film. The religious sequence opens with a pan from left to right, revealing a square crammed with people: this is the beginning of the sequence that alternates between the Pentecostals and the followers of Umbanda. The last shot of this sequence - the sound of the sea over the Pente- costal meeting - shows the same square from the same angle but with a countersymmetry, since the camera passes from right to left. Until now, we have had sequences that led into one another; now we have a sequence that closes on itself: starting point, development, then re- turn to the starting point with the sound of the sea, resembling a re- prise of the initial theme enriched by subsequent development. The final pan serves to return us to a position of rest. The sequence closes in on itself in harmonious equilibrium. The construction of this sequence prefigures the next sequence, the return to the railway station, where we will once again meet the mi- grants who are going back north (in contrast to those who were arriv- ing at the beginning of the film) and we will see the train move away (in contrast to the train that was just arriving). This final sequence also serves as a reprise, enriched by the foregoing development (the failure of the urban experience), which brings the film full circle. The religious sequence announces the information the following sequence will give us about the film's structure, while simultaneously echoing that construction. The only surprise effect provoked by Viramundo's editing occurs at the end of the last shot of this second station sequence: the long take, the train slowly retiring into the distance, the musical effects all sig- nify "The End." Yet the relationship between the track-in on a train in the station with migrants disembarking, and the violent musical har- monies unexpectedly contradict the effect of the words "The End" and send us right back to the point of departure. One starts over from zero: the arrival in the city, the search for work, a new departure for the North, and so on to infinity. These circular forms, the way the sequences are linked to each other, 231 Jean-Claude Bernardet the use of parallel montage, make Viramundo a film without breaks or gaps or interstices - perfectly filled in, an uninterrupted flux of images, sounds, and ideas. This internal coherence serves a function: to pre- vent us from "catching our breath" and taking a step back. The film takes an assertive attitude but offers neither itself nor its ideas as material for discussion. Its construction would appear to be the result and the expression of the structure of reality itself. The film's circu- larity is the formal expression of the migrants' cycle. The language of Viramundo does not doubt that it is expressing the real; it does not present itself as a representation or a particular elaboration referring to the real. This effort at coincidence between the film and the real is based on the internal coherence of the film's construction - a coherence that passes for (and is accepted by the spectator as) the coherence of the real. Hence the film could not be the object of debate since it co- incides with the real; only the latter could be discussed. The language of Viramundo offers itself to us as a piece of evidence. It is layered over the real with no distance in between; therefore, in extreme circum- stances, it is the real. This entire operation occurs with apparent naturalness, since the real shown by the film has been duly prepared to support it - determined by it - as we saw regarding the particular/general mechanism. The dis- course is coherent. At no time does it negate itself. It closes upon itself as the promised directions are developed; nothing remains in suspense. The lack of contradiction in the discourse ensures that there is no con- tradiction between it and the real either, since the real has been con- structed in the service of the discourse, as part of it: a tautological operation. This aggregate operation - the "natural" dramaturgy, the particular/ general system, the editing-permit us to introduce a new agent: the enunciation that organizes the filmic material in terms of what it wishes to express, of its goal. The enunciator puts the film's system into place. It is like a voice without speech, one of whose characteristics (at least in this kind of film) is voice-over narration. As a matter of fact, the nar- rator, though he is an element in this system, cannot be placed at the same level as the other elements, as we have seen. He is the element who gives verbal materiality to the enunciation. One of the levels on which Viramundo produces ideology is the one we have just seen: a language confident of adhering to reality. There is another. The film, as we have stated, evolves toward the theme of religious alienation, to which living and working conditions, unemploy- ment, marginality, and petty-bourgeois ideology all lead. Viramundo, which was planned in 1964 and produced in 1965, attempts to answer a latent question: why did the people fail to offer significant resistance 232 Ideological Form in Viramundo to the 1964 coup d'etat, given that intellectuals and political leaders alike were convinced that they were mobilized for the revolution? The film answers, "Here is the situation of the working class, at least that portion of the Sao Paulo working class that comes from the Northeast. Lacking the necessary conditions for organizations and struggle, it runs aground on the shoal of alienation." It is true that the word alienation is never employed in the film, but the latter's construction leads us to interpret religious trance as a kind of hysterical despair on the part of people who see no way out. When the mde de santo says that Father Damiao, among other things, gives work to the unemployed, the film doesn't allow any other interpreta- tion. Since no viable social measures are able to solve the job question, the unemployed worker turns as a last resort to the saints. Despera- tion leads to delusion, and the situation is never resolved. The first half of the 1960s - which produced the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasilenses (Institute of Advanced Brazilian Studies), the Centros Populaes de Cultura (the Centers of Popular Culture), and Cin- ema Novo -relied heavily on the conciencia/alienaca-o (consciousness/ alienation) opposition. Briefly summarized, the idea was that transfor- mative, revolutionary action has its origins in consciousness because people are alienated. This is not to say that they lack aspirations, but rather that they do not know their own aspirations. This is the task of those who have the requisite conditions to understand the people's aspirations, to formulate them and then send them back to the people, awakening their consciousness. And these qualified to perform this operation are the intellectuals who, sensitive to the people's latent as- pirations, also enjoy a social position that allows them to "produce consciousness." The notion of generalized popular alienation provides an explana- tion for the painful coup d'etat and excuses the intellectuals, including the filmmakers. From this point of view, the alienation of the people is what justifies the intellectuals. This is probably what accounts for the relative length of the religious sequences that take up almost a third of the film, more time than both the work sequences together. The con- struction sector, where the majority of migrants were concentrated at the time the film was made, is the subject of a relatively short sequence that is less detailed than the one dealing with the industrial sector. (The issue of worker specialization, for example, is not addressed, though such differences in the workers' skill levels exist in that sector as well.) It seems to be assumed that construction workers are less specialized, less organized, and less politically conscious than industrial workers. One cherishes the hope that the industrial proletariat has attained a higher level of consciousness and struggle, so one lingers longer with 233 Jean-Claude Bernardet them, which only accentuates the (deceptive) affirmation that neither consciousness nor struggle are to be found, thus consolidating the aliena- tion thesis. The same motive seems to direct the flow of words in the film. After the factory sequence, this flow abates. We no longer have the voice- over narrator or the auxiliary narrator -only one interview with the mae de santo. The song continues. We hear the sermons by a spiritual- ist minister in the charity sequence as well as by the Pentecostal preach- ers, public testimony to miraculously cured maladies, eventual dialogues. But, except for the mde de santo's speech, these are all am- bient sounds rather than words pronounced for or provoked by the film. In this way, after the lack of consciousness has been verified, the film makes a retreat (the result of a deception) and cannot do otherwise than ascertain the fact of alienation. If the people were not interpreted as alienated, if they produced their own consciousness, the consciousness- producing intellectual would have no place. Thus, as we have seen, the people have only a superficial, fragmentary, and individual understand- ing of their situation. Petty-bourgeois ideology and unemployment lead to alienation. Here we have the real. It is obviously essential that the kind of alienation presented in the representation of the people should not be taken for a product of the intellectuals, a result of their needs, but as an unquestionable given. It is therefore necessary to produce a language which, faithful to the tradition of filmic representation, gives the impression of total coinci- dence with the real. There is still another level from which the film's meaning derives - a vague, diffuse appeal that may even enter into conflict with the others: sympathy. The preceding comments on the factory sequence have shown how a series of "adjectival" elements were interpreted in terms of the skilled/unskilled comparison. These same elements also work on another level: they direct our reading of the film and channel our sym- pathy. The harsh treatment of the first worker, whose declarations are interpreted as petty-bourgeois, render the man unsympathetic to us. (Among certain audiences, he even becomes an object of ridicule.) In contrast, the other worker's misfortunes, his smile, his easy air, combined with a freer camera style, express the director's sympathy and channel our own toward him. The dramatic personage who attracts our sympathy can then bounce back upon the type (in the universe we inhabit). It is not the inherent characteristic of a skilled worker, even one marked by an ideology considered petty-bourgeois, to be tense, nor of a unskilled worker to feel more smiling and at ease. The compara- tive mechanism places two types side by side so that we understand the two categories of workers, but parallel to this runs another vector 234 Ideological Form in Viramundo that assumes its own direction and meaning: sympathy and antipathy. The same thing applies to the religious sequence. Although the film grounds both cults in a single signification, the way they are filmed orients us differently to each one. In the Pentecostal cult, the preach- ers and their retinue are mounted on a platform that stands some six feet above their followers. The camera emphasizes the intervening space. The high-angle framing of the crowd and the low-angle framing of the preachers interpret spatial relations in terms of power: the preachers dominate the faithful. A sharp low-angle shot silhouettes a minister dressed in black against the sky. He asks those who are willing to follow him to raise their hands, adding that when he makes an appeal, he ex- pects to be obeyed at once. The following shot shows the throng with raised arms. These elements - the throngs who let themselves be domi- nated, the authoritarian priests-make the Pentecostals unsympa- thetic. There is a tendency to see the people who go into trances, or the young man who faints after waiting all day for the worship to begin, as victims. On the other hand, the umbandistas are filmed with horizontal rather than vertical camera movements, the shots emphasizing proximity over distance. We therefore feel closer to these people. We approach a mae de santo interviewed in a two-shot. (None of the Pentecostals-ministers or worshippers-is interviewed.) The umbandistas' trances, no less violent than those of the Pentecostals, don't set in motion (in the film) relations of dependency or domination between officiators and their faithful. While the Pentecostal faithful have their eyes fixed on the preachers, the umbandistas are shown to be freer in their dances and in their offerings to the gods. In addition, the final scenes of the latter take place on the beach, in contact with nature. Dressed almost all in white, they throw flowers into the sea. This stands in marked contrast to the dark robes of the Pentecostal ministers. (There is an allusion to the red robes of a Catholic bishop who participates in the ceremony, but since the film is in black and white ... ). All this potentially guides our sympathy, although on another level the two cults may be taken to mean the same thing. At the level of his thesis, Viramundo's director, Gerardo Sarno, re- jects Umbanda as much as Pentecostalism. But when, eight years later, he goes on to make la6, a documentary about Candombl6, a popular cult that resembles Umbanda, interpreting it in an extremely positive way, we are not particularly surprised. The seed of that positive inter- pretation is found in the way the Umbanda cult is filmed in Viramundo, the negative interpretation given it in that film notwithstanding. The moment when the sympathy/antipathy operation enters in most acute contradiction with the film's signification mechanisms occurs dur- 235 Social Documentary in Latin America guarantee these early film pioneers access to the kind of public spec- tacles which soon became their stock-in-trade. Yet these associations also instilled a highly ethnocentric, elitist view of what aspects of so- ciety were appropriate for filming. This restrictive definition of the na- tional would persist in Latin America for over half a century, severely circumscribing political and cultural participation. In his history of documentary, Eric Barnouw dedicates consider- able attention to a "genre" he calls the "bugle-call film"-"adjunct to military action, weapon of war"-as it developed during World War II. Though Barnouw does not do so, the historical antecedents of this genre can be clearly traced to the U.S. military intervention in Cuba in 1898, in the closing months of Cuba's thirty-year struggle for independence from Spain. The role of the Hearst newspapers, and William Randolph Hearst himself, in stirring up prointerventionist sentiment is notorious. Less well known is the way moving footage of the conflict, the first of its kind, was manipulated for the same expansionist ends. Early Ameri- can silent films like Fighting with Our Boys in Cuba, Raising Old Glory Over Moro Castle, and The Battle of Santiago Bay compensated for the disappointingly humdrum nature of the first on-the-spot war foot- age with dramatic simulations of naval battles - two-dimensional cut- out boats doing battle in an inch of water under clouds of cigar smoke in a Manhattan apartment, as pioneer cameraman Albert E. Smith tells it in his autobiography Two Reels and a Crank.7 In The American News- reel: 1911-1967, Raymond Fielding includes a photograph illustrating the faking of Spanish-American War footage on a slightly larger scale - in a swimming pool.8 Like the yellow journalists with whom they are so closely tied, these early "newsreel" producers felt little compunction to adhere to the facts; a professional code of objectivity did not yet prevail. Humble ancestors of today's "special effects," these early dra- matizations-cum-document apparently succeeded in arousing the pa- triotic fervor of gullible Americans, but Cuban audiences, struck by the disparity between the actual events and their recreation, viewed the same footage more skeptically, as a warning of the cinema's po- tential for manipulation and falsification.9 A decade later, another Latin American war, the first of the great twentieth-century popular revolutions, again called forth the camera- men - this time with much more historically significant, if still under- acknowledged, results. The second half of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz's thirty-year reign coincided with the introduction of the film medium. More than any other Latin American ruler of the period, he made the cinema a tool for the ostentatious promotion and glorifica- tion of his regime. Movie theaters proliferated -not only in the capital but also in literally scores of cities and towns throughout the provinces. 11 Jean-Claude Bernardet ing the interview with the factory manager. As I have stated, I see this personage as an auxiliary narrator. Both of them find themselves enmeshed in a system that treats migrants as objects. Nevertheless, the way the manager is filmed provokes a negative reaction to him. He is shot in a narrow space, from slightly low-angle at the moment he rises to speak. The use of his title distances him from us and empha- sizes his social role to the detriment of his personal being. The inter- viewer speaks in a curt tone that he does not use to address the mi- grants. Finally, though it is never made explicit, there are the benefits one suspects that the boss derives from the social system that harms the unskilled worker who has won our sympathy. There is therefore a tension between the alliance made with the manager at the level of the film's information system, and his negative treatment. This ten- sion probably expresses a contradiction between the director's politi- cal position (his inclination toward those oppressed by the social sys- tem) and the sociological attitude that governs the film and excludes the director from the universe of the oppressed. This sociological atti- tude, implying the domination of the subject-of-knowledge over the object-of-knowledge, rejects it when it comes to the manager in an at- tempt to shift the balance to the subservient term. The "Senhor" and the sharp tone of the interviewer (who is in fact the director himself, who has also lent his voice to the narrator) seems to want to deny on the affective and social level the agreement that exists on the level of the film's informational system. This sympathy/antipathy network that runs through the film like filigree offers another contradiction: it cannot exceed the spectator's complicity. Because it is a tracery that runs throughout and because it functions in the film's rhetorical structure like an expletive, the sym- pathy thus generated will touch only those who are emotionally or ideo- logically predisposed. Whoever might oppose Umbanda for religious, or political, or "law-and-order" reasons will see in those images only the alienation proposed by the film, or some form of savagery. The Pente- costals will not let the negative connotations bother them. All those who aspire to making it in life or who struggle to provide for a family will eventually project their sympathy onto the skilled worker who has managed to attain a house and a steady job, while perceiving the other worker as a menace. This network of connotation indicates that there is a potential pub- lic to whom the film implicitly addresses itself: let's call it "progres- sive." This is the film's interlocutor. If the viewer remained a stranger to the latent sympathy the film displays toward the umbandistas, it would not jeopardize either the information transmitted by the film or its logic (I would even dare to say it would be irrelevant), but it would 236 Ideological Form in Viramundo violate the essence of the film, given that it aspires, though in filigree patterning, to direct our sympathies toward whom the system oppresses and who serve as raw material in order that the film might function as a discourse of knowledge. NOTES This essay is a revised and expanded version of the first chapter of the author's doctoral dissertation, "Cineastes et images du peuple" ("Filmmakers and Im- ages of the People"), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, 1984, under the direction of Christian Metz. The essay was translated from the French by the editor. 1. The term sociological model in the title of this chapter should not be taken excessively rigorously. It is meant to characterize a kind of sociological "spirit": the confidence demonstrated by certain filmmakers (not professional sociologists) that the discipline of sociology offers the instruments necessary to understand social reality. This reality was understood as being completely structured by production, and the relationship to production was believed to define the various social groups. Paulo Rufino's Lavrador (Worker, 1968) was the first film to break with this sociological model. It ceased considering pro- duction as the unique structuring agent of social reality and the relationship to production as the only way of understanding people and social groups. Documentarists began making an effort not to treat the people they were filming as examples of certain sociological categories, seeking instead to restore the individual sphere. Doubts about the possibility of constructing a discourse of a sociological nature that would convey reality in its full complexity, doubts about the very possibility of conveying reality through discourse, led these "postsociological" films to call attention to their own character as discourse, to rupture and fragment the smooth flow of sounds and images, and to em- phasize ambiguity. 2. On April 1, 1964, the armed forces seized power from a democratically elected government and ruled the country for two decades, until 1985. 3. Umbanda is a religious practice derived from the Yoruba of East Africa. 4. With the promulgation of Institutional Act No. 5 in December 1968, an already repressive regime abrogated even more far-reaching powers to it- self, abolishing individual rights and legal protections. 5. These were Maurice Capovilla's Subterraneos do futebol (Soccer Under- ground), Manuel Horacio Gimenez's Nossa escola do samba (Our Samba School), and Paulo Gil Soares's Memorias do Cangago (Memories of the Cangago). 6. Sergio Santeiro's analysis of a sequence from Viva Cariri (Long Live Cariri, Gerardo Sarno, 1969) in A voz do dono (The Master's Voice; mimeo- graphed, 1975), explores a situation in which the natural dramaturgical sys- tem breaks down. Santeiro's analysis of this film reveals how this system func- tions better than any other I have read. 237 12 CUBA'S LATIN AMERICAN WEEKLY NEWSREEL: CIMEMATIC LANGUAGE AND POLITICAL EFFECTIVENESS Jorge Fraga Jorge Fraga, longtime head of Film Production at the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC), examines the representational strategies of the weekly Noticiero Latinoamericano (Latin American Weekly Newsreel) as the product of converging factors: Cuba's material and cultural conditions, its political and ideological goals, and the particular char- acteristics of the film medium in comparison with other news media. The essence of the Cuban newsreel, Fraga argues, lies not in the nature of its images but it the way those images are organized - specifically, in successions of contrasting motifs and oppositional relationships subordinated to interpretive rather than "purely informational" ends. In these brief but highly suggestive initial reflections, in addition to questions of structuration and open versus closed forms, Fraga stresses the element of reception- how each work is perceived differ- ently according its viewers' varying circumstances, and how particu- lar representational strategies enlist the spectators' active participa- tion. The second part of the chapter, a commentary on eighteen frame enlargements from Newsreel #428 (1968) provides concrete, textual illustration of the more general theoretical arguments put forth in the preceding section. Fraga's essay is typical of Cuban film criticism of this period (1960s and 1970s) in that it does not conceive of film criticism as a specialized activity but rather as part of a filmmaker's broad-based participation in the medium; it is atypical, however, in its attention to concrete visual evidence. WHAT ARE the basic propositions of the Cuban Film Insti- tute's Weekly Latin American Newsreel? How do these fundamentals determine its purposes, character, and style? How does the language 239 Jorge Fraga that organizes its more characteristic components affect its ideologi- cal impact? In Techniques of Film Editing, Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar write, "If the newsreel is to survive the competition of the more up-to-date television news service, newsreel-makers will have to adapt their style of presentation to create a rather different level of appeal for their prod- uct. A more interpretive approach ... will have to be developed."' Al- though following an independent route and unrelated to competition with television, the ICAIC Newsreel takes the idea Reisz expresses here as one of the basic principles. The main thing that distinguishes Cuba's newsreels from those elsewhere is that ours do not limit them- selves to "recording a given reality" but offer a deliberately and explic- itly "interpretive vision" of the various realities they record. It would be a serious inconsistency in a socialist country if the means of cultural communication had to compete among themselves, or if they were limited to seeking directions for development and standards of quality solely in relation to one another. On the contrary, each com- munications medium must find its own function, deducing it from the principles of cultural politics, from the specific conditions under which each medium realizes its goals, and from the particular characteristics of each. I will try to suggest how the ICAIC Weekly Newsreel carries out this process. In their relationship to current events, communications media like the press, radio, television, and film are differentiated by the speed with which they disseminate information. Radio is the most agile, followed by television, the press, and in last place, film. But it would be dog- matic to suppose that this relative lack of agility, the product of tech- nological factors and of a rich and complex tradition of film language, is a defect. Such an assumption, furthermore, would mean failing to see reality in concrete terms or remaining captive to the commercial idea of "getting the scoop." It is obvious that information is not valuable only for the speed with which it is disseminated and that in many cases the urge to be "up to the minute" impoverishes and distorts the infor- mation in question. What is more important is how a particular piece of information is assembled and the quality of the interpretation that necessarily accompanies it. These qualities can confer a scope and tem- poral relevancy greatly superior to those of more "up-to-the-minute" news coverage. I don't believe that any piece of news lacks interest or immediately loses interest in and of itself- only because of the way in which it is assembled and disseminated. The most incidental item, if it is related to essential ideas and facts, can transcend its immediate applicability and achieve permanent interest. It is this possibility that prevents the 240 Cuba's Latin American Weekly Newsreel relative slowness of film in reaching its audience from becoming a de- fect. It is possible to make a virtue of necessity. The ICAIC Newsreel gives an interpretive character to the information it transmits. This is its special function. Film does not, therefore, suffer from any antago- nistic relationship or disadvantage vis-A-vis the other media. There are other motives, related to this one, that justify our con- ception of the Newsreel. The most important of these is political. Be- cause of film's all-too-familiar virtues - the universality of the image - the newsreel is called to fulfill a basic role in popular political educa- tion. In a country like Cuba, where median levels of education are still quite low, where the masses still lack sufficient means to interpret in- formation for themselves, it is essential that information explicitly carry within itself either its interpretation or the means through which it can be interpreted. The second factor is material. We print only sixty copies of each Weekly Newsreel; we do not have the raw film stock to print more. Yet our country has 500 permanent theaters and more than 400 mobile pro- jection units, so unavoidably there is a time lag of three to four weeks before the newsreels reach many places. To compensate for this delay, our newsreels must retain their interest for at least that long. This is achieved by transcending the immediate temporal relevance of a given news item by offering an interpretation of the recorded events. The concept of the ICAIC Newsreel corresponds, therefore, to its purpose of political education, to the country's material and cultural conditions, to the special characteristics of the medium, and to the har- mony of purpose that should exist between the various means of cul- tural communication, given the differences between them. But how does this conception determine the form of the ICAIC Newsreel? Its dominant expressive device is montage, but this is not an ex- clusive quality, since montage is the dominant means of composition in all newsreels. Why, then, does our Newsreel "not seem like a news- reel," as so many people say? It is common knowledge that film language has two principal means of interpreting reality: framing (the nature of the images in separation) and montage or editing (the organization of images in succession). These two procedures do not interpret reality in the same way or under the same conditions. It is a commonplace to say that the expressive potential of the frame is principally determined by the choice of the camera's point of view. Although it is often difficult to perceive it directly, our sense of the filmed event depends on camera position. But the interpretive possibilities of the framing-extracting symbolic connotations from the sensitive re- production of the object - are fully realized only when the filmmaker 241 Jorge Fraga can exert some influence over the event being recorded, particularly if it can be organized according to a preconceived plan. This is the case with the majority of fiction films. But it is obvious that the newsreel camera operator can neither anticipate nor influence the event to a similar degree. He or she cannot (but for exceptional cases) extract the interpretive potential, the symbolic connotations, from the frame. This explains why the newsreel camera operator's most prized quality is intuition - the ability to immediately detect the essential aspects of an event and to record them clearly and forcefully. But s/he cannot make the general meaning of the event explicit; working conditions prevent this. The footage shot by the newsreel camera thus displays the follow- ing contradiction: although it is poor in symbolic connotations, it must lend itself to an interpretive use. Conventional newsreels, with their serial, notelike structure and chronological editing, do not resolve this contradiction. They remain at the most externalized, descriptive level of an event, and when they want to make the meaning of what they are showing explicit, they re- sort to narration. Since the role of the narration is to supplement the image's impoverished symbolic dimension, the text it offers is inevitably rhetorical. The ICAIC Newsreel, in contrast, manages to resolve the above contradiction by means of special montage techniques. Someone observed once that our newsreel is defined by its way of "mixing everything with everything." It's true that, from a formal stand- point, the ICAIC Newsreel has its roots in expressive procedures com- mon to many examples of twentieth-century culture - cubism or sur- realism, for example. But our newsreel is also particularly rooted in the linguistic tradition of Soviet filmmaking from the silent period. The type of montage that characterizes our newsreels derives from the origi- nal and more contemporary applications of the Eisensteinian "montage of attractions." Generally speaking, this mode of organizing images is characterized by the succession of dissimilar and opposite motifs whose ordering is determined according to symbolic associations relating to a common theme and in accord with an explicit ideological end. The fact that the ICAIC Newsreel is formally characterized by how it organizes its images rather than by the nature of those images can be explained by already mentioned conditions and interpretive goals. But the newsreel's particular, concrete style, whose generic character- istics I have just sketched out, has other consequences. These involve the ideological value not of the ideas or the images themselves, or of the end result of their organization, but of the very structure that or- ganizes those ideas and images. Structure mediates content and deter- mines the ideological efficacy of the message. To achieve the desired ideological impact, not only must the structure conform to the content, 242 Cuba's Latin American Weekly Newsreel but also the structure itself must correspond to certain exigencies prin- cipally having to do with its relationship to the spectator. What are the typical structural characteristics of the ICAIC News- reel and how do they determine its ideological efficacy? To explain and demonstrate this in detail would require a technical analysis exceeding the scope of this chapter; I will limit myself to pointing out, first, that in the case of newsreels like ours in which interpretation typically domi- nates information, communication is more effective if opposition, con- trast, and conflict are emphasized over continuity; and second, that these opposing relationships may be found in the most representative examples of the ICAIC Newsreel. Should the structure be "open" or "closed"? This is the crux of the contemporary polemic surrounding the communications media. The competing points of view can be summarized as follows. The proponents of "open" structures oppose prior interpretation, defending the freedom of the spectator. They believe "closed" structures and language are au- thoritarian, "manipulating" the spectator and imposing a point of view without allowing viewers to take a critical stance toward what is being offered. Their ideal is "pure" information whose interpretation is left to the spectator. There is a profound truth- a moral authenticity -in this position. But the deepest truths, if ill-used, can become banal. The partisans of "open" works (myself among them) tend to be one-sided. It is not diffi- cult to discover that the majority of proponents of "open" structure, at least in the most extreme cases, adopt the point of view that a priori judgment should be suspended. But I don't think this is the principal question. What matters is the efficacy of the communicative act, and it is too simplistic to reduce this to favoring either information over interpretation ("open work") or interpretation over information ("closed work"). Common to both of these positions is the tendency to restrict discussion to the sphere of the work itself, leaving aside the other com- ponents of the communication process: the content and function of the work; the spectators and their circumstances. While warning us against so-called sociological reductionism, the structuralist approach lays an- other trap, that of conceiving of the work as a "thing in itself." The scope of communication can never be measured by purely structural consid- erations. Besides, "open" and "closed" are opposite approaches that have meaning in their unity. The most "open" work has "closed" elements in its structure; interpretation is also information. The thematics of the ICAIC Newsreel are heterogeneous. According to the varying circumstances of its spectators, the diverse contents it disseminates have different contextual associations and richness. The goals proposed by the newsreel are also multiple. Those who criticize 243 Jorge Fraga the predominance of interpretation that characterizes our newsreel should not omit this diverse range of functions: to denounce injustice, to mobilize support, to bear witness, to incite viewers to analysis or to combat. None of these should be beyond scrutiny. Is there in any newsreel a more "closed" structure than that of Santiago Alvarez's Now -or a more effective one?2 Nor, I believe, should the predominance of interpretation (and its impact on the nature of communication) be judged while leaving aside structural components that put interpretation itself into a state of ten- sion and conflict. I think this function is realized by the oppositional relations pointed out above. I do not mean to say that all ICAIC News- reels are models of effective communication, but I do wish to point out that our newsreels' characteristic solution to the contradiction between interpretation and information ("open" versus "closed" work) is to con- dition interpretation through a structure of oppositional relationships that incite spectators to take an active stance toward what they are perceiving. To illustrate this complex question, we must descend from the clouded sky of abstract ideas to the terra firma of concrete examples. In the summary analysis that follows of Noticiero Number 428, a re- port on the Symposium Against Genocide in Vietnam,3 I will try to demonstrate some of the most structurally pertinent oppositional rela- tionships. Readers will have to verify for themselves whether it is these relationships that give this particular newsreel, so exceptionally laden with symbolic connotations, its ideological effectiveness. NOTES 1. Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar, Techniques of Film Editing, 2nd ed. (Lon- don: Focal, 1968), pp. 192-93. (Spanish version: Tcnica de montaje [Madrid: Taurus], p. 132.) 2. See chapters 2 and 4. 3. This newsreel was released on 4 November 1968; the symposium was held in Havana in October of that year. 244 C s '0) C 0) CZ cz 4- Q : > - Q Q C CO CO -o CO C) 0) CO Q 0) Strategies of self-representation: the War for Independence through Cuban eyes. Credit: Courtesy ICAIC (Right) Images of the symposium alternate with images of Hayd'e Santamaria visiting Haiphong-a visual solution to the ideas ex- pressed by Haydee. The visual elements are in opposition - simulta- neously ordinary, everyday scenes and symbols of heroism. (Below) The animated intertitle expands upon ideas Haydee expressed. Visual opposition moves from the particular to the general, from event to symbol. (Below right) Cuban singer Pablo Milanes sings in praise of the sym- bolic heroism and courage of Ho Chi Minh. (Above left) Images of Pablo Milanes alternate with images of Ho en- gaged in everyday activities: again the opposition of the heroic and the commonplace. The foregoing intertitle, which anticipated the idea of dignity, developed further by Pablo, realizes two opposite func- tions: it amplifies a preceding idea and anticipates what will follow. The exaltation that began in general terms with Portillo's song takes concrete form in the image of Ho while remaining on a high level of abstraction because the song emphasizes the symbolic connotations of Ho's image. Sentiments are particularized, however, in the opposi- tion between emotions and ideas. (Above) An off-screen voice summarizes the results of the symposium. The end of the event appears at the beginning of the filmic exposi- tion, an opposition between real time and cinematic time. (Left) Yankee barbarity: the hostility provoked by the image requires no accompaniment. Silent at first, the sound track later registers gunfire. (Right) A Yankee soldier has his picture taken next to the body of the Vietnamese he has just murdered. The "Marine's Hymn" is on the sound track- an opposition between image and symbol. (Below) A Vietnamese horribly mutilated by napalm. An off-screen voice alludes to the destruction of Vietnamese cultural values -the- matic opposition. (Below right) Preceded by the sense of horror, the intervention of Cuba's minister of foreign affairs, Rail Roa, changes the character of the narration, which moves from denunciation to threat. This is the climax of this exposition. w:.-:::ii::."~9~?i!F 7 :::~PB (Above left) Cuban singer Omara Portuondo sings a song by Silvio Rodriguez. The threat is transformed into a call to fight. The specta- tor's generic hostility, the visceral impact of horror, assumes a con- crete emotional content. (Above) At the song's climactic point, the sound and image of a power- ful explosion. The exhortation to combat suddenly gives way to the symbolic realization of the spectator's latent aggressiveness. A quali- tative leap: in typically surrealist fashion, the explosion lacks any material linkage to the succession of images. (Left) Image-sound opposition: the visceral horror of the image in con- trast to a brief, almost lyrical guitar theme on the sound track. The feeling of hostility is retained; the symbolic frustration of (unconscious) aggressive impulses impedes any return to tranquility. (Right) "They began killing in order to win" (Below) "and now they are killing" (Belozw right) "because they cannot win." Ae 13 THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES AND THE TWO AVANT-GARDES Robert Stam This essay examines what is quite probably the most influential docu- mentary ever produced in Latin America, a paradigmatic example of the culture and political discourse of the late 1960s. Stam identifies intricate interrelationships between modes of production, modes of signification, and modes of reception in a work in which, as he ar- gues, the dual impulses of the avant-garde - artistic innovation and political militancy -are fused in exemplary fashion. The "strategic arsenal" of this three-hour filmed "essay" includes startling disjunc- tions between image and commentary, the parodistic appropriation of advertising techniques, and, perhaps the film's most aggressive form of radical interventionism, the temporary disruption of the cine- matic event as a goad to political debate among members of the audi- ence. In his judicious concluding reassessment of the political tenets of those leaders who gave the filmmakers their ideological compass - Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Juan Perdn -Stam benefits from, with- out abusing, the privilege of a decade's hindsight. The struggle to seize power from the enemy is the meeting-ground of the political and artistic vanguards engaged in a common task which is enriching to both. -Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, "Towards a Third Cinema" IF THERE are two avant-gardes-the formal and the theoretico-political - then La hora de los hornos (Hour of the Furnaces, 1968) surely marks one of the high points of their convergence. Fusing Third World radicalism with artistic innovation, the Solanas-Getino film revives the historical sense of avant-garde as connoting political as well as cultural militancy. It teases to the surface the military metaphor submerged in the very expression "avant-garde"- the image of an ad- 251 Robert Stam vanced contingent reconnoitering unexplored and dangerous territory. It resuscitates the venerable analogy (at least as old as Marey's fusil photographique) of camera and gun, charging it with a precise revo- lutionary signification. Art becomes, as Walter Benjamin said of the dadaists, "an instrument of ballistics." At the same time, La hora's ex- perimental language is indissolubly wedded to its political project; the articulation of one with the other generates the film's meaning and se- cures it relevance. It is in this exemplary two-fronted struggle, rather than in the his- torical specificity of its politics, that La hora retains vitality as a model for cinematic practice. Events subsequent to 1968 have, if not wholly discredited, at least relativized the film's analysis. Unmoored and set adrift on the currents of history, La hora has been severed from its original context, as its authors have been exiled from their country. The late sixties were, virtually everywhere, the hour of the furnaces, and La hora, quintessential product of the period, forged the incandes- cent expression of their glow. Tricontinental revolution, under the sym- bolic aegis of Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh, was deemed imminent, waiting to surprise us around the next bend of the dialectic. But despite salient victories (Vietnam, Mozambique, Nicaragua), many flames have dwindled into embers, as some of the Third World has set- tled into the era of diminished expectations. In most of South Amer- ica, the CIA, multinational corporations, and native ruling elites con- spired to install what Noam Chomsky calls "subfascist" regimes, that is, regimes whose politics and practices are fascist but which lack any popular base. In Argentina, class struggle in a relatively liberal con- text gave way to virtual civil war. Per6n - the last hope of the revolu- tionaries and the bourgeoisie -returned, but only to die. His political heirs veered rightward, defying the hopes of those who returned him to power, until a putsch installed a quasi-fascist regime. Rather than being surprised by revolution, Argentina, and La hora with it, was am- bushed by a historical equivocation. La hora is structured as a tripartite political essay. The first sec- tion, "Neocolonialism and Violence," situates Argentina internationally, revealing it as a palimpsest of European influences: "British gold, Ital- ian hands, French books." A series of "Notes"-"The Daily Violence," "The Oligarchy," "Dependency" - explore the variegated forms of neo- colonial oppression. The second section, "An Act for Liberation," is sub- divided into a "Chronicle of Peronism," covering Per6n's rule from 1945 through his deposition by coup in 1955, and "Chronicle of Resistance," detailing the opposition struggle during the period of Per6n's exile. The third section, "Violence and Liberation," consists of an open-ended series 252 The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes of interviews, documents, and testimonials concerning the best path to a revolutionary future for Latin America. Much of this section is taken up by two interviews, one with an octogenarian, oral archivist of the national memory of resistance, who recounts past combats and predicts imminent socialist revolution, the other with labor organizer Julio Troxler, then living and working underground, who describes mass executions and vows struggle until victory. While reawakening the military metaphor dormant in "avant-garde," La hora also literalizes the notion of the "underground." Filmed clan- destinely in conjunction with militant cadres, it was made in the inter- stices of the system and against the system. It situates itself on the periphery of the periphery - a kind of off-off-Hollywood - and brashly disputes the hegemony of both the dominant model ("First Cinema") and of Auterurism ("Second Cinema"), proposing instead a "Third Cinema," independent in production, militant in politics, and experimental in lan- guage.1 As a poetic celebration of the Argentine nation, it is "epic" in the classical as well as the Brechtian sense, weaving disparate materials - newsreels, eyewitness reports, TV commercials, photographs-into a splendid historical tapestry. A cinematic summa, with strategies rang- ing from straightforward didacticism to operatic stylization, borrow- ing from avant-garde and mainstream, fiction and documentary, cinema verit6 and advertising, it inherits and prolongs the work of Eisenstein, Vertov, Joris Ivens, Glauber Rocha, Fernando Birri, Resnais, Bufiuel, and Godard. La hora's most striking feature is its openness. But whereas "open- ness" in art usually evokes plurisignification, polysemy, the authoriza- tion of a plurality of equally legitimate readings, the Solanas-Getino film is not open in this sense: its messages are stridently unequivocal, Its ambiguities, such as they are, derive more from the vicissitudes of history than from the intentions of its authors. The film's openness lies elsewhere, and first of all in its process of production. Coming from the traditional Europeanized left, Solanas and Getino set out to make a socially minded short documentary about the working class in Argen- tina. Through the filmmaking experience, however, they evolved toward a left Peronist position. The production process, in other words, in- flected their own ideological trajectory in ways that they themselves could not have fully predicted. (One need not endorse the specific na- ture of this inflection to appreciate the fact of the inflection.) Once aware of the tenuous nature of their initial "certainties," they opened their proj- ect to the criticisms and suggestions of the working class. As a result, the film underwent a process of constant mutation, not because of au- thorial whims (a la 81/2) but under the pressure of proletarian critique. 253 Robert Stam Rather than performing the mise-en-scene of preconceived opinions, the film's making entailed inquiry and search. The reformist short became a revolutionary manifesto.2 La hora is open, secondly, in its very structure as a text, operat- ing by what might be called tendentiously aleatory procedures.3 At key points, the film raises questions-"Why did Per6n fall without a struggle? Should he have armed the people?"- and proposes that the audience debate them, interrupting the projection to allow for discus- sion. Elsewhere, the authors appeal for supplementary material on the theme of violence and liberation, soliciting collaboration in the film's writing. The "end" of the film refuses closure by inviting the audience to prolong the text: "Now it is up to you to draw conclusions to con- tinue the film. You have the floor." This challenge, more than rhetori- cal, was concretely taken up by Argentine audiences, at least until the experiment was cut short by military rule. Cine-semiologists define the cinema as a system of signification rather than communication, arguing that the gap between the produc- tion of the message and its reception, doubled by the gap between the reception and the production of an answering message, allows only for deferred communication. La hora, by opening itself up to person-to- person debate, tests and "stretches" this definition to its very limits. In a provocative amalgam of cinema/theatre/political rally, it joins the space of representation to the space of the spectator, thus making "real" and immediate communication possible. The passive cinematic experi- ence, that rendezvous manque between exhibitionist and voyeur, is transformed into a "theatrical" encounter between human beings pres- ent in the flesh. The two-dimensional space of the screen gives way to the three-dimensional space of theatre and politics. The film mobilizes, fostering motor and mental activity rather than self-indulgent fantasy. Rather than vibrate to the sensibility of an Auteur, the spectators be- come the authors of their own destiny. Rather than a mass hero on the screen, the protagonists of history are in the audience. Rather than a womb to regress in, the cinema becomes a political stage on which to act. Brecht contrasted artistic innovation easily absorbed by the ap- paratus with the kind that threatens its very existence. La hora wards off cooptation by a stance of radical interventionism. Rather than being hermetically sealed off from life, the text is permeable to history and praxis, calling for accomplices rather than consumers. The three major sections begin with ouvertures - orchestrated quotations, slogans, rally- ing cries -which suggest that the spectators have come not to enjoy a show but to participate in an action. Each screening is meant to cre- ate what the authors call a "liberated space, a decolonized territory." 254 The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes Because of this activist stance, La hora was dangerous to make, to dis- tribute, and, not infrequently, to see. When a repressive situation makes filmgoing a clandestine activity punishable by prison or torture, the mere act of viewing comes to entail political commitment. Cinephilia, at times a surrogate for political action in the United States and Europe, became in Argentina a life-endangering form of praxis, placing the spec- tator in a booby-trapped space of political commitment. Instead of the mere firecrackers-under-the-seats of the dadaists, the spectator was faced with the distant possibility of machine-gun fire in the cinema. All the celebrated "attacks on the voyeurism of the spectator" pale in vio- lence next to this threatened initiation into political brutality. In its frontal assault on passivity, La hora deploys a number of textual strategies. The spoken and written commentary, addressed di- rectly to the spectator, fosters a discursive relationship, the I-you of discours rather than the he-she voyeurism of histoire. The language, furthermore, is unabashedly partisan, eschewing all factitious "objec- tivity." Diverse classes, the film reminds us, speak divergent languages. The 1955 putsch, for the elite, is a "liberating revolution," for the people, "the gorilla coup." Everything in the film, from the initial dedication to Che Guevara through the final exhortation to action, obeys the Brechtian injunction to "divide the audience," forcing the audience to "take sides." The Argentine intellectual must decide to be with the Peronist masses or against them. The American must reject the phrase "Yankee imperialism" or acknowledge that it corresponds, on some level, to the truth. At times, the call for commitment reaches discomfiting extremes for the spectator hoping for a warm bath of escapism. Quot- ing Fanon's "All spectators are cowards or traitors" (neither option flat- ters), the film calls at times for virtual readiness for martyrdom-"To choose one's death is to choose one's life" - at which point the lukewarm entertainment-seeker might feel that the demands for commitment have escalated unacceptably. La hora also short-circuits passivity by making intense intellectual demands. The written titles and spoken commentary taken together form a more or less continuous essay, one which ranks in rhetorical power with those of the authors it cites - Fanon, Cesaire, Sartre. At once broadly discursive and vividly imagistic, abstract and concrete, this essay-text, rather than simply commenting on the images, orga- nizes them and provides their principle of coherence. The essay consti- tutes the film's control-center, its brain. The images take on meaning in relation to it rather than the reverse. During prolonged periods, the screen becomes an audio-visual blackboard and the spectator a reader of text. The staccato intercutting of black frames and incendiary titles generates a dynamic cine-dcriture; the film writes itself. Vertovian titles 255 Social Documentary in Latin America By 1910, the year the Mexican Revolution broke out, "actualities" had become synonymous with a ritualized recital of official processions, for- mal dedications, and diplomatic encounters as presided over by this prototypical Latin American dictator, whose extended reign achieved new heights of self-congratulatory redundancy that year with the elabo- rately orchestrated civic celebrations on the anniversary of 100 years of independence from Spain. Much of this footage has survived and was given new circulation in 1950 in Carmen Toscano's compilation, Memorias de un mexicano (Memories of a Mexican), its style as staid and predictable as its subject matter. The outbreak of the revolution - which overthrew not only Diaz but a number of aspiring successors - transformed the way the film medium was used in Mexico. High angles, immobile cameras, and long shots of indigenous peoples performing and workers parading before a Euro- peanized oligarchy, gave way to shots of swirling masses in motion on their own behalf. From their position of privileged superiority, often literally as well as figuratively on the dais of the dictator, cameramen descended into the street; from the sheltered urban spaces of the bour- geoisie, they fanned out into the contested countryside. Diaz had brought railroads to Mexico to facilitate the exploitation of the country by foreign investors. The masses appropriated the rail- roads to transport political and military leaders, soldiers, supplies. Dur- ing more than a decade of revolution and counterrevolution, battles were fought along the rail lines that traversed the country. Cameramen boarded the trains with the soldiers and their leaders. The resulting "tracking shots" of mounted Villistas and Zapatistas, with their wide sombreros, crossed cartridge belts, and intense expressions, retain their dynamic charge even today. (In Memories of a Mexican, the exuberant energy of this spontaneous, democratic footage threatens to undermine the carefully sanitized, "officialist" historical discourse imposed by Toscano's editing and by the putatively "autobiographical" voice-over that narrativizes the archival footage.) In the 1930s, long after the conflagration had died down, feature filmmakers, motivated by economy rather than by any will to authen- ticity, inserted actual documentary battle footage from the great un- assembled "archive" of the revolution into their fictional films. In his comparative history of film in Latin America, Paulo Antonio Paranagua writes: The Mexican Revolution spurred [film] production, with filmmakers accus- tomed to capturing miles and miles of images, one after another. ... That [documentary] production prefigures in Latin America (and perhaps worldwide) a political cinema closely linked to the present, in symbiotic relationship to great social movements, a form of expression whose con- 13 Robert Stam Emblematic militancy: La hora de los hornos (Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, 1968). Credit: Unifilm; courtesy Gary Crowdus explode around the screen, rushing toward and retreating from the spec- tator, their graphic presentation often mimicking their signification. The word "liberation," for example, proliferates and multiplies, in a strik- ing visual and kinetic reminiscence of Che's call for "two, three, many Vietnams." At other times, in a rude challenge to the sacrosanct "pri- macy of the visual," the screen remains blank while a disembodied voice addresses us in the darkness. The commentary participates mightily in the film's work of demys- tification. As the caption, "for Walter Benjamin," could tear photog- raphy away from fashionable cliches and grant it "revolutionary use- value," so the commentary shatters the official image of events. An idealized painting celebrating Argentine political independence is un- dercut by the offscreen account of the financial deals which betrayed economic independence. Formal sovereignty is exposed as the facade masking the realities of material subjugation. Shots of the bustling, prosperous port of Buenos Aires, similarly, are accompanied by an analysis of a general systemic poverty: "What characterizes Latin American countries is, first of all, their dependence - economic depen- 256 The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes dence, political dependence, cultural dependence." The spectator is taught to distrust images, or better, to see through them to their un- derlying structures. The film strives to enable the spectator to pene- trate the veil of appearances, to dispel the mists of ideology through an act of revolutionary decoding. Much of La hora's persuasive power derives from its ability to ren- der ideas visual. Abstract concepts are given clear and accessible form. The sociological abstraction "oligarchy" is concretized by shots of the "fifty families" that monopolize much of Argentina's wealth. "Here they are..." says the text; the "oligarchy" comes into focus as the actual faces of real people, recognizable and accountable. "Class society" be- comes the image ("quoted" from Birri's Tire die) of desperate child beg- gars running alongside trains in hopes of a few pennies from blase passengers. "Systemic violence" is rendered by images of the state's apparatus of repression - prisons, armored trucks, bombers. The title "No Social Order Commits Suicide" yields to four quick-cut shots of the military. C6saire's depiction of the colonized - "Dispossessed, Mar- ginalized, Condemned"- gives way to shots of workers, up against the wall, undergoing police interrogation. Thus La hora engraves ideas on the mind of the spectator. The images do not explode harmlessly, dis- sipating their energy. They fuse with ideas in order to detonate in the minds of the audience. Parody and satire form part of the strategic arsenal of La hora de los hornos. One sequence, a sightseeing excursion through Buenos Aires, compares in irreverence to Bufiuel's sardonic tour of Rome in L'age d'or. The images are those customary in travelogues - government build- ings, monuments, busy thoroughfares- but the accompanying text is dipped in acid. Rather than exalt the cosmopolitan charm or the bustling energy of Buenos Aires, the commentary disengages its class struc- ture: the highly placed comprador bourgeoisie, the middle class ("eter- nal in-betweens, both protected and used by the oligarchy") and the petite bourgeoisie, "eternal crybabies, for whom change is necessary, but impossible." Monuments, symbols of national pride, are treated as petrified emblems of servility. As the camera zooms out from an eques- trian statue of one of Argentina's founding fathers (Carlos de Alvear), an offscreen voice ironizes: "Here monuments are erected to the man who said: 'These provinces want to belong to Great Britain, to accept its laws, obey its government, live under its powerful influence."' Satiric vignettes pinpoint the reactionary nostalgia of the Argen- tine ruling class. We see them in an antique car acting out their fan- tasy of la belle epoque. We see "La Recoleta," their cemetery, baroque testimonial to an atrophied way of life, where the oligarchy tries to "freeze time" and "crystallize history." Just as Vertov destroys (via split 257 Robert Stam screen) the Bolshoi Theatre in Man with the Movie Camera, Solanas- Getino annihilate the cemetery with superimposed lightning bolts and thunderous sound effects. Using techniques reminiscent of Resnais's art documentaries, they animate the cemetery's neoclassical statues, creating a completely artificial time and space. The statues "dialogue" in shot/reaction shot to the music of an Argentinian opera whose words ("I shall bring down the rebel flag in blood") remind us of the aristoc- racy's historical capacity for savage repression. Still another vignette pictures the oligarchy at its annual cattle show in Buenos Aires. The sequence interweaves shots of the crowned heads of the prize bulls with the faces of the aristocracy. The bulls - inert, sluggish, well pedigreed - present a perfect analogue to the oligarchs that breed them. Metonymic contiguity coincides with metaphoric transfer as the auctioneer's phrases describing the bulls ("admire the expression, the bone struc- ture") are yoked, in a stunning cinematic xeugma, to the looks of bo- vine self-satisfaction on the faces of their owners. On occasion, Solanas-Getino enlist the unwitting cooperation of their satiric targets by having ruling-class figures condemn themselves by their own discourse. Newsreel footage shows an Argentine writer, sur- rounded by jewelry-laden dowagers, at an official reception, as a parodic offscreen voice sets the tone: "And now let's go to the Pepsi Cola Salon, where Manuel Mujica Lainez, member of the Argentine Academy of Letters, is presenting his latest book Royal Chronicles." Lainez then boasts, in nonsynchronous sound, of his international prizes, his Euro- pean formation, his "deep sympathy for the Elizabethan spirit." No pro- fessional actor could better incarnate the intellectual bankruptcy of the elite, with its fossilized attitudes, its nostalgia for Europe, its hand- me-down culture, and its snide ingratitude toward the country and people that made possible its privileges. Recorded noises and music also play a discursive and demystifi- catory role. The sound of a time clock punctuates shots of workers hurrying to their jobs, an aural reminder of the daily violence of "wage slavery." Godardian frontal shots of office buildings with their abstract geometricality are superimposed with sirens; innocuous images take on overtones of urban anxiety. A veritable compendium of musical styles - tango, opera, pop - make mordant comment on the image. A segment on cultural colonialism has Ray Charles singing "I don't need no doc- tor" as a pop-music junkie nods his head in rhythm in a Buenos Aires record store. A medley of national and party anthems ("La Marseillaise," "The International") lampoons the European allegiances of the tradi- tional left parties. And one of the most poignantly telling sequences shows a small-town prostitute, pubic hair exposed, eating lunch while sad-looking men wait in line for her favors. The musical accompani- 258 The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes ment (the patriotic "flag-raising" song) suggests that Argentina has been reduced to exactly this - a hungry prostitute with her joyless clientele. Solanas-Getino prolong and critically reelaborate the avant-garde heritage. One sequence fuses Eisenstein with Warhol by intercutting scenes from a slaughterhouse with pop-culture advertising icons. The sequence obviously quotes Eisenstein's celebrated nondiegetic meta- phor in Strike, but also invests it with specifically Argentinian reso- nances. In Argentina, where livestock is a basic industry, the same workers who can barely afford the meat that they themselves produce are simultaneously encouraged by advertising to consume the useless products of the multinational companies. The livestock metaphor, an- ticipated in the earlier prize-bull sequence, is subsequently "diegetized" when a shot of the exterior of a slaughterhouse coincides with an ac- count of the police repression of its striking workers. The advertising/ slaughter juxtaposition, meanwhile, evokes advertising itself as a kind of slaughter whose numbing effect is imaged by the mallet striking the ox unconscious. The vapid accompanying music by the Swingle Singers (Bach grotesquely metamorphosed into Ray Conniff) counterpoints the brutality of the images, while underlining the shallowly plastic good cheer of the ads. In La hora, minimalism- the avant-garde esthetic most appropri- ate to the exigencies of film production in the Third World-reflects practical necessity as well as artistic strategy. Time and again one is struck by the contrast between the poverty of the original materials and the power of the final result. Unpromising footage is transmogrified into art, as the alchemy of montage transforms the base metals of titles, blank frames, and percussive sounds into the gold and silver of rhyth- mic virtuosity. Static two-dimensional images (photos, posters, ads, engravings) are dynamized by editing and camera movement. Still photos and moving images sweep by at such velocity that we lose track of where movement stops and stasis begins. The most striking mini- malist image - a close-up of Che Guevara's face in death-is held for a full five minutes. The effect of this inspirational death mask is para- doxical. Through the having-been-there of photography, Che Guevara returns our glance from beyond the grave. His face even in death seems mesmerizingly present, his expression one of defiant undefeat. At the same time, the photo gradually assumes the look of a cracked revolu- tionary icon. The long contemplation of the photograph demystifies and unmasks: we become conscious of the frame, the technical imperfec- tions, the filmic material itself.4 The most iconoclastic sequence, entitled "Models," begins by citing Fanon's call for an authentically Third World culture: "Let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions and societies in its 259 Inevitable analogies: the martyred guerrilla, Christlike, resurrected via a five-minute take in La hora de los hornos. Credit: Unifilm; courtesy Gary Crowdus The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes mould. Humanity expects more from us than this caricatural and gen- erally obscene imitation." As the commentary derides Europe's "racist humanism," the image track parades the most highly prized artifacts of European high culture: the Parthenon, Dejeuner sur l'herbe, Roman frescoes, portraits of Byron and Voltaire. In an attack on the ideologi- cal hierarchies of the spectator, haloed art works are inexorably lap- dissolved into meaninglessness. As in the postcard sequence of Les carabiniers, that locus classicus of anti-high art semioclasm, the most cherished monuments of Western culture are implicitly equated with the commercialized fetishes of consumer society. Classical painting and toothpaste are leveled as two kinds of imperial export. The pretended "universality" of European culture is exposed as a myth masking the fact of domination. This demolition job on Western culture is not without its ambigui- ties, however; for Solanas and Getino, like Fanon before them, are im- bued with the very culture they so vehemently denigrate. La hora betrays a cultivated familiarity with Flemish painting, Italian opera, French cinema; it alludes to the entire spectrum of highbrow culture. Their attack is also an exorcism, the product of a love-hate relation- ship to the European parent culture. The same lap dissolves that obliter- ate classical art also highlight its beauty. The film's scorn for "culture," furthermore, finds ample precedent within the antitraditionalist mod- ernism of Europe itself. Mayakovsky asked, even before the revolution, that the classics be "cast from the steamboat of modernity." The dis- missal of all antecedent art as simply a waste of time recalls the antepassatismo of the futurists. "We must spit each day," said Mari- netti "on the altar of art." And both Mayakovsky and Godard have evoked the symbolic destruction of the shrines of high culture. "Make bombardment echo on the museum walls," shouted Mayakovsky, and Godard, in La chinoise, has V6ronique call for the bombing of the Louvre and the Com6die Frangaise. While drawing on a certain avant-garde, La hora critiques what it sees as the apolitical avant-garde. Revolutionary films, in this view, must be esthetically avant-garde -revolutionary art must first of all be revolutionary as art (Benjamin) - but avant-garde films are not nec- essarily revolutionary. La hora eludes what it sees as the vacuity of a certain avant-garde by politicizing what might have been purely for- malistic exercises. The ironic pageant of high art images in the "Models" sequence, for example, is accompanied by a discourse on the coloniza- tion of Third World culture. Another sequence, superimposing shots of Argentinians lounging at poolside with vapid cocktail dialogue about the prestige value of being familiar with op art and pop art, abstract art and concrete art, highlights the bourgeois fondness for a politically 261 Robert Stam innocuous avant-garde which is as much the product of fashion and com- modity fetishism as styles in shirts and jeans. In Argentina, its pro- motion formed part of a pattern of United States cultural intervention in which organizations such as the U.S.I.S. exhibited modernist paint- ing as part of a larger imperialist strategy. An apolitical avant-garde risks becoming an institutionalized loyal opposition, the progressive wing of establishment art. Supplying a daily dose of novelty to a satiated society, it generates surface turmoil while leaving the deep structures intact. The artists, as Godard once pointed out, are inmates who bang their dishes against the bars of their prison. Rather than destroy the prison, they merely make a noise which, ulti- mately, reassures the warden. The noise is then coopted by a mecha- nism of repressive desublimation and cited as proof of the system's liberality. La hora has nothing to do with such an avant-garde, and to treat it as such would be to trivialize it by detaching it from the revo- lutionary impulse that drives and informs it. Embracing elements of this critique of an apolitical avant-garde does not entail endorsing all features of the film's global politics. Without diminishing the directors' achievement or disrespecting the sacrifice of thousands of Argentinians, one feels obliged to point out certain politi- cal ambiguities in the film. La hora shares with what one might call the heroic-masochistic avant-garde a vision of itself as engaged in a kind of apocalyptic self-sacrifice in the name of future generations. The ar- tistic avant-garde, as Renato Poggioli and Massimo Bontempelli have suggested, often cultivates the image, and symbolically suffers the fact, of military avant-gardes: they serve as advanced cadres "slaughtered" (if only by the critics) to prepare the way for the regular army or the new society. The spirit of self-immolation on the altar of the future ("Piti6 pour nous qui combattons toujours aux frontieres / De l'illimite et de l'avenir" [Pity us who struggle always at the edge of boundlessness and the future"]) merges in La hora with a quasi-religious subtext that draws on the language and imagery of martyrdom, death, and resur- rection. One might even posit a subliminal Dantesque structuring which ascends from the inferno of neocolonial oppression through the purga- torio of revolutionary violence to the paradiso of national liberation. Without reviving the facile caricature of Marxism as "secular religion," one can regret the film's occasional confusion of political categories with moral-religious ones. The subsurface millenarianism of the film, while it partially explains the film's power (and its appeal even for some bour- geois critics), in some ways undermines its political integrity. Equipped with the luxury of retrospective lucidity, one can also bet- ter discern the deficiencies of the Fanonian and Guevarist ideas inform- ing the film. La hora is deeply imbued with Fanon's faith in the thera- 262 The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes peutic value of violence. But while it is true to say that violence is an effective political language, the key to resistance or the taking of power, it is quite another to value it as therapy for the oppressed. La hora misapplies a theory associated with a specific point in Fanon's ideologi- cal trajectory (the point of maximum disenchantment with the Euro- pean left) and with a precise historical situation (French settler colo- nialism in Algeria). Solanas and Getino also pay rightful tribute to Che Guevara as model revolutionary. Subsequent events, however, have made it obvious that certain of Che's policies were mistaken. Guevar- ism in Latin America gave impetus to an ultravoluntarist strategy which often turned out to be ineffective or even suicidal. One might even link the vestigal machismo of the film's language ("El Hombre": Man) to this ideal of the heroic warrior who personally exposes himself to combat.5 Guerrilla strategists often underestimated the repressive power of the governments in place and overestimated the objective and subjective readiness of the local populations for revolution. As a left Peronist film, La hora also partakes of the historical strengths and weaknesses of that movement.6 Solanas-Getino rightly identify Per6n as a Third World nationalist avant la lettre rather than the "fascist dictator" of Eurocentric mythology.' ("Per6n was a fascist and a dictator detested by all good men ... except Argentinians," said Dean Acheson, slyly insinuating that Argentinians were not good men.) While La hora does score the failures of Peronism-its refusal to at- tack the power bases of the oligarchy, its failure to arm the people against right-wing coups, its constant oscillation between "democracy of the people" and the "dictatorship of bureaucracy" - the filmmakers see Per6n as the man through whom the Argentine working class be- came gropingly aware of its collective destiny. Peronism, for them, was "objectively revolutionary," because it embodied this proletarian move- ment. By breaking the imperial stranglehold on Argentina's economy, Peronism would prepare the way for authentic socialist revolution. The film fails most crucially, however, in not placing Peronism in its most appropriate context - Latin American populism. In this version, popu- lism represents a style of political representation by which certain pro- gressive and nationalist elements of the bourgeoisie enlist the support of the people in order to advance their own interests. Latin American populists, like populists everywhere, flirt with the right with one hand and caress the left with the other, making pacts with God and the devil. Like the inhabitants of Alphaville, they manage to say yes and no at the same time. As a tactical alliance, Peronism constituted a laby- rinthine tangle of contradictions, a fragile mosaic which shattered, not surprisingly, with its leader's disappearance. Peronism was plagued by at least two major contradictions, both 263 Robert Stam of which are inscribed, to a certain extent, in the film. Wholeheartedly anti-imperialist, Peronism was only half-heartedly antimonopolist, since the industrial bourgeoisie allied with it was more frightened of the work- ing class than it was of imperialism. Although Solanas-Getino at one point explicitly call for socialist revolution, there is ambiguity in the film and in the concept of "Third Cinema." The "third," while obviously referring to the "Third World," also echoes Per6n's call for a "third way," for an intermediate path between socialism and capitalism. That La hora seems more radical than it in fact is largely derives from its skill- ful orchestration of what one might call the revolutionary intertext, i.e., its aural and visual evocation of tricontinental revolution. The strategically placed allusions to Che Guevara, Fanon, Ho Chi Minh, and Stokely Carmichael create a kind of effet de radicalite rather like the "effet de reel" cited by Barthes in connection with the strategic de- tails of classical realist fiction. Peronism's second major contradiction has to do with its constant swing between democracy and authoritarianism, participation and ma- nipulation. With populism, a plebeian style and personal charisma often mask a deep scorn for the masses. Egalitarian manners create an ap- parent equality between the representative of the elite and the people who are the object of manipulation. The film, at once manipulative and participatory, strong-armed and egalitarian, shares in this ambiguity. It speaks the language of popular expression ("Your ideas are as im- portant as ours") but also resorts to hyperbolic language and sledge- hammer persuasion. La hora is brilliant in its critique. And history has not shown its authors to be totally failed prophets. It is facile for us, equipped with hindsight and protected by distance, to point up mistaken predictions or failed strategies. The film's indictment of neocolonialism remains shat- teringly relevant. The critique of the traditional left, and especially of the Argentine Communist party, was borne out when the PCA offered its critical support to a right-wing regime, largely because it concen- trated its repression on the non-Stalinist left and made grain deals with the Soviet Union. The film also accurately points up the ruling class potentiality for violent repression. The current regime, with its horren- dous human rights record, its desaparecidos and its anti-Semitism, merely reaffirmed the capacity for violence of an elite that has "more than once bathed the country in blood." Despite its occasional ambiguities, La hora de los hornos remains a seminal contribution to revolutionary cinema. Transcending the nar- cissistic self-expression of Auteurism, it voices the concerns of a mass movement. By allying itself with a concrete movement, which however "impure" has at least the virtue of being real, it practices a cinematic 264 The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes politics of "dirty hands." If its politics are at times populist, its filmic strategies are not. It assumes that the mass of people are quite capable of grasping the exact meaning of an association of images or of a sound montage; that it is ready, in short, for linguistic experimentation. It respects the people by offering quality, proposing a cinema which is simultaneously a tool for consciousness-raising, an instrument for analy- sis, and a catalyst for action. La hora provides a model for avant-garde political filmmaking and a treasury of formalist strategies. It is an ad- vanced seminar in the politics of art and the art of politics, a four-hour launching pad for experimentation, an underground guide to revolu- tionary cinematic praxis. La hora is also a key piece in the ongoing debate concerning the two avant-gardes. It would be naive and sentimental to see the two avant- gardes as "naturally" allied. (The mere mention of Ezra Pound or Mari- netti refutes such an idea.) The alliance of the two avant-gardes is not natural, it must be forged. The two avant-gardes, yoked by a common impulse of rebellion, concretely need each other. While revolutionary esthetics without revolutionary politics is often futile ("They did away with grammar," said Pere Brecht, "but they forgot to do away with capitalism"), revolutionary politics without revolutionary aesthetics is equally retrograde, pouring the new wine of revolution into the old bottles of conventional forms, reducing art to a crude instrumentality in the service of a preformed message. La hora, by avoiding the twin traps of an empty iconoclasm on the one hand, and a "correct" but for- mally nostalgic militancy on the other, constitutes a major step toward the realization of that scandalously utopian and only apparently para- doxical idea-that of a majoritarian avant-garde. NOTES This essay originally appeared in Millennium Film Journal, nos. 7-9 (Fall- Winter 1980-81). Reprinted by permission. 1. The idea of "Third Cinema" is fully developed in an essay by Solanas and Getino entitled "Towards a Third Cinema." This essay, anthologized in Bill Nichols's Movies and Methods (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1976) and translated into at least a dozen languages, has been highly influential around the world. 2. Solanas and Getino were not historically the first to suggest the com- bination of film with discussion. In 1933, Bela BalAzs proposed that "explana- tions" be made standard at all screenings: "This does not apply only to our films. We must have critical, satirical analysis of the bourgeois films, expose their reactionary, capitalistic and antiproletarian ideology, ridicule their philistine narrow-mindedness." Bali~zs's proposal is, finally, less open than that of So- 265 Julianne Burton The dynamic iconography of the revolution unleashed: Memorias de un mexicano. Credit: Courtesy M. de Orellana temporaneity broke with the [prevailing cinematic tradition of] simple curiosity directed at the leisured classes in public squares. Certain his- torians (Aurelio de los Reyes, for example) don't hesitate to claim that this was the true golden age of Mexican cinema and Mexico's real contri- bution to international filmmaking.10 In the 1980s, the Central American conflict gave new currency to the use of documentary as a call to arms. The kind of transformative broadening of the medium that occurred during the decade-long Mexi- can struggle has its contemporary equivalent in films and videos from El Salvador and Nicaragua. A work like Tiempo de audacia (A Time of Daring, 1983), by El Salvador's Radio Venceremos group, sounds a call to revolution in a new key. A startlingly intimate view of both sides of the Salvadorean conflict, the government and the guerrilla forces, A Time of Daring is no less ironic and (self-) critical for its own candid partisanship. In its eclectic mixture of media-odds and ends of 16mm and Super-8 footage, in both black-and-white and color, which display different grains and color ranges: 1/2-inch and 3/4-inch video and "second- generation" television footage-A Time of Daring is typical of many Central American media works. Their "look" testifies to circumstantial constraints, but it also posits a model for the creative synthesis of a 14 Robert Stam lanas and Getino, since he favors "explanations" rather than "debate," going so far as to suggest that the lecturer record his/her comments on a disc that could accompany the film. More recently, McCall and Tyndall in Argument aim to create the preconditions whereby the audience can act on the social situa- tion that the film engages. Their film has been shown to small groups followed by discussions with its makers. This experiment too is less audacious than that of Solanas and Getino, since the film is not interrupted, and the debate is only with the filmmakers. 3. Aleatory procedures are, of course, typical of art in the sixties. One need think only of "process art" in which chemical, biological, or seasonal forces affect the original materials, or of environmental art, or happenings, mixed media, human-machine interaction systems, street theater, and the like. The film formed part of a general tendency to erase the boundaries between art and life, but rarely did this erasure take such a highly politicized form. 4. The Argentinian junta paid inadvertent tribute to the revolutionary potential of photography when they arrested Che Guevara's mother in 1962, accusing her of having in her possesson a "subversive" photograph. The photo- graph was of her son Che. See the New York Times, May 19, 1980, p. A10. 5. Gerard Chaliand, in Mythes Revolutionnaires du Tiers Monde (1976), criticizes what he calls the "macho" attitudes of Latin American guerrillas that led them to expose themselves to combat even when their presence was not required, thus resulting in the death of most of the guerrilla leaders. He con- trasts this attitude with the more prudent procedure of the Vietnamese. Dur- ing fifteen years of war, not one of the fifty members of the central committee of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front fell into the hands of the enemy. 6. Should there be any doubt about the Peronist allegiances of the film, one need only remember the frequent quotations of Per6n, the interviews with Peronist militants, and the critiques of the non-Peronist left. In 1971, Solanas and Getino made a propaganda film for Per6n: Per6n: La revolucidnjusticialista (Per6n: The Justicialist Revolution). The Cine-Liberaci6n group which made the film, according to Solanas, served as "the cinematic arm of General Per6n." Dur- ing the [pro-Peronist] Campora administration, Getino accepted a post on the national film board. Upon Per6n's death, Solanas and Getino made a public declaration supporting the succession of his wife Isabel. Ironically, the repres- sion unleashed after her ouster was leveled as much against Solanas and Getino as against those who had been more consistently on the left. 7. The simplistic view of Per6n as a fascist has been revived in many of the reviews of the Broadway production of Evita, with a number of critics com- paring the play to the kind of spectacle parodied in Mel Brooks's The Producers. 266 14 THE BATTLE OF CHILE: DOCUMENTARY, POLITICAL PROCESS, AND REPRESENTATION Ana M. Lopez This essay attempts to contextualize the most ambitious documen- tary produced in Latin America in the 1970s by taking account of pro- cesses of cultural and ideological production and reproduction in Chile under Salvador Allende's Popular Unity coalition (1970-1973) as well as of the film's reception outside Chile. Lopez identifies a com- plex and apparently contradictory series of textual operations at work. Foremost among these are sequence shots and omniscient nar- ration. She argues that the careful orchestration necessary to produce the characteristic sequence shots belies the immediate, testimonial impact of the "raw materials of the real, " simultaneously inviting and obstructing direct identification with the events recorded. Similarly, the narrator's present-tense address creates continual, ironic tension because the denouement is always already foretold. Lopez contends that a struggle over the very nature of language and representation was taking place in Chile under the Popular Unity government, a struggle involving assumptions about the transparency and immedi- acy of meaning which would intensify and polarize after that regime's overthrow. Lopez attempts to show how that struggle, and the subse- quent experience of exile, shaped The Battle of Chile's particular mode of production and its modes of signification, creating an epic work poised between direct and dramatized, immediate and mediated modes of apprehending historical events. We maintain that imperfect cinema must above all show the process which generates the problems. It is thus the opposite of a cinema prin- cipally dedicated to celebrating results.... To analyze a problem is to show the problem (not the process) permeated with judgments which the analysis itself generates a priori.... To show the process of a prob- 267 Ana M. Lopez lem .. is to submit it to judgment without pronouncing the verdict.... The subjective element is the selection of the problem, conditioned as it is by the interest of the audience-which is the subject. The objec- tive element is showing the process -which is the object. -Julio Garcia Espinosa, "For an Imperfect Cinema" The first impulse is to film everything that is taking place in order to later find a structure at the moviola... but "everything that takes place" is not really everything that is taking place.... What Chile rep- resented, after all, was a sort of twentieth-century Paris Commune. -Patricio GuzmAn IN DECEMBER 1972 Chile was in a state of chaos. As Sal- vador Allende's Popular Unity coalition government (called Unidad Popular, or UP) struggled to overcome the many obstacles in the way of its "peaceful road to socialism," a small group of filmmakers headed by Patricio Guzman decided to undertake an ambitious project: to pro- duce on film a testimonial/documentary record - complex, analytic, dialectical-of this national crisis and its outcome. They eventually produced The Battle of Chile: The Struggle of a People Without Arms (La batalla de Chile: La lucha de un pueblo sin armas) - a three-part, four-and-a-half-hour analysis of Chilean sociopolitical life at its most complex moment, between February and September 1973. It has been recognized as one of the best examples of politically engaged and so- cially conscious documentary filmmaking in Latin America. If at one end of the spectrum comprising the New Latin American Cinema docu- mentaries we locate The Hour of the Furnaces (1968), the montage- based, self-reflexive analytical work by the Grupo Cine Liberaci6n, we must place the apparent immediacy and testimonial power of Battle at the other end. However, this testimonial power - acclaimed by crit- ics and audiences alike - is more complexly elaborated than is apparent on the film's dense, informational surface. And it is precisely this tex- tual and political density (which Guzm"n himself has described as mak- ing the film heavy as a brick) that must be analyzed in relationship to the representational and political options of the Chilean sociopolitical conjuncture. Popular Unity and the Practices and Languages of Cinematic Representation That Popular Unity did not pay sufficient attention to the importance of cultural/ideological production and reproduction in its plans for a democratic and legal transition to socialism is by now, more 268 The Battle of Chile and National Reality than fifteen years later, a well-documented, indisputable fact. What was missing from the UP agenda was an understanding of the crucial need for continued direct ideological struggle alongside the overt political warfare. The UP's defeat was largely caused by its inability to exert the hegemonic ideological power necessary to maintain and develop the political majority acquired in 1970.1 As Armand Mattelart and many others have argued, the official UP policy toward culture - "first access to culture, and then rupture with the existing culture" - ignored the crucial role of ideology in society by separating "the delivery of the pre- existing culture. . . from its reception by the dominated classes."2 Of course, this is not to imply that the UP did not take any measures to influence or control cultural production in Chile. However, its pluralis- tic and legalistic position prevented it from taking the kind of radical measures needed to counter effectively the ideological strength of an- tagonistic forces.3 The specific problems the UP faced with the cinema have also been well documented and analyzed.4 Chile Films, the official state film agency, was under UP control and supervision, but this was actually a handicap, because the political structure of the coalition (an uneasy mix of Socialists, Communists, and fractions of the Radical and Chris- tian Democratic parties) was reproduced within the administration of Chile Films. Popular Unity had no clear policy for the cinema, and each party represented by the coalition tried to follow its own objectives and not those of the ensemble. Although the daily direction of Chile Films had been assigned to the Committee of Popular Unity Filmmakers, a group headed by Miguel Littin that had earlier proclaimed its allegiance to the UP, Chile Films' resources were far from adequate for the task of building a new national cinema. By 1970 the facilities of Chile Films were thirty years old and in disrepair, and the agency did not even have enough funds to arrange for the installation of equipment purchased in 1969 by the previous regime. Funds for purchasing raw film stock were severely limited, causing even further restrictions on production.5 Furthermore, because of a "democratic guarantees" provision that prevented the UP from removing any civil servants from their jobs, incumbent bureaucrats could not be replaced by younger cineastes and technicians, and the institution was saddled with very high payroll ex- penses. Finally, the potential effectiveness of Chile films was further curtailed because the organization also had little control over film dis- tribution (especially after U.S. distributors stopped exporting their films to Chile in 1971) and did not begin to alter the existing structure of commercial theatrical exhibition (through nationalization) until 1973. Although institutional and industrial conditions were less than favor- able for the development of a strong national cinema, it is important 269 to consider other, less direct and instrumental factors when analyzing Chilean cinema under the UP. How was the process of cinematic rep- resentation itself altered under the Popular Unity regime? How did the political and social changes made during this time affect the textual operations of its cinema? Did cinematic representation experience the same - or similar - cataclysmic changes as Chilean society in this period? These kinds of questions - in effect, addressing a sociology of cinematic representation-have rarely been addressed to the cinema produced during the Popular Unity years. It is always difficult to assess or theorize about the relationship of texts or groups of texts (filmic, literary, or whatever) to specific socio- historical moments and struggles. As we understand cultural produc- tion in general, it is an autonomous, self-referential, and determining process, but one that nevertheless participates in the complexity of any social moment - sometimes prefiguring, sometimes following, but al- ways participating in that sociopolitical instance. At the risk of oversimplification, we might say that the UP years (whose impetus can be traced as far back as the 1930s) were structur- ally characterized by ever growing sociopolitical contradictions and polarizations. In spite of their complexity, these contradictions became increasingly more transparent in the 1970-1973 period.6 As Chilean society was divided into antagonistic blocks that would ultimately ex- haust their ability to negotiate with one another, cultural production displayed similar structural characteristics manifested in contradictory bipolar tendencies that simultaneously depended upon and rejected the assumed transparency of meaning production.7 In the press of the period, for example, we find the hysterical counterrevolutionary aggres- siveness of the right in El Mercurio versus the measured, intellectual- ized address of the left in the publications of the UP-controlled Qui- manti press. In literature, the antipoetry of Nicanor Parra countered the revolutionary rhetorical poetry of Pablo Neruda. And in the cinema, the aggressive cinematic self-reflexivity of a Rauil Ruiz stood in sharp contrast to the transparency of newsreel production sponsored by Chile Films. Caught in the interstices of these general contradictions, the cinema was also affected by its own specific history and other mediating forces at the national as well as the international level. The history of the development of the Chilean cinema before and during the UP is inti- mately linked with the rise of postwar and anti-Hollywood movements in Europe and the slow emergence of socially conscious modes of film- making throughout Latin America. As an integral part of the New Latin American Cinema that emerged from the struggling efforts of Latin American filmmakers in the early 1960s, the representational work of Ana M. Lopez 270 The Battle of Chile and National Reality the Chilean cinema must be considered in light of the representational options offered by this complex context. Elsewhere I have argued that the most central representational characteristic of the New Latin American Cinema is the specific way in which the documentary and fictional modes of filmmaking were com- bined and transformed as filmmakers of the sixties and seventies at- tempted to change the social function of the cinema in Latin America.8 This rearticulation of the basic representational work of the cinema also took place in Chile, but in a fashion specific to that conjuncture, begin- ning before the UP victory and continuing after its defeat in the "exile cinemas" produced by Chileans all over the world.9 Although much less explicitly than in other Latin American coun- tries, the documentary form was taken up by Chilean filmmakers in the years preceding the UP electoral victory in 1970 as a vehicle for the promotion and popularization of the Unidad Popular alliance. Docu- mentary production began in earnest in Chile under the auspices of uni- versity cinema programs'0 and university-sponsored TV stations, but it was the 1967 Vifia del Mar festival that served as catalyst for the politicization and autocritique of Chilean documentary filmmakers in the context of the New Latin American Cinema." After the 1967 Vifia festival, filmmakers like Alvaro Ramirez, Doug- las Hubner, Carlos Flores, and Guillermo Cahn began to use the cinema as an instrument for the analysis of contemporary Chilean social prob- lems: infant malnutrition in Desnutrici6n infantil (Ramirez, 1969), the disenfranchised in Hermida de la Victoria (Hubner, 1969), Casa o mi- erda (House or Shit, Flores and Cahn, 1970) and mining problems in Miguel Angel Aguilera (Ramirez, 1970). Following the style of La hora de los hornos, Pedro Chaskel and Hec- tor Rios wanted to develop a cinema that would awaken passive spec- tators to the injustices and problems of the Frei regime. They produced a film in early 1970 entitled Venceremos, the first documentary specifi- cally affiliated with the UP. Like La hora, this film was designed to serve as an instrument in the struggle to bring a particular candidate, in this case Allende, to power. Other films emerged during the electoral cam- paign that favored the programs of Unidad Popular - for example, Brigada Ramona Parra (1970) by Alvaro Ramirez. Sponsored by the Centro de Cine Experimental (headed by Sergio Bravo) and by the film department of the Central Unica de Trabaj adores (CUT, the principal workers' union), most of these films were not dis- tributed in the hostile commercial circuit. Instead, they were shown throughout the countryside, in working-class neighborhoods, and in fac- tories. In addition to Chilean films, others, including La hora de los hor- nos, were also shown through these alternative circuits. The Chilean 271 Ana M. Lopez working class has historically been among the most politicized of the continent, and these films served as the focus of important political debates. Overall, the stated goal of militant documentary filmmakers in Chile before Unidad Popular was to "involve the popular masses in the struggles for power and to help them rediscover Chile, giving them a new vision of the present, past, and future of their nation. This vision will be a critical one that interprets reality according to new values and that is integrated with the construction of socialism in Chile."12 Although highly politicized and distributed almost exclusively within alternative circuits, these early UP documentaries adhered to the tenets of traditional political documentary filmmaking. They sought to be "objective," denunciatory, and persuasive, while also calling at- tention to conditions that the cinema had previously not recognized or analyzed, and articulating new solutions. After the UP's electoral victory and the reorganization of Chile Films under the leadership of Miguel Littin and the cineastes of Unidad Popu- lar, documentary production continued, albeit in a different form. Be- cause Chile Films was not able to assume control of Chilean distribu- tion or exhibition, and the films it sponsored and/or produced were generally not welcomed by the commercial sector, documentary films that sought to expose and analyze contemporary social and political problems facing Chile had a difficult time finding an official outlet. Allende's electoral victory had not marked the end of the struggle for cultural and political autonomy; the documentary was being used to promote that victory and to analyze available political and practical options. Rather than denounce conditions, the documentary began to be used as a means to chronicle and analyze the Chilean political pro- cess. Over 100 documentaries were produced by Chile Films between 1970 and 1973, some of which dealt with the need to preserve Chile's natural resources, the workers' struggle to control the national econ- omy, and the need for social and political reforms.13 As Zuzana Pick has argued, "Each of these films demonstrates that the Chilean docu- mentary movement began to overcome the [idea of] documentary as memory or witness to reality and aspired to transform it into an analyti- cal historical instrument, while [the newsreels] of Chile Films were con- ceived as the site for informative material and political commentary."14 El Equipo Tercer Ario and Patricio Guzmdin Patricio Guzmn is among the most accomplished docu- mentary filmmakers to emerge during the Unidad Popular years. Guz- man neither attempted to use the cinema "as a gun" nor followed the socio-scientific mode of, for example, Colombian filmmakers Marta 272 The Battle of Chile and National Reality Rodriguez and Jorge Silva in Chircales (Brickmakers). Guzman (and the small group of filmmakers associated with him) adopted the docu- mentary as the only cinematic form appropriate to the complex, multi- faceted social and political condition of Chile during Unidad Popular. Although trained in fiction filmmaking in Spain, upon his return to Chile in 1971 Guzman decided that what was most important was to "film the events that they [in Chile] were living at that moment. ... You would be sitting in a cafe, working on a script, and all of a sudden a group of picketing workers with red flags would pass by. ... How could you not film all that? Why distance oneself from that reality?""15 Guzman and his associates undertook to film the day-to-day events of the first year of Unidad Popular; in 1971 they produced El primer ano, a feature documentary that tried to summarize what took place in that year. Rather than rely on archival material, Guzman and his team insisted on filming an amazing record of events, but even accord- ing to Guzman, it is too much of a chronicle, too journalistic and com- memorative, to provide an analysis of the events recorded. In fact, Guz- man's search for an appropriate mode of cinematic representation for Chile under the UP parallels the increasingly blatant contradictions of the UP conjuncture. Although Guzmin next embarked on a fiction film project, a Chile Films-sponsored historical reconstruction of the life and legend of Manuel Rodriguez, a Chilean national hero, he once again abandoned fiction "because what was happening was more important than fiction."'" While shooting Manuel Rodn'guez, Guzman and his production team (which included, among others, camerman Jorge Miller and producer Federico Elton) took to the streets to film a report of daily political ac- tivities. "No matter how interesting the Manuel Rodn'guez project ... it was impossible not to film what was going on.""17 The streets of Chile in 1972 were physically paralyzed by a number of crippling strikes organized by anti-Unidad Popular forces, and Guzmin and his team filmed the response of the Chilean working class to this paralysis. La respuesta de octubre (The Answer to October, 1972) records how the working class organized itself into industrial belts (cordones industriales) by taking over factories that had been abandoned by their owners and managers so as to neutralize the economic chaos produced by the strikes. By Guzmin's own admission, the long series of interviews that make up the film is monotonous. The industrial belt was not an immediately visible phenomenon. "You can't see it. You can only see the facade of the factory and a sign. But it is not a parade. It isn't an inauguration or a speech or a demonstration."'8is Yet through their work in this film, Guzman and his associates began to understand how to find, visualize, and film the "invisible" events at the core of Chilean life. In fact, as the 273 Ana M. Lopez situation worsened, the roots of the crisis were rendered increasingly visible. Shelving their fiction projects until the time when the country might be under more secure political control, Guzmtn and his associates or- ganized themselves to continue their work of documenting the people's struggle against fascist forces in Chile. Because they could no longer count on the support of Chile Films,'9 they obtained simple equipment (an Eclair and a Nagra) from a friendly independent production outfit and raw stock from France through the generosity of cinema verit6 filmmaker Chris Marker. Rather than run to the streets and film in- discriminately, Guzmin and his team (now called El Equipo Tercer Afio) undertook a long theoretical and methodological debate before film- making began. Fully conscious of the volatile state of the nation in 1972 and of impending changes, they nevertheless felt that regardless of the final outcome for Chile (whether a civil war or a coup d' tat), their film would serve as a valuable historical record of those events. However, they wanted to avoid the agitational or denunciatory style of documen- tary they all considered typical of the New Latin American Cinema; they sought to produce what they termed an analytical documentary, more like an essay than explicit agitprop, which could serve an essen- tial testimonial and analytical function for Chile and all of Latin America in future years. El Equipo Tercer Afio surveyed available models of political documentary and fiction filmmaking and analyzed their method- ological options. They concluded that they needed to avoid the simple chronological structure they had used in El primer ario in order to develop a "nucleus" or dialectical approach that would pinpoint "the key areas at which the Chilean class struggle intersects." Guzman explained: Which are the key points through which the proletariat and the peas- antry must pass in the conquest of state power? And which are the key points through which the bourgeoisie and its imperialist allies must pass in order to reappropriate that power? If you locate these fifteen or twenty battlegrounds within the larger conflict and pin them down one by one, you are going to have a dialectical vision of what is going on. This was the approach we finally agreed to use.20 The extensive preproduction planning carried out by El Equipo Tercer Afio would seem to contradict my assertion that sociopolitical contradictions were becoming increasingly obvious. But in fact, the "work" these filmmakers felt was necessary to filming the Chilean con- juncture in 1973 already prefigures the outcome of the crisis itself at a representational level. The ubiquitous assumed transparency of cine- matic language challenged the apparent transparency of the social sys- tem, disclosing its own insufficiencies. Only the cataclysmic change 274 The Battle of Chile and National Reality wrought by the coup d'etat, the reestablishment of the hegemony of the oligarchy - would validate the Equipo Tercer Afio's complex repre- sentational work. The filming of this tremendously ambitious project took place semi- clandestinely. For as long as the Unidad Popular government retained control of the state, the filmmakers had access to events and were welcomed by workers. But to be able to document the contemporary situation thoroughly, they also had to infiltrate the right and subject themselves to physical danger by participating in all sorts of poten- tially violent demonstrations. The Equipo Tercer Afio was "in production" for as long as their film supply lasted. When the successful coup made it unsafe to film in the streets, they used their last reels of film to record the first televised messages of the military junta and the broadcast of the bombing of the presidential palace. Soon afterward, the members of the collective left Chile in a prearranged order and also smuggled all the footage and magnetic sound recordings for the film out of the country.21 After search- ing unsuccessfully for financial support to complete the project in France, the collective ended up in Cuba, where Alfredo Guevara of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) offered all of the institute's resources and facilities (including the supervision and advice of Julio Garcia Es- pinosa) necessary to complete the film. The final product of this experience, the three-part Battle of Chile, stands as the epitome of the New Latin American Cinema documen- tary: direct, engaged, immediate, spontaneous yet analytical, and com- pleted through pan-Latin American cooperation. In fact, no documen- tary of the New Latin American Cinema other than The Hour of the Furnaces has received more popular attention or wider international distribution. The Critical Response Ironically, however, The Battle of Chile has never been publicly shown in Pinochet's Chile. The public the film was meant to serve as an analysis of a crucial sociopolitical conjuncture has not been and cannot be its audience. Instead, Battle has been inserted into a number of extremely different sociopolitical milieus that have decisively affected its reception. What is most interesting about a survey of the various critical re- sponses to Battle is that regardless of their nationalities or political beliefs, most critics have failed to recognize the uniqueness of the film's representational work and have assessed the film as "pure documen- tary," dealing in facts, history, testimony, and so forth. For example, 275 Social Documentary in Latin America range of contemporary media. Salvadorean practice in particular dis- penses with the "definitive text" by recombining the same images in different works and formats, varying the product according to whether the intended audience is within or beyond national borders. Anonymous collective authorship and the determining intervention of the editor(s) render an auteurist conception of the medium obsolete. Given the power of the documentary footage of the Mexican con- flict, it was not coincidental that film censorship was introduced in Mex- ico in 1913, curbing but certainly not suppressing the first "complete" war coverage in film history through its attempt to enlist documen- tary reportage as another branch of official, government-sponsored dis- course. There and elsewhere in Latin America, the coming decades (from the teens and twenties, up to the introduction of the talkies in the early thirties) would produce a still quantitatively unequaled crop of fiction films, while documentary expression was confined within narrow chan- nels: travelogues, promotional films for government or commercial con- cerns, scientific and educational applications. The principal manifes- tation of documentary during this extended period was the weekly newsreel, which proliferated throughout Latin America in the 1920s and 1930s, at least a decade behind most Euro-American models and the early adoption of the format in Brazil and Argentina. The changeover to sound, which began in Latin America in the mid- thirties, was a costly undertaking that effectively curtailed production in all but the richest and the most populous countries. In the United States, as Barnouw and others have argued, the transition to the new technology was a "desperate gamble" undertaken by producers in re- sponse to another transition: from relative prosperity to economic col- lapse and worldwide depression. According to Barnouw: To the documentary film the [depression] brought sharp change. During the 1920s explorer, journalist, artist, and others had experimented with the moving image in a spirit that was usually zestful and optimistic. Their films had seldom been contentious. But economic collapse brought tension and strife. Ideological combat began to dominate all media. Documentary film, acquiring the spoken word at this precise moment, was inevitably called on to join the battle.1 Later in his book, Barnouw describes the formal characteristics that would, for many years, dominate documentary discourse: "[The rise of advocacy in documentary] also involved matters of form. ... The typical film of advocacy was shot like a silent film, with "voice-over" narration added.... Some narrators were characterized but most were abstract voices ... resonant with authority and backed by impressive music."'2 In some areas of Latin America, namely, Cuba and Nicaragua, the 15 Ana M. Lopez The pageantry of Popular Power: La Batalla de Chile, part III. Credit: Patricio Guzman North American mass media critics uniformly hailed the film's value as a record and for the most part ignored its substantive analytical work or the complexities of its modes of address. Stanley Kauffmann wrote in the New Republic, "There is little critical to be said about this pic- ture. It is merely gripping fact, well represented."22 According to Pauline Kael, "The film seems to give us only the public actions.., and none of the inner workings."23 And Vincent Canby in the New York Times and the reviewers for Variety were in almost complete agreement, simply classifying the film as "reportage" with an explicit Marxist bias.24 Euro- pean critics, although they protested less about the film's alleged "diffi- culty," also tended subtly to privilege its status as a documentary record over its analytical work. Even Paul Louis Thirard in Positif argued that Guzmin prefers to illustrate instead of explain and that this limits the effectiveness of the film.25 When attempting to assess the film's impact on audiences, most critics have been overwhelmed by the film's informational density (its four and a half hours of relentless data), simultaneously claiming that its analysis is excessively detailed and that it does not provide enough background information. Beyond this point, critics have argued either that the film is cold and distancing, or the exact opposite - that it is absorbing. For example, Cuban critic Azucena Isabel argued in her 276 The Battle of Chile and National Reality The traitorous military under intimate scrutiny: La Batalla de Chile, part II. Credit: Pa- tricio Guzman review that the film is effective precisely because of its "conscious dis- tancing" of all emotional impact without seeking to illustrate a specific thesis, while North American critic Rosalie Schwartz claimed that the film was "frightening in its power to absorb the viewer."26 The Textual Operations of The Battle of Chile This split critical response becomes less paradoxical when we look closely at the textual operations of the film. The film's impact - this simultaneous absorbing and distancing effect- is to a large degree determined by the fictive strategies that are invoked to represent what we necessarily recognize as important documentary footage of crucial historical events. The most significant of these strategies is Guzmin's extensive use of sequence shots. Rather than depend on montage (like The Hour of the Furnaces and, in fact, most political documentaries) to organize and construct an a posteriori reading of the social and political events of this particular moment in Chilean history, the filmmakers set out to film in long takes whenever possible. They were able to do this because 277 Ana M. Lopez of the theoretical and methodological work that preceded and accom- panied the actual filming. El Equipo Tercer Afio did not want to film everything that was taking place. On the contrary, they followed an original analysis that identified five crucial problems in the Chilean class struggle and filmed only those events that seemed significant within those areas. Guzmin explained in an interview: We decided that these fronts of struggle had to be followed up and ex- amined, and anything happening on another front had to be excluded, even if it was very interesting. Within this outline there was room for variation and improvisation. This was what we had decided to do: illus- trate with images a previously proposed outline, without losing in the filming the freshness and spontaneity of life, without locking them into a set frame.27 Once the outline was established, the filmmakers were able to concen- trate on the aesthetics of images to a degree unusual in traditional documentary filmmaking of this kind (temoignage). "Once the project was clearly worked out on paper and in our heads, we could liberate our expressive capabilities, freeing the camera to make very long takes."28 This explicit aesthetic decision required the complex orchestration of the filming process. Guzman often served as the peripheral eyes of cameraman Jorge Miller, surveying the action, anticipating what was about to happen, and instructing him "to make certain movements [pans, tilts, manual cranes] that are much more readily identified with fictional than with documentary filmmaking."29 In the finished film, these sequence shots so laboriously obtained serve to alter the traditional relationship between film, filmmakers, and spectators. In the narrative-fiction cinema, the sequence shot increases the image's credibility and its indirect persuasiveness. It is generally considered more "realistic" because of its apparent preservation of the unities of time and space. Its extensive use in the documentary, how- ever, rather than emphasizing a real already ostensibly guaranteed by the documentary form, paradoxically brings the document closer to the realm of fiction. It produces a "fiction effect" which, by resisting the manipulation of editing, unmasks the manipulation or "construction" inherent in the simple act of pointing a camera.30 In Battle, sequence shots provide a wealth of detail and evidence of the directiveness of the filming that belies the careful orchestration of the "raw" materials of the real. This is not a film presenting itself as a record of how things "really were" in Chile in 1973, as many critics have argued. It is a pre- cise, calculated, intentionally political, Marxist dialectical analysis of those events that uses the narrative strategies of fiction as a legitimat- 278 The Battle of Chile and National Reality Sound technician Bernardo Menz, cameraman Jorge Miller, and director Patricio Guz- man in 1973, shooting a sequence for La Batalla de Chile. Credit: Patricio Guzman ing device. By revealing the means by which the dramatic action has been structured, the sequence shot functions within this documentary as a kind of estrangement device that separates the spectator from the sheer force of rhetoric and that simultaneously suggests (because of its role in fiction) and prevents (because this is a documentary) simple identification. An important example of this operation takes place early in part 1 ("The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie") during a series of interviews that establish the mood of the people before the March 1973 elections. The filmmakers enter a right-wing apartment, pretending to be repre- sentatives of Channel 13 TV.31 While the microphone interviews the lady of the house, the camera, after remaining on her face for only a few seconds, takes a tour of the well-appointed apartment. What we see underlines the presumed coherence between what she says and her environment. While the woman expresses her conservative political sentiments - in a tone and diction that denote her class position - the camera shows us her furniture, her porcelain figurines, her carefully coiffed, insouciant adolescent son who lights a cigarette taken from a fancy holder resting on a fine wood table. The second-level information 279 Ana M. Lopez provided by this sequence shot is as essential to the analysis presented by the documentary as similarly placed (and therefore underlined) in- formation would be for the plot development of a fiction film. This presentation of information - the visual indictment of the bourgeoisie - simultaneously positions the spectator as a reader/observer of the "real" and as the observer of a preconstructed, intentional operation, directed as a fiction is directed. Notwithstanding their fictional effect, there is no doubt that the im- ages that assault us in Battle are real and that their testimonial force is great. The authenticity of the images and their ability to report di- rectly on the events that took place in Chile in 1973 is interpreted and reorganized for the spectator not only by the sequence shots and by the smoothly invisible editing of Pedro Chaskel, but also by the voice- over narration that situates our reading of the events portrayed by the film. This authoritarian voice-over marks the distance between this film and traditional conceptions of "direct cinema." Although the sequence shots and the mobile framing, reframing, focus shifts, and movements within the image could code the film as "direct," the voice-over reinscribes the filmic discourse as an authored discourse. The camera may be a "neutral" observer, but the images it produces are orchestrated and con- trolled by the essential contextual and explanatory information pro- vided by this metadiscourse. Because of the directness of the images, the voice-over performs a double operation that indirectly supports the distancing effect of the sequence shots. By negating the images' abil- ity to stand on their own, the voice-over provides a second line of in- terpretation, one that is dialectical rather than objective in the tradi- tional sense. It also establishes a specific kind of spectator and address. While the images often seem to position the spectator as a direct observer-participant in the events filmed, the voice-over distances the spectator from emotional identification and encourages a "knowing" stance. The textual operations of Battle position the spectator as a knowing subject -one who knows both the outcome of the struggles the film documents and the film's status as an irreplaceable document of those struggles. This operation is especially apparent at the beginning of part 1. The sound of jet engines and bomb explosions accompanies the credits. After the credits, the source of those sounds is identified: these are the air- planes and the bombs with which the military destroyed the Moneda presidential palace in the September 1973 coup. In long shot, we see the effects of the bombs on the palace. The voice-over -in the English- language version a woman's voice -interjects, "In March 1973, six 280 The Battle of Chile and National Reality months before the bombing of the Moneda Palace, the people of Chile go to the polls.... The political forces are divided into two sides," as the image places us in the midst of a street demonstration. We know what the outcome will be-there is no narrative enigma in the tradi- tional sense. In fact, the film is structured as an extensive flashback from the spectator's present state of knowledge-signified by the newsreel-like images of the bombing of the palace that were broadcast over television as soon as the military took power.32 The events presented by the film are thus constructed as leading to a foreknown closure. The voice-over, while insisting on the present tense, always remarks on the future consequences of the events presented, thereby negating the apparent transparency and completeness of the represen- tation. For example, early in part 1, during the presentation of the par- liamentary boycott of the UP's anti-black market policies, the narra- tor makes this statement: Although the right was not able to prove anything, the accusations would follow their course. The blackmail would be repeated with other high functionaries of Popular Unity: either the ministers give in to the demands of the right or they will be expelled. ... In every instance, a rep- resentative of the left is going to demonstrate that the accusations did not have any legal basis. (Emphasis added) Battle's overall flashback structure - emphasized by the fact that part 3, "Popular Power," is structured as a flashback-within-the- flashback look at the October 1972 crisis from the people's perspective - engages the spectator as a participant in the process of making and recording this particular history. The filmmakers' self-reflexivity in the first five minutes of part 1 further contributes to this mode of address. After the shots of the bombing of La Moneda, we are thrown into the midst of a demonstration, where the hand-held camera bounces from one face to another, from one placard and excited shout to the next. In the background of the chanting and singing, we hear the technical com- mands of the filmmakers: "Sync... clapboard.., .ready? go! ... over here, 'Flaco'!"33 We see their bodies, especially Guzman as interviewer holding the microphone, moving among the demonstrators, approach- ing different individuals, trying to get out of camera range. After sev- eral of the cuts in this first sequence, a new shot begins as the camera focuses on a hand tapping the mike to mark the beginning of a take and then quickly reframes or refocuses to approach the subject of the interview. Their privileged location at the beginning underscores the priority accorded to the process of filming the events that mark the cru- cial "nodal" points of the Chilean class struggle at this historical mo- 281 Ana M. Lopez ment. Furthermore, they introduce the spectator to the historical pro- cess and to the process of recording/writing that history as a witness and spectator-participant. This sense of "history in the making" is further emphasized in the conclusion of part 1 and the beginning of part 2. The Equipo Tercer Aflo made use of the dramatic footage obtained the day of the tancazo (the aborted coup of June 1973) by an Argentine TV cameraman (Leo- nardo Henricksen) who filmed his own death as he was threatened and finally shot by an army officer. Part 1 ends abruptly, with the turbulent images recorded by the camera falling from the hands of the dying Hen- ricksen. The narrator explains: "Not only did he film his own death. He also filmed, two months before the final coup, the true face of the fascist Chilean military. The imperialist stragegy enters its final phase." And in the background, we hear someone's voice screaming, "Watch out! Watch out! Get out of here!" Part 2 ("The Coup d'Etat") begins with this same footage and voice-over commentary (but without the background voices). The end of Henricksen's final sequence is joined to a sequence filmed by the Equipo Tercer Aflo cameraman who, from the other side of the street, witnessed the event. The development of Battle follows the logic of fictive discourses. Each element of the film, especially in parts 1 and 2, is part of a cause- and-effect chain leading to the eventual denouement of the September coup d'etat that ends part 2. As Guzman himself has acknowledged, the filmmakers "probed reality to find in it a narrative line."34 The film unfolds by establishing a series of events that demand responses from the right and from the left. From the pre-electoral survey of attitudes on both sides, the film takes us through the elections, to the increas- ingly desperate responses of the right, to the left's responses to the right's increasing sabotage activities, and so forth. Because the collec- tive's goal was to present a dialectical analysis, they emphasized con- flict, thus bringing the film closer to the traditional structuration of fictional dramas.35 Their efforts to show events as they unfolded and to juxtapose one series of events to another generate audience expec- tations that are fulfilled by the subsequent development of the film. Thus the actions filmed are transformed into dramatic actions in the classic sense. One of the expectations emphasized by the inexorable logic of the cause-and-effect chain, by the introductory sequence, and by the audi- ence's prior knowledge of Chilean events, is the triumph of the right in the September coup d'etat. This knowledge and this expectation, fulfilled at the end of part 2, color the filmmakers' and the spectators' relationship to the sequence portraying the right. The iconography and activities of the right - the arm bands and military insignias - are sin- 282 The price of documentary witness: an Argentine cameraman records his own summary execution at the hands of mutinous Chilean troops in La Batalla de Chile. This sequence concludes part I and initiates part II. Credit: Patricio Guzmin Ana M. Lopez ister, echoing Nazi and the Ku Klux Klan rallies. Their victory at the end of part 2 is, for the film, a pyrrhic one. Although in effect the coup d'&tat ends the drama, the film continues and finds another locus for dramatic introspection within the left itself rather than in the very visi- ble and ostensibly straightforward conflict between the left and the right. Ultimately, part 3 demonstrates that the militancy of the Chilean people was not sufficiently tapped by the via democrdtica of Unidad Popular. The narrative logic underlying this tripartite structure also clearly marks the film as an a posteriori representation, particularly one in- flected by exile, neither within the UP conjuncture nor totally outside it. More than other films begun in Chile and finished elsewhere, The Battle of Chile highlights the cataclysmic representational/linguistic/ ideological effects of the coup d'etat and of exile. For those who remained in Chile after the coup, language and representation became suspect: treacherous, deceiving, veiled. Those outside, caught in the time warps of exile, tended to remain within the assumed linguistic and ideologi- cal transparency of the UP conjuncture.36 The Battle of Chile is poised between these two conditions: a document shaped by transparency and immediacy that also questions the systems producing these mean- ings and inscribes a necessarily questioning spectator within its midst. NOTES 1. For an interesting analysis of the Chilean debacle from a Gramscian perspective, see John Hoffman, The Gramscian Challenge (Oxford: Basil Black- well, 1984). 2. "Entretien avec Armand Mattelart," Cahiers du Cinema, nos. 254-55 (1974-75), trans. and rpt. as "Interview with Armand Mattelart," in Chilean Cinema, ed. Michael Chanan (London: BFI, 1976), p. 78. 3. For an extensive analysis, see Armand Mattelart, Mass Media, Ideologies and the Revolutionary Movement (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980). See also Gabriel Smirnow, The Revolution Disarmed (New York: Monthly Review, 1979). 4. See, for example, Chilean Cinema, ed. Chanan; Francesco Bolzoni, El cine de Allende (Valencia: Fernando Torres Editor, 1974); and Re-visi6n del cine Chileno, ed. Alicia Vega (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Aconcagua-CENECA, 1977). 5. Zuzana Pick, "Le cinema chilien sous le signe de l'Union Populaire: 1970- 1973," Positif 155 (1974), 35-41. 6. As Radl Zurita has convincingly argued, this is apparent first of all within language itself as the growing sociopolitical dislocation in Chile forced oral expression and conversation to become increasingly transparent and self- evident: "One understands.., because one is in disagreement and language becomes more transparent as the intermediary space of negotiation narrows" 284 The Battle of Chile and National Reality (p. 301). See Ra'il Zurita, "Chile: literatura, lenguaje y sociadad (1973-1983)," in Fascismo y experiencia literaria: reflexiones para una recanonizacidn, ed Her- nan Vidal (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1985), pp. 299-331. 7. Interestingly, Stuart Hall finds a similar phenomenon in his analysis of the relationship of the photomagazine Picture Post to wartime Great Brit- ain, a society undergoing a revolutionary transformation and crisis akin to that of Chile under the UP. See Stuart Hall, "The Social Eye of Picture Post," Work- ing Papers in Cultural Studies 2 (Spring 1972), 71-120. 8. See Ana M. Lopez, The New Latin American Cinema (Champaign: Uni- versity of Illinois Press, 1991), chap. 20. 9. For an extensive filmography and analysis of the Chilean exile cinema, the "cinema of resistance," see the special issue of Literatura Chilena 8, no. 1 (1984). 10. Among university programs, the most important was that of the Catho- lic University in Santiago. Other centers of experimental/political cinematic ac- tivity were the Cine Club Universitario, the Centro de Cine Experimental, the Cinemateca Universitaria, and the Cine-Club Vifia del Mar. The visit of Dutch documentarist Joris Ivens in the early 1960s (when he filmed his Valparaiso) was also an important stimulus to the young filmmakers who worked with him and attended his seminars. 11. The 1967 Vifia del Mar festival represented a first step in the col- laborative process of creating a new, pan-Latin American cinema. The impor- tance of this event was officially recognized at the 1987 International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, with a complete retrospective of the films shown at Vifia two decades earlier. 12. Declarations collected by the editors of Cine y liberaci6n, cited by Bol- zoni, El cine de Allende, p. 38. 13. Chile Films also produced many newsreels analyzing current events, but these newsreels, like their documentaries, provoked the anger of the estab- lished commercial sector and even, in some cases, fights in the theaters. See Zuzana Pick et al., "Chili," in Les cinemas de l'Amerique Latine, ed. Guy Henne- belle and Alfonso Gumucio Dagr6n (Paris: l'Herminier, 1981), p. 206. 14. Zuzana Pick, "La imagen cinematogrifica y la representaci6n de la realidad," Literatura chilena: creacidn y cn'tica 8, no. 1 (1984), 36. A subsequent version appears in chapter 5. 15. Pedro Sempere, "Cine contra el facismo: conversaci6n con Patricio Guz- man," in Sempere and Guzmin, Chile: el cine contra el fascismo (Valencia: Fer- nando Torres, Editor, 1977), p. 54. 16. The historical film was itself planned as a kind of documentary of the popular rewriting (and ideologically motivated deformation) of the legend of the nineteenth-century Chilean hero Manuel Rodriguez (see ibid., pp. 60, 75). 17. Ibid., p. 69. 18. Ibid., p. 72. 19. Chile Films had been paralyzed by internal problems and the U.S. blockade that made the importation of raw film stock impossible. 20. Julianne Burton, "Politics and the Documentary in People's Chile: An 285 Pitt Latin American Series Julianne Burton newsreel format, creatively redefined to reflect contemporary political transformations, retains its vitality and appeal a quarter century after the introduction of television began to make it obsolete in the devel- oped sector. But the general situation in Latin America was different. If American and European newsreels suffered from increasing ideologi- cal and formal regimentation because of both corporate sponsorship and government intervention, the uses of the genre in Latin America from the 1930s through the 1950s were doubly alienated. The screen- ing spaces that weren't filled with Fox Movietone News, Hearst Metro- tone, the March of Time, and other imports from the United States were colonized instead by domestic imitations, thinly disguised self- promotions for local businessmen and political bosses. (In The Cuban Image, Michael Chanan refers to the corporate documentaries that cir- culated in prerevolutionary Cuba as an "ideological protection racket.") In Chile, as in a number of other countries, half a dozen commercial newsreel series vied for public attention. In many nations, this activ- ity constituted the only regular film production, such as it was, because fictional efforts never attained more than sporadic levels after the com- ing of sound. Prerevolutionary Nicaragua offers a more monolithic ex- ample: the country's sole film production company, Producine, operated as a "vanity studio" to promote the political and economic interests of the Somoza dynasty -considered (by the Somozas and their allies, at least) to be one and the same with those of the nation. The meager and monotonous Producine archive constituted the entire cinematic legacy of the triumphant Sandinistas. In the aftermath of the First World War and especially the Second, U.S. distributors strengthened their hold on Latin American markets, discouraging local production. The consolidation of Hollywood hege- mony meant that a medium that had been, at its inception and in its early distribution and exhibition patterns, broadly international (Lu- mi're's 1897 catalogue numbered 750 titles from several dozen coun- tries) became increasingly associated with a single national culture. The early founding of European film societies (1924 in Paris, slightly later in other European capitals) provided alternative exhibition space for noncommercial films, many of which elaborated different concep- tions of the relationship between cinema and national culture - from avant-garde works produced by the members of these early cine clubs to the remarkable products of Eisenstein, Vertov, and other partici- pants in the great national experiment that was Soviet cinema of the 1920s. In Latin America, with the exception of Brazil where the Chap- lin Clube and a number of important film magazines date from the 1920s, the film society movement did not emerge until two decades later - its inception ranging from the early 1940s in Uruguay and Argentina to 16 Ana M. Lopez Interview with Patricio Guzmin on The Battle of Chile," in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers, ed. Burton (Aus- tin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 55. 21. Cameraman Jorge Miiller was not able to leave the country. He was arrested by the military police and like many of Latin America's "disappeared," he is assumed dead, though his fate has never been made public. 22. Stanley Kauffmann, "The Battle of Chile," New Republic, 21 January 1978, rpt. in Before My Eyes (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), pp. 303-04. 23. Pauline Kael, "The Battle of Chile," New Yorker, 23 January 1978, p. 82. This is by far the most thorough critical review available in the North American mass press. 24. See Vincent Canby, "Guzm"n Documentary," New York Times, 13 Jan- uary 1978, sec. C7, p. 1; Holl., "La batalla de Chile-II: el golpe de estado, Va- riety, 14 July 1976; and Cart., "La batalla de Chile-III," Variety, 17 May 1980. 25. See Paul Louis Thirard, "En la historia. Ya," Positif (1977), rpt. in Guz- mAn and Sempere, Chile: el cine contra el fascismo, pp. 201-03. This volume also reprints other reviews, including Luis Marcorelles's glowing assessment of the film for Le Monde. 26. Azucena Isabel, "El golpe de estado," Bohemia, 24 September 1976, rpt. in Guzman and Sempre, Chile: el cine contra el fascismo, pp. 194-96; and Rosalie Schwartz, "Battle of Chile," PCCLAS Proceedings 6 (1977-79), 261. 27. Zuzana Pick, "Interview with Patricio Guzman," Cinetracts 9 (1980), 30. The five fronts of struggle identified by the Equipo Tercer Afio were the control of production and distribution, the counteroffensive by revolutionary forces, the transformation of the relations of production, the ideological fight in education and information, and the battle plan. These five areas were iden- tified in what was essentially the shooting script, published as "Gui6n esquema del filme," Cine Cubano 91-92 (1977), 49-51; rpt. in Patricio GuzmAn, La Batalla de Chile (Pamplona: I. Peralta Ediciones/Editorial Ayuso, 1977); trans. and rpt. by Christine Shants in Cinetracts 9 (1980), 46-49. 28. Julianne Burton, "Politics and the Documentary in People's Chile," So- cialist Review 35 (1977), 49, rpt. in Cinema and Social Change. 29. Ibid. 30. "A film using the sequence-shot is still a communicative instrument that signifies on other levels as well as that of direct representation (which in itself is already incomplete and intentional; it is still a work in which the place oc- cupied by the signifiers is the support and root of the place occupied by the signified, by the diegesis" (Gianfranco Bettetini, The Language and Technique of the Film [The Hague: Mouton, 1968]; rpt. in Realism and the Cinema, ed. Christopher Williams [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980], p. 221). 31. Channel 13 was the principal TV station controlled by the right. 32. This sequence of the bombing of La Moneda is one of the few not ac- tually filmed by the Equipo Tercer Afio. Another crucial sequence not filmed by them is the ending of part 1, the cameraman's filming of his own death. See Sempere, "El cine contra el fascismo," p. 97. 33. "Flaco" was Jorge Miller's nickname. 286 The Battle of Chile and National Reality 287 34. Pick, "Interview with Patricio Guzman," p. 30. 35. See Mayra Vilasis, "Comunicaci6n y dramaturgia en el cine documen- tal," Cine Cubano 105 (1983), 61-66, for an analysis of dramaturgy and the documentary. 36. This phenomenon has been well documented. For a journalistic account, see Ariel Dorfman, "The House That Neruda Built," Village Voice, 13 December 1981, pp. 59-68. For an analysis of how this "silencing" and "shrouding" of ex- pression has redefined the nature of art in Pinochet's Chile, see Nelly Richard, Margins and Institutions: Art in Chile Since 1973, a special issue of Art and Text 21 (1986). See also the essays collected in Fascismo y experiencia literaria, ed. Vidal. 15 NICARAGUAN RECONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTARY: TOWARD A THEORY AND PRAXIS OF PARTICIPATORY CINEMA AND DIALOGIC ADDRESS John Ramirez This chapter explores a persistent and troubling problematic: the process of differentiation of Self from Other and the concomitant subordination of the latter to and by the former. This phenomenon, which characterizes any colonial or neocolonial situation, distorts the personality- or sense of subjecthood- of the nation as well as of the in- dividuals within it. In constructing his theoretical framework, Rami- rez builds on the work of French poststructuralist Roland Barthes and Brazilian pedagogical theorist Paulo Freire, borrowing as well from Colombian Arturo Escobar's Foucault-inspired critique of the discourses of development. Ramirez identifies a modified form of docu- mentary that he calls participatory cinema in the thirteen-minute Nicaraguan film Bananeras (Banana Company, Ramiro Lacayo, 1982). Ramirez's methodology breaks the film down into its component shots, supplementing his verbal descriptions of each with a selection of illustrations. (Owing to insurmountable technical difficulties, artist's sketches are used instead of frame enlargements to convey visual composition.) Ramirez argues that this film's parallel struc- turation is an example of a third mode of documentary address. To the expanded paradigm offered in chapter 3, he adds a third, dialogic, mode of address that actively incorporates the viewer. This dense, sometimes difficult chapter challenges those who cre- ate images to deploy documentary representations in ways that do not directly or indirectly replicate "conquest ideologies. " It simul- taneously challenges critics to avoid the perpetual recasting of the Other "as a signifier of the conquerer." Throughout the chapter, Rami- rez uses the adjective "solidary" (derived from "solidarity") to denote 289 John Ramirez relationships of genuine parity, relationships that refuse any intima- tion of cultural or political superiority. The truth is... that the oppressed are not "marginals," are not men [sic] living "outside" society. They have always been "inside" - inside the structure which made them "beings for others." The solution is not to "integrate" them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become "beings for themselves." - Paulo Freire THE OTHER: dispossessed, marginalized, silenced, and distorted - cast, in the shadow of a conquering ideology, as essentially tragic and fated to be "inferior" to the standards of the "normal," "natu- ral" according to the hegemonic body politic. When appropriated or "looked at" through the cultural matrix that defines, affirms, and reinforces Self in the first and last instance, the Other can only be presented as "myth"- as the representation of an original sign, deprived of meaning for itself and transfused with a sec- ondary meaning that serves to sustain the conquering gaze, the con- queror's Self-affirming differentiation. To all intents and purposes, within the circumscribed boundaries of a conquering cultural endowment, the Other is invisible, unimaginable - in a word, un-image-able. In the words of Roland Barthes, "The petit-bourgeois is... unable to imagine the Other. If he comes face to face with him, he blinds himself, ignores and denies him, or else transforms him into himself. In the petit-bourgeois universe, all the experiences of confrontation are reverberating, any otherness is reduced to sameness."2 In terms of Western documentary film, the Other figures also as a circumscribed referent, cast within culture-centric parameters for rep- resentation. This tendency in dominant Western media practices has been criticized at length. However, the degree to which this tendency also informs informational oppositional media practices is not so read- ily acknowledged or confronted.3 If this mythicizing Self-serving appropriation of the Other consti- tutes a pervasive cultural tendency in the West, in what ways might that tendency manifest itself at the level of critical analysis? If within a culturally sanctioned representational context, the Other is unimage- able as signifier to itself, how can we effectively draw, from a culturally derived reserve of analytical methods, the means by which to "see" the Other? This challenge seems particularly problematic if the "marketplace of image production" is governed by a mythicizing imperative to recast the Other as signifier of its conqueror. 290 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary Textual analysis is as tentative a level as any at which to attempt cognition of the Other. Even the most critically informed models for "looking at" texts are nonetheless forged out of the same ideological milieu that, at best, sanctions "looking at"-as opposed to "seeing"- the Other. Analytical models of Western representation and analy- sis, which share an impulse to comprehend (in order to challenge) the cultural machinations of dominant ideology, variously share a method- ological self-referentiality between spectator and text - a self-referen- tiality that is culturally bound and ideologically marked. Critical theory may effectively underscore culturally structured absences of the Other, or map the contours of the Other as shaped through conquest. How- ever, one problematic for Western critical representation theory and analysis seems to be how to set forth analytical paradigms for "see- ing" the Other in a capacity that substitutes genuine solidarity for self- identifying and self-serving imperatives of cultural and ideological conquest. Roland Barthes suggests a distinction between the left and the Other at the experiential level of their recourse to language. Compelled toward solidarity with the oppressed Other, and yet insulated within the privileged space of a dominant mythicizing regime (that is, isolated from the Other's concrete experiential context of oppression), opposi- tional agendas on the left function as countermyths in relation to domi- nant ideology. As countermyths, they neither demonstrate the prolifer- ating capacity of dominant myth nor fully convey the scope of the Other's particular experience of historico-discursive domination: Now, the speech of the oppressed can only be poor, monotonous, immedi- ate: his destitution is the very yardstick of his language: he has only one, always the same, that of his actions; metalanguage is a luxury, he can- not yet have access to it. The speech of the oppressed is real; ... he is unable to throw out the real meaning of things, to give them the luxury of an empty form, open to the innocence of a false nature.4 In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire considers the percep- tual dimensions of this problematic, recognizing the extent of the ex- periential acknowledgment that effective solidarity with the Other would entail: One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding. ... We must realize that their view of the world, mani- fested variously in their action, reflects their situation in the world.5 How can the mythicizing constraints of conquest ideology be effec- 291 John Ramirez tively transgressed to allow for a more solidary understanding with the Other's point of view? This inquiry concerns the appropriation of modes of documentary address by the Other and their deployment in the reformulation of his- tory. I will consider the structural dynamics of documentary film prac- tice and the politics of expository address. Specifically, I will ground my analysis in the political economy of documentary filmmaking dur- ing Nicaragua's national reconstruction period (1979-1982), before the 1983 escalation of the U.S.-sponsored contra war. My methodology derives from Paolo Freire's model of the subject in liberating cultural praxis, and from the analytical paradigm for documentary film formu- lated by Bill Nichols, as expanded in collaboration with Julianne Bur- ton, that appears in chapter 3.6 I will conclude by assessing the usefulness and the limitations of the paradigms proposed by Nichols and Burton for a solidary appreciation of Other image-making impera- tives and frameworks. According to Tombs Borge, minister of the interior under the Sandi- nistas, "Our people have... sought to recover their cultural identity and have fought for their right to be the authors of their own historical process, which has already been interrupted and truncated by imperial- ism innumerable times."7 What ideological factors help determine the options by which a Nicaraguan identity is being shaped and presented by Nicaraguans for Nicaraguans? Explicit in the proposition of the Other's capacity for Self is the moment of awareness - the motive of consciousness by which the Other seizes the challenge to demythicize her/his circumscribed repre- sentation as determined by the ideological imperatives of conquest. The material conditions that would separate the Other from dominant ideo- logical empowerment provide the experiential basis for a quality of dif- ference that is fundamental to the Other's Self-identification, namely, a unique claim to dynamic intentionality - a commitment to the crea- tive authority of Self as a "history" yet to be realized, spoken, and seen. This authority derives from a tridimensional constitution of experi- ential knowledge: (1) the memory or concept of an autonomous self; (2) the experience of self in the process of colonization; (3) the experi- ence of the conquered or colonized self; followed by (4) the conscious effort to return to (1), the (culturally and politically) autonomous self. The Other always stands at a more essentially dynamic vantage point in relation to a dominating ideology. Given the structure of her/ his experiential constitution of knowledge, what is at issue in this dy- namic relationship is precisely the authority assumed by the Self to determine the representation of history, to define the configurative 292 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary parameters of historical discourse. There is a direct correlation between the unimageability of the Other and the unspeakability of the experien- tial restraints that bind her or him to ideological captivity. Dominated but not subjugated, [the Indians] also remember what West- erners have "forgotten"- a continuous succession of uprisings and awak- enings that have left almost no trace in the written historiographies of the occupiers. As much as and more than in the handed-down narratives, this history of resistance punctuated by cruel repression is marked upon the Indian body. This writing of an identity recognized through pain con- stitutes the equivalent of the indelible markings engraved on the bodies of the young in initiation tortures. In this form too "the body is a mem- ory." It bears, it writes the law of the equality and non-submission that regulate not only the relation of the group with itself, but also its rela- tions with the occupiers. Among the ethnic Indian groups that inhabit "Latin" America, this tortured body and this other body, which is the altered earth, form the beginning from where once more the will to con- struct a political association is reborn. A unity fashioned by unhappiness and the resistance to unhappiness is the historic site, the collective mem- ory of the social body, whence originates a will that neither ratifies nor denies this writing of history and that deciphers and scars of the body itself - or the fallen "heroes" and "martyrs" who reflect them in narrative - as the index of a history to be made.8 The Other's constitution of Self is primarily a historiographic dy- namic, a forging of the modes for Self-presentation out of the concrete experience of Otherness. The modes by which the Other presents Self are processes of imaging that derive from an experiential vantage point and awareness. The modes are as follows: (1) revising the original "text"; (2) rewriting the sequence(s) of conquest; (3) recasting the conquered persona. This historiographic process is always more or less imperiled, a defensive operation that implies circumscription by the conquering matrix. These propositions are particularly relevant to a consideration of Nicaraguan documentary film culture. The official U.S. policy debate on Central America in the 1980s pro- moted a discursive conquest that assumed the authority to fulfill the "destiny" of Nicaraguan "development." Whether the articulation of that destiny included aiding the contras as a developmental vanguard in primarily political or military terms (that is, giving "humanitarian" aid or mounting an invasion), a particular ideological containment had been affected. By conceptual design and rhetorical construction, the contras had been enlisted to represent the ideologically sanctioned boundaries for the representation of Nicaragua with the United States - consider for example the claim that the contras are "the moral equal of our Founding Fathers." The contras, as a rhetorical device for official U.S. 293 John Ramirez representation, served to devalidate alternative frameworks for North American perceptions of Nicaragua. This is evident, for example, in the extent to which the official discourse invoked the geopolitics of East-West conflict to set an essential framework for the "relevant" un- folding of the Nicaraguan drama and the significance of its players. The symbolic dimensions of this conceptual apparatus, together with the intricate maneuvers of its practical applications (as evidenced by the 1987 congressional Iran-contra hearings) betray an underlying ideo- logical motive - to ignore, deny, and transform Nicaragua's significance of difference, to contain the Nicaraguan revolution's claim to Self- presentation. In light of these dynamics, I will consider Nicaraguan Self-presentation by analyzing the textual politics of the 1982 Nica- raguan documentary Bananeras. Bananeras (Banana Plantations, INCINE, Ramiro Lacayo Desh6n, 1982, 13 mins.) addresses Standard Fruit Company's refusal to cooper- ate with the agrarian reform and economic recovery policies of the re- construction government. After the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza regime, the new government joined the Union of Banana Exporting Countries and Comunbana and established a banana export tax of fifty cents a box. Standard Fruit responded with sabotage and decapitaliza- tion tactics. Standard's system of industry management since the later 1960s had been to franchise harvest and packing sites to local landlords who, in turn, were to sell their harvests exclusively to Standard Fruit. The increased export tax was not to the company's advantage. In Janu- ary 1981, after negotiations, both sides agreed that Standard would be the sole buyer of Nicaragua's banana exports. It was also agreed, however, that over the next five years the government would buy out Standard's investment and begin overseeing the banana industry's operations. Thus, the industry's management and labor practices be- came incontestably open to scrutiny within the context of the govern- ment's industrial reforms and labor empowerment policies. Bananeras represents a high point of stylistic refinement of what I would call the National Film Institute's (INCINE's) "reconstruction" genre and the inception of the genre's relative decline. Both themati- cally and stylistically, Bananeras is characteristic of a vast majority of INCINE documentaries produced after the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. First, Bananeras employs the technique of dialectical juxtaposition: black-and-white newsreel images of the dictator (usually from the Producine collection of footage abandoned by Somoza) are con- trasted to color footage shot by INCINE of the national liberation and reconstruction processes.9 Technique and thematics reflect the circum- stances and imperatives underlying the nation's independence. Given 294 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary the incohesiveness and didacticism of INCINE's earliest efforts, pro- duced under conditions of constant scarcity, a work of such textual com- plexity and sophistication as Bananeras was no minor accomplishment. The thematic focus of INCINE production underwent a shift in 1982. As U.S. economic and military intervention escalated, undermining the optimism and the gains made in the previous three years-which saw unprecedented advances in literacy, housing, land reform, employment, health care, and the arts -it became necessary once again to compromise the national attention to autonomous self-definition in the interest of immediate survival. Thus, in 1982, INCINE redirected its efforts toward the "U.S./contra aggression" genre and the earlier optimism gave way to a sense of renewed urgency and alarm.1' Bananeras: Sequence Breakdown This production combines newsreel footage produced under Somoza with contemporary interviews and visuals. Alternating sequences juxtapose former dictator Somoza Debayle praising the mod- ern technology used in the banana industry against images of present- day workers who still perform heavy manual labor as they haul and load bananas. In interviews in the field, workers describe the conditions they have lived and worked under for years." If we consider Bananeras in terms of Nichols's original modes of ad- dress paradigm (see chapter 3), we find that the film is dominated by direct address strategies. Bananeras constructs a dichotomized discur- sive universe comprised of two expository chains: A: Somoza; B: banana workers. A's exposition is carried by black-and-white newsreel-style visuals whose aural elaboration is of two modes: musical punctuation and nonsync voice-of-God narration. B's color visuals, produced by INCINE, are elaborated by five aural modes: musical punctuation, voice- of-God narration, sync verite ambient sound, sync character interviews, and nonsync character interviews. Ala Medium master shot: Somoza in banana packing plant hands forward bananas. b Somoza walks forward through plant. A2 Iris wipe. A3 Producine titles montage. A4 Triangle wipe. A5a Medium shot: pan down to Somoza walking forward through banana grove. b Medium shot: Somoza chops banana bunch from tree. Chopped bunch carried away on worker's back. c Medium shot: Somoza awarded silver machete. 295 Social Documentary in Latin America the 1950s in countries like Chile, Bolivia, and Cuba, and the mid-sixties in Peru and elsewhere. This temporal lag meant that Soviet cinema of the 1920s, early surrealist works and other examples of the European avant-garde, as well as subsequent landmark documentaries by Robert Flaherty, Joris Ivens, and the disciples of John Grierson in England, Canada, and elsewhere could not be seen with any frequency in Spanish- speaking Latin America until the 1950s and after. In addition to film society screenings, foreign embassies occasionally made important docu- mentaries available, as did organizations like the National Film Board of Canada, UNESCO, and affiliates of the Communist International. World War II, and the Spanish Civil War that immediately preceded it, brought documentary to the forefront once again. Sixteen-millimeter equipment, which had been available as a less cumbersome alternative to 35mm as early as 1923, finally came into widespread use. This for- mat allowed the camera operators greater agility on the front lines and, with the war-related campaign to distribute 16mm projectors around the globe, also commanded access to broad and diverse audiences. Hollywood's preoccupation with the war effort freed space on Latin American movie screens, stimulating local feature production in several Latin American countries, particularly the "big three"- Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. The foremost Latin American fictional genres - all re- lated to indigenous musical forms - developed during this period: the Argentine tango film, the Mexican comedia ranchera with its obligatory mariachi accompaniment, and the carnival-based Brazilian chanchada. Hollywood's dominance of Latin American screens persists to the present day, even in a country like Brazil-despite high levels of na- tional film production in the 1970s and into the 1980s, a rigid exhibi- tion quota system, and state intervention in favor of the domestic product. Since that brief World War II hiatus, protectionist legisla- tion, exhibition quotas for national films, admission surcharges to help finance national production, and other forms of legal intervention have sought, with only limited success, to create space for Latin American films on Latin American screens. The postwar years witnessed the beginnings of a dual reevaluation: of the role of the United States among its southern neighbors (giving rise to renewed political nationalism and developmentalist ideologies), and of the role of film and other forms of cultural expression in the life of individual nations and the region as a whole (giving rise to cultural nationalism and to concepts of dependency and decolonization in the cultural as well as political spheres). Though the ways of conceptualiz- ing these issues have evolved over the past several decades, the basic question of how to guarantee national and regional political and cul- tural autonomy persists. 17 John Ramirez Bla Lone worker moves forward through banana grove. Narration/interview bridge. b Banana workers' interview. B2 INCINE title. B3a Wide master shot: volcano in silhouette. b Medium long shot: volcano, banana trees in silhouette. c Long shot: volcano in silhouette with medium close trees. B4 INCINE title. B5a Close-up: irrigation sprinkler. b Master shot: irrigation of banana groves. c Long master shot: irrigation of banana groves. d Wide master shot: irrigation of banana groves. e Close-up: water drops from banana leaf. f Medium shot: irrigation of banana tree stumps. g Medium close-up: irrigation of bare ground. h Master shot: irrigation and sunlight spray banana grove. i Close-up: water dripping onto ground. j Medium close-up: water cascading. k Close-up: water cascading. 1 Medium shot: rippling puddles on ground. m Close-up: rippling puddles. n Close-up: bananas in rippling puddle. B6a Medium close-up: crate. Pan left to stacks of crates. Pan left to man sitting on hammock. b Medium shot: woman in shadows with smoking stone hearth. c Medium shot: through doorless doorway, of hammock swaying. d Close-up: shelf of sparse canned, packaged food. e Close-up: sparse crumbs in pots and bowls. f Medium close-up: child asleep in swaying hammock. g Close-up: makeshift home altar. h Close-up: can of powdered milk. i Close-up: burlap sack on shelf. Pan right to medium master shot of bunkhouse interior. j Close-up: makeshift corrugated metal roof. k High medium shot: bunkhouse with corrugated roof. 1 Long shot: bunkhouse amid other bunkhouses. m Medium long shot: people outside bunkhouses, stream of water run- ning along path. n Medium shot: woman at smoking hearth. o Medium shot: child through smoke. p Medium shot: man eating from tin bowl. q Medium shot zoom to medium close shot: woman at hearth cooking. r Medium shot: man against exterior wall with tin bowl. s Medium shot: boys sitting without food. t Medium shot: dog moves to garbage pail surrounded by flies. u Medium close-up: boy pushing child on makeshift cart. 296 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary v High medium shot: baby receding into shadows. A6a Medium shot: Somoza chops banana tree surrounded by workers. b Wide shot: banana packing plant interior. c Medium shot: Somoza in field with foreman/manager. d Folk dance performance at plantation for Somoza. B7a Lone worker recedes down wooden walkway and down plank into dis- tance pulling masses of banana bunches by waist-harness attached to suspended conveyor rail. Narration bridge. b Medium close-up: banana workers' interview. c Insert close-up: conveyor rail. Interview/narration bridge. d Medium shot: banana workers' interview. B8 Medium shot: lone worker enters frame left pulling banana conveyor harness across and off frame screen right. B9a Medium close-up: worker carrying banana bunch. b Close-up: worker's bare feet in mud. c Close-up: hands pulling conveyor cable, pan to faces. d Close-up: worker lifting and carrying bananas. e Medium shot: boy carrying bananas through maze of trees. f Medium shot: worker pulling down banana bunch. g Close-up: hands attaching bananas to conveyor rail. h Close-up: bare feet receding into shadows as worker pulls bananas along conveyor rail by harness. i Medium shot: worker running with bunches for conveyor. j Close-up: bunches taken down from tree. k Close-up: bunches taken down from tree. 1 Close-up: conveyor hook-up. m Close-up: bunches being carried. n Close-up: conveyor hook-up. A7a Medium master shot: brightly lit banana packing plant. b Medium master shot: packing plant washing facility. c Medium master shot: workers monitor washing mechanism. d Close-up: mechanized banana washing system. e Medium shot: Somoza in plant observing the washing system. f Medium shot: Somoza washing bananas in mechanized system. B10a Medium shot: woman washing bananas by hand. b Medium close-up: low angle of foreman. c Master shot: dark packing plant. d Close-up: bananas being handwashed and weighed. e Close-up: bananas moving down conveyor belt. f Close-up: hand labeling bunches with Dole stickers. g Close-up: sandaled feet on puddled floor. h Close-up: bunches being packed into Dole boxes. i Close-up: packed boxes moving down conveyor and being hand- stacked. A8a Medium shot: Somoza at packing plant. 297 John Ramirez b Medium shot: Somoza at packing conveyor. c Medium shot: Somoza at conveyor control panel. d Medium shot: pan from applauding audience to Somoza. e Medium shot: Dole boxes moving down packing conveyor belt. f Medium shot: Somoza at conveyor controls. g Master shot: plant exterior. B11 Medium close-up: banana workers' interview. A9a Medium shot: Somoza laying foundation stone. b Medium shot: pan right to Somoza and crowd in swimming pool. c Medium close-up: Somoza in pool laughing. d Medium close-up: Somoza dancing with woman. e Close-up: banquet buffet spread on table. f Close-up: different banquet buffet spread. g Close-up: different banquet buffet spread. h Close-up: different banquet buffet spread. i Medium close-up: Somoza dancing with another woman. j Medium shot: Somoza holding medal before applauding audience; his photo enlargement on the wall. k Medium close-up: Somoza in tuxedo dancing. 1 Medium close-up: Somoza in tuxedo dancing. m Medium close-up: Somoza standing drinking with woman. n Medium shot: woman in gown ascends stairs. o Medium shot: women in formal gowns with drinks in hand. p Medium shot: Somoza dancing. B12a Medium master shot: banana groves pan left. b Close-up: piles of bananas. c Close-up: piles of bananas. d High master shot: piles of bananas. e Medium close-up: decayed, mutilated bananas and trees. B13 Long shot: metal scaffolding-enclosed path surrounded by banana trees; lone worker pulls cable harness forward to tight close-up into camera. Blackened frame. B14a Titles: passage from poem "La Hora Cero (Zero Hour)." b Titles: poem passage continuation. c Titles: poem passage continuation. B15 Closing credits. The text's consistent juxtaposing of these two chains constructs a point-counterpoint pattern of address by which A, in its exclusive voice- of-God aural elaboration, establishes an authoritative autonomy that becomes increasingly more vacuous as it unfolds in contrast with the immediacy achieved through B's fuller range of signifying devices. Aurally, A stands out as impoverished in contrast to B's enrichment, scripted in contrast to B's spontaneity, contrived in contrast to B's realism. This disparity between A and B, as enhanced by their respec- 298 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary tive technical recourses, undermines the credibility of A's exposition to the advantage of B. The pattern of juxtaposition not only lays bare A's formal inadequacy to signify "realistically," but, in fact, progres- sively challenges A's authority to signify at all. This is the case, for example in A9a-p. A's voice-of God narration and background orchestra music are abandoned and superseded by "burlesque" instrumental and percussion-vocal tracks that invoke B's expository challenge to A's pos- ture of impenetrable authority. The important effect is that B assumes an added expository author- ity to speak insofar as B's discursive trajectory is allowed to impose itself directly upon A's otherwise formally static and self-contained autonomy. One connotation of this effect - the authority of the banana workers' social space to signify and to speak directly against the con- trived "order" of the dictator -points toward a dynamic of empower- ment concomitant with the Other's Self-awareness in terms of the crea- tive authority to speak, to make history, commit itself Self-consciously to the fundamental quality of Otherness -the commitment to action as praxis, and praxis as the empowerment to name one's own world. Nichols admits that the paradigm does not provide the tools by which to account for ideological factors in textual reception- the im- peratives toward Self that shape the ideological intentionality under- lying cultural production. He argues for the need to develop "a critical awareness of the implications of the position of self-as-subject for the expository cinema."'2 However, Nichols ultimately suggests that the viewing relation to expository film is informed by an ideologically de- termined insufficiency on the part of the viewing subject, who submits to the expository text's "invocation of, and promise to gratify, a de- sire to know."'3 As an essential documentary reception motive, the "desire to know" suggests a particular delimiting of options for cul- tural "Self-determination." Nichols's paradigm does not allow for the prospect of address modes that could effectively encourage, in the realm of information and knowledge, the democratizing empowerment of popular expression as opposed to the totalizing regulation of mass consumption. In chapter 3, Nichols's original paradigm is expanded to account for reception factors that are explicitly dynamic or revolutionary in their ideological intentionality and that assert counterrelations as a challenge to dominant modes of Western documentary film practice. The revised paradigm pursues spatial politics in the study of exposi- tory film - the ideological significance of the range of character and actor variations as expanded by the democratizing imperatives of New Latin American filmmaking. These lines of analysis allow for a more ideo- logically grounded understanding of Bananeras's textual dynamics. 299 John Ramirez In agreement with our initial analysis, A's visual authority is cen- tered on the image of Somoza Debayle. Conversely, B centes on images of banana workers. However, in contrast to our initial analysis (where at the level of aural elaboration, B supersedes A), the film's chain of character dynamics suggests a reverse procedure where, at the level of their respective economies of spatial occupancy, A unfolds in an in- terventionary capacity with relation to B. A is characterized by a particular ordering of spatial constituents. In comparison to B, each sequence of A visually constructs social space that is more "democratically" ordered. Around the centered image of Somoza performing various activities (bananera labor: A6a; facility in- spection: Ala and A5a; and recreation: A9c and A9d) are a multitude of surrounding characters (banana plantation workers, foremen, land- lords, colleagues, friends, and admirers). This pattern stands in sharp contrast to B's sparsely populated spaces and landscapes. The only ex- ceptions to banana plantation workers and the members of their imme- diate community is the plantation foreman in B10Ob. Furthermore, the editing pattern consistently fragments social space. A is "democratic" to the extent that it denotes a heterogeneous occupation of unified space. The organization of A's spatial occupants elicits a centripetal significa- tion that is textually bound and directed toward Somoza's core image. By comparison, B is "undemocratic" in its denotation of a homoge- nous field of occupants in fractured space. In contrast to A's rigid "hero"- intensive pattern, there is a centrifugal, extratextual orientation to B's comparatively anonymous and monotonal constituency. The significa- tion of B's characters is not dictated by the rigidity of their formal cir- cumscription. Instead, B's characters signify by the degree to which B's spatial fragmentation works in a deconstructive capacity to invoke the social circumscriptions of these workers' "textuality"- that is, of their historiographic identity, their identificatory significance as repre- sentational resources for the production of meaning and the making of history. Al inaugurates Bananeras: the first of two similar black-and-white clips of Somoza, in center frame, at a banana plantation, surrounded by a crowd of workers and plant administrators. These images are ac- companied on the sound track by a military drill horn, which proceeds into the montage title graphic of A3. The title graphic is followed by the A5a-c black-and-white sequence of Somoza in a banana grove, again surrounded by workers and administrators. As he walks forward to center frame, he chops a stalk of bananas and receives a silver machete award. This sequence is accompanied on the sound track by background orchestral music and voice-of-God narration. These opening components, 300 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary which introduce the range of A's formal parameters, are followed by the film's first installments of the B chain. In Bla, the lone worker motif is introduced as a man in the banana grove advances to center frame, surrounded by piles of bananas and banana trees. The lone worker's image, in color, is accompanied by sync ambient sound. These devices substantiate his presence. This segment closes with the nonsync voice-over: "Where is it from?" "Well, it's for- eign." This question can be considered both as voice-of-God narration in relation to the lone worker image and as a bridge to the workers' interview in Bib, which introduces a pattern of worker-interviewees that recurs throughout the film. The workers' placements range from 90 to 30 degrees as they face an interviewer who occupies a contigu- ous space, offscreen left. Those interview sequences are accompanied only by the workers' sync voices and the nonsync voice of the offscreen interviewer: Worker: ". . . North American." Interviewer: "And do the Standard people treat you well?" Worker: "Not very. The main problem is the bunkhouse. Nothing's improved." One effect of these techniques is that they establish B's narrating agent as a character who is spatially united with the workers. In con- trast to A's spatial ordering authorized by the hegemony of its voice- of-God narration and centered Somoza image, B is occupied by a cast of social actors, thereby approximating a spatial order more represen- tative of extrafilmic social space. A's correlative hegemonies (voice-of-God narration and centered Somoza image) underscore the inviolability of A's diegetic ordering, whereas the structured absence of such hegemonies in B opens B's die- getic order to a suggestion of insecurity, threat of violation, or infiltra- tion. Where A asserts a controlled and contained social space, B assumes a less controlled and more open social space. Where A contends order, B charges disorder. I would suggest that, at the aural and visual levels of exposition, B is structurally open to a connotative infiltration by A. By their formal cross-referencing throughout the text, A unfolds to give evidence of an underlying informational disparity. A's formal order of "democracy" carries the key to comprehending the significance of B's disorder. Does A's relation to B figure simply in terms of a rhetorical asser- tion of cause and effect? What is the logic of B's capacity to impose formally upon A, so long as A remains capable of imprinting a weight of signification (as source of insecurity and threat of violation) upon 301 John Ramirez B? Does this effect not in fact threaten to undermine confidence in the revolution? Had not three years of independence and national recon- struction significantly minimized the threat of the dictator? The ex- panded paradigm of documentary address brings us again to an im- passe of intentionality - an impasse at the limit of action-choices that shape cultural production. By the terms of the expanded paradigm, we can reinforce the observation that Bananeras conforms to direct ad- dress modes of expository cinema. However, this observation is still bound to the methodological assumption of a vertical trajectory of text- viewer relations. This Nicaraguan viewer is invariably cast in terms of image-consumer and object of address -the respondent to the "in- vitation to know" and locus for the depositing of knowledge. The expanded paradigm opens documentary analysis to the textual participation of the filmmaker(s). Although this inclusion is based on the belief that the role of the filmmaker(s) is in solidary alignment with the viewer, it does not ensure a necessary correlation of filmmaker - viewer interests. The viewing subject is still too peripheral by the terms of the paradigm to function in any other way than as an object of address. Bananeras refrains from becoming a disquisition on the facts of Standard Fruit's noncooperation with the reconstruction government. As a whole, the text does not offer a "conventional" exposition of the events it purports to clarify. Though there is formal consistency to the A and B visual chains, neither follows a clear path of chronology or spatial continuity. We cannot conclude that the A segments occurred in exactly this sequence. Similarly, B's segments do not constitute a direct temporal path; B is not a "day-in-the-life" treatment of any of its social actors. The bunkhouse occupants in B6a-v are not explicitly related to any of the interviewees; similarly, the recurring lone worker stands independent of the interviewees and the bunkhouse occupants. Also, the temporal context of B's segments are only tentatively "the present," inasmuch as they lend themselves to a temporary parallelism with A, or at least to a reading of banana workers' conditions before the 1979 triumph, rather than conditions up to 1982. Finally, the con- trasting national terrains comprised by A's and B's spatial chains assume their respective significance not on the basis of exact location but rather the performances and activities of the characters who in- habit these locations. These factors are highly inconsistent with the conventions of stan- dard expository cinema. How might they be reconciled so as to vali- date Bananeras's informational integrity? How may the film's formal and expository strategies be seen as an endorsement rather than an imposition of knowledge? 302 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary We need to consider Bananeras in terms of an exercise in the his- toriographic project explicit in the Other's "Self-awareness." Rather than standing as the source of a field of information desired to be known, the text might be viewed as the locus of known information desired to be remade. Bananeras's text presents episodes from the sequence of conquest that elaborate, not the terms of their factualness, but rather the terms of their making - that is to say, their representation. There is an essential self-reflexivity to Bananeras that endorses an awareness of the status of "history," "culture," and "self' as constructs. I wish to propose an expansion of the modes of address paradigm to accommodate an added model of dialogic address or participatory cinema (see table 1). Drawing on Paulo Freire's theories of "liberating pedagogy," such a model would be based on a transformative or dy- namic intentionality of relations to a dominating ideology. This ap- proach would necessarily have to account for the viewer as subject and in conscious commitment to cultural formations of "self." "Consistent Table 1. Dialogic Address Sync Nonsync Narrators conquest narrative: compositional direction for dictator's spatial centering voice of God/surrogate dictator voice of social actors images of illustration image of dictator images of character bridging ambient sound of social action space image of dictator Characters voice of filmmaker as social actor image of filmmaker as social actor voice of social actors (interlocutor/witness/subject) images of illustration or observation interview voices of social actors social actor/narrator/film- maker on screen offscreen interview: interviewer off screen, social actors on screen variations: interviewer occupies contiguous space or noncontiguous space of the same diegetic order or is represented nonspatially 303 with the liberating purpose of dialogical education, the object is not men [sic] (as if men were anatomical fragments), but rather the thought- language with which men refer to reality, the levels at which they per- ceive that reality, and their view of the world."14 Since the primary inquiry endorsed by this model is not at the level of the fact, but at the level of the social determinability of fact, the model would need to be open to an extensive range of address modes typi- cally exclusive to expository and observational cinema, and including certain modes of narrative cinema. For example, in Bananeras, the four sequences of the lone banana worker (B1, B7, B8, B13) would stand as a variation of direct cinema, namely, semidirect cinema. While this figure functions at one level as a social actor experientially engaged, at another level he is editorially directed in his spatial movement and placement. In comparison with the direct cinema mode of the bunk- house sequence (B6), the plantation field labor sequence (B9), the pack- ing plant sequence (B10), or even the interview segments (B1, B7, B 11), the lone worker emerges more as a character than a social actor. Given the ideological intentionality for which this mode seeks to ac- count, the oppressor/conqueror needs to be explicitly figured within the paradigm. We recognize this need in Bananeras when we consider how to account with the existing paradigm for the image and role of Somoza. Finally, by this model I would propose a particular demotion of the filmmaker's status. For example, as previously seen, Bananeras strate- gizes a solidary alignment of the role and place of the narrator/film- maker/interviewer with the figures and the place of the banana workers. This method of alignment, I would argue, is consistent with a dialogic mode of address in that it affirms the primary value of popular expe- rience and knowledge. An elitist, paternalizing, and mystified filmmak- ing orientation is antithetical to the intentionality of participatory cinema. If we qualify our consideration of Bananeras in terms of dia- logic address modes, I believe we approach a more solidary apprecia- tion of the Self-affirming imperatives to which the text responds. Throughout A's expository chain, Somoza is placed as the protago- nist. The antagonist dimension is framed in terms of "underdevelop- ment" and follows from the contention that Somoza's social agenda was committed to economic and industrial "progress." Structurally absent is the "materiality of underdevelopment"- a range of underlying social experiences such as hunger, poverty, unfair labor policies, state police terror against the civilian population, and a neglected peasant and work- ing class. The mediation of these experiences, through the visual con- struction of Somoza's "good intentions," establishes them as obscure and tentative. Significantly, it is precisely those categories of public John Ramirez 304 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary deprivation whose expressions are kept in check by the design of these Somoza-centered compositions; the victims of Somoza's dictatorship are rendered silent and voiceless. This textual marginalization of im- miseration illustrates a particular rhetorical strategy designed to en- force the discourse of "development" and support the institution of "progress." Through A's textual delegation of powerlessness and anonymity, the actual proportions of the relationship between Somoza's state ap- paratus and the popular experience begin to be seen. In A, the anony- mous and voiceless working-class characters are figured to reinforce Somoza's symbolic status. The workers' images never acquire value in- dependent of the narrative calculations and conventions that shape the footage's fiction of "Somoza as hero." The aggressive expository exclu- sion of social deprivation and the textual assertion of national well-being are facilitated by the hegemonic formal patterns of voice-of-God narra- tion and centered Somoza "hero." In this sense, the significance attached to "progress" suggests a targeting not of the symptoms of "under- development" but rather of its victims whose imageability and "voice of experience" would be more disruptive to the design of national "well- being" characteristic of these newsreel scenarios. In the words of Ar- turo Escobar, "The discourse of development was not constituted by the array of possible objects included under its domain, but by the way in which ... it was able to form systematically the objects of which it spoke, to group them and arrange them in certain ways, to give them a unity of their own."'5 Bananeras is inaugurated by A's chain of Somoza newsreel footage, but not as a point of historical departure. As noted earlier, temporality in this text is not chronologically mapped. Instead, the Somoza footage stands as a frame of collective Self-reference. Bananeras's historio- graphic project acknowledges the motive and authority of collective popular experience to be ever ready and able to challenge the discourse of "development" as framed by the conquering apparatus of "Somoza," which includes all its attendant institutions such as the domestic oli- garchy, the U.S. military-industrial complex, and world capitalist com- merce and industry. To keep the conqueror in check, the struggle for national Self-realization had to be ever vigilant. This awareness had been an integral feature of the reconstruction effort. National reforms toward democratization and mixed economic policies presented an at- mosphere vulnerable to disruptions and infiltrations unleashed in the name of the "free world" and for the cause of "development" (for example, the contras). In view of both Standard Fruit's management practices and its reaction to the reconstruction effort, it is significantly on the 305 Julianne Burton The 1950s marked a major turning point, politically and culturally. That decade saw the spread of film societies to all but the most cine- matically underdeveloped Latin American countries. By the 1960s, a number of these cineclubs had founded film magazines. Amateur film- making courses and contests proliferated. International film festivals in Punta del Este (Uruguay), Mar del Plata (Argentina), and elsewhere also began in the 1950s, but by the end of that decade, the focus of a few strategic festivals had begun to shift from foreign to regional film production. Uruguay's SODRE festival had, by 1958, become an im- portant showcase for Latin American documentarists. That year John Grierson, guest of honor, closed the event with a salute to Fernando Birri, founding director of the Documentary Film School at Santa Fe, who had come to Montevideo with a number of his students to exhibit the photo reportage which would lead to their first film production - now revered as the founding social documentary of the New Latin American Cinema Movement - Tire did (Throw Me a Dime, 1958-60). John Grierson's visit to Latin America in the late 1950s had been brief, his function largely ceremonial. Joris Ivens, who visited Cuba in 1960, Chile on two separate occasions a few years later, and Uruguay at the end of that decade, would leave a more lasting imprint on ac- tual documentary production, particularly in the former countries. Dur- ing this period, Ivens represented the engaged documentarist par ex- cellence, a man whose career itinerary recapitulated the chronology of national liberation movements around the world-the Soviet Union, republican Spain, Indonesia, China, Mali, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile. No more appropriate international figure could have been found to inau- gurate Uruguay's reorganized Marcha Festival, which- after the first pan-Latin American gathering of filmmakers in Vifia del Mar, Chile, in 1967 -redirected its focus to cine de combate in a global context. The proliferation throughout the region of cineclubs, 8mm and 16mm equipment, amateur filmmaking courses, and contests all recruited to the cinema the best and brightest of the postwar generation -people who might otherwise have been, or were also, writers, poets, painters, researchers, scientists. In part, this burgeoning amateur and indepen- dent filmmaking activity, often completely artisanal in its mode of production, was consistent with international trends. As Barnouw ob- serves: "After the war, short films in a personal vein provided the start- ing point for many young filmmakers. Such films were often conceived, photographed, and edited by a single artist - a reaction against the assembly-line projects of wartime. Instead of reasons of state, the in- dividual sensibility became the point of departure.... Economy and personal control were among the attractions of the genre."13 In Latin America, however, the urge to self-expression was almost 18 John Ramirez theme of national security and cultural defense against "development" that Bananeras endorses and affirms popular awareness toward an em- powering re-presentation of "history." The Somoza footage functions at another significant level. The in- augurating sequences of A's Somoza segments set certain structural parameters on which INCINE's B footage is modeled. Within these opening A sequences, a number of visual devices and textual patterns are introduced, foreshadowing their reformulation in B's sequential chain. However, these are not exact simulations, for each time B refers to strategies previously established by A, these function to underscore the disempowering effects through their initial renderings. Ala-b Image: B/W. Somoza center-frame in banana packing plant sur- rounded by plant workers. Sound: Nonsync. Military drill horn. A2 Image: B/W. Expanding iris wipes frame to black. Sound: Same as Al. A3 Image: B/W. Series of superimposed dissolves construct title mon- tage of still graphics consisting of communication buildings and images. Titles -Nicaragua en marcha (Nicaragua on the March) - slide cen- ter frame screen right. Sound: Same as Al. A4 Image: Contracting triangle wipes frame white. Sound: Same as Al. A5a Image: B/W. Low-angle pan from banana trees to eye-level of So- moza in center frame advancing forward into banana grove sur- rounded by workers. Sound: Nonsync. Orchestral background tune. Nonsync. Voice-of-God narration: "In Chinandega, General Anas- tasio Somoza, enthusiastic harbinger of the farmers' progress, notes the great results of the modern system introduced by the Standard Fruit Company." Bla Image: Color. Eye-level medium shot. Lone banana worker in cen- ter frame advancing, surrounded by piles of bananas and banana trees. Semidirect cinema. Sound: Sync. Ambient sound. Nonsync. Voice of social actors' narration: "Where is it from?" "Well, it's foreign...." The compositional direction of the lone worker in Bla challenges the figurative contentions of A5a. The worker is editorially directed to trace the spatial trajectory followed by Somoza in A5a. The "staged proportions of A are reformulated in Bla by fusion with cinema verit6 306 Ala A4 Bla Bib B3a Credit: Illustrations by Barbara Benish and John Ramirez pp,I vp I A3 John Ramirez techniques. In the "performance" of his labor, the worker is uncelebrated, solitary, isolated, and anonymous. Surrounded only by the products of his labor, the worker's space notably lacks A's props of "develop- ment" and "progress." Bib Image: Color. Medium close-up, eye-level. Banana workers screen left responding to interviewer/social actor (co-narrators B 1). Sound: Sync. Banana workers' dialogue. Nonsync. Interviewer/social actor question. ". .. North American." "And do the Standard people treat you well?" "Not very. The main problem is the bunkhouse. Nothing's improved. Nonsync folk guitar. As previously noted, the bridge provided by the nonsync narration in Bla to the social actor/interviewer/filmmaker in Bib functions to align that character to both the banana workers and the space they occupy. The composite effect of this strategy also significantly empowers the banana workers' voices, elevating them to the authoritative level of co- narrators: the beginning of the bridging device incorporates the first response of the workers/interviewees. Thus, whereas A aligns its voice- of-God in co-hegemony with the visual authority of Somoza, B decodes the formal parameters of that hegemonic design and reformulates them for a broader range of participants. B2 Image: Color. Red title on black: El Instituto Nicaragiiense de Cine presenta Sound: Nonsync folk guitar. B3a Image: Color. Long master. Smoking volcano in silhouette. Sound: Nonsync folk guitar. Nonsync horn solo. b Image: Color. Medium master. Banana trees in silhouette, volcano in top background. Sound: Nonsync folk guitar. c Image: Medium shot. Banana trees, volcano on horizon frame left. Sound: Nonsync folk guitar. B4 Image: Color. Red title on black: Bananeras Sound: Nonsync folk guitar. This volcano montage in B3a-c recalls the triangle wipe of A4. Here, the form provides a significance more immediately aligned with the na- tional experience. B3a-c also introduces B's particular montage strat- egy. Unlike A3's title montage of uniformly decontextualized image fragments coordinated to bracket A's "development" narrative, B's mon- tage strategy is to present its component parts from a plurality of 308 B3b B5h B5n B6a(b) B6a(a) John Ramirez angles, perspectives, and focuses, thus encouraging cognition of the collective experiential context. In this way sections B3a-c offer a link between the general experience of nationhood and the popular specificity of working-class and peasant experience. B's volcano montage suggests a more significant sensitivity to the popular national experience than A's montage of Somocista cultural and media practices that the vast majority of Nicaraguans never had access to, except as passive objects of address. B's application of montage is especially important in that it constitutes the unifying factor of B's overall chain. Here again, an obvious device of A's artificiality has been appropriate in service to the reconstructive agenda. The film's subsequent sequence amplifies B's montage strategy. B5a Image: Color. High master shot of banana groves being irrigated. Sprinklers in foreground. Sound: Nonsync. Folk guitar melody, as in B2. Nonsync. Sound effect: wind/echo chamber. Nonsync. Voice of social actor narration (selection from poem, "La hora cero"): "The United Fruit Company came with its subsidiaries..." b Image: Color. Master shot of banana groves being irrigated. Sprinklers in midground. Sound: Same as B5a: ". .. the Taylor Railroad Company and the Tru- jillo Railroad Company, allied with ..." c Image: Color. Long master shot of banana groves being irrigated. Sprinklers in background. Sound: Same as B5a: "... Coyomel Fruit and Bacaret Brothers ..." d Image: Color. Wide master shot of groves being irrigated. Sprinklers far midground. Volcano center frame prominent on horizon. Sound: Same as B5a: "... of the Standard Fruit..." e Image: Color. Close-up on drops falling from leaf. Sound: Same as B5a: " .. . and Steamship Corporation." f Image: Color. Medium shot of banana tree stumps sprayed by irriga- tion sprinklers. Sound: Nonsync folk guitar. Horn solo. Nonsync sound effect: wind/echo chamber. h Image: Color. Master shot of irrigation spray and sunlight through grove of banana trees. Sound: Same as B5f. j Image: Color. Medium close-up of water cascading. Sound: Same as B5f. Nonsync flute. Thus far, the visuals in this montage have coordinated an editori- ally directed scenario of agricultural production that closely parallels the idyllic contentions of A's Somoza footage. This segment of the mon- tage sequence also parallels A in the dominance of nonsync narration combined with background music. Yet the specificity of these patterns 310 B6j B6k B61 B6m B13(a) B13(b) John Ramirez in B undermines the authority of A's contentions and underscores the patterns' overall status as artifice. Furthermore, the montage's align- ment of these devices with codes of popular culture (that is, music and the poetry of Father Ernesto Cardenal) affirms and endorses the recrea- tive capacities of popular cultural forms. From this seemingly rich and productive landscape, the montage hones in for a closer examination. B51 Image: Color. Medium shot. Drops of water falling onto ground mak- ing ripples. Sound: Same as B5f. m Image: Color. Close-up of rippling puddles. Sound: Same as B5f. n Image: Color. Tight close-up of banana bunches in rippling puddle. Sound: Same as B5f. B6a Image: Color. Close-up on wooden crate marked: PRODUCT OF U.S.A. PERISHABLE KEEP FROZEN. Sound: Same as B5f. d Image: Color. Close-up of makeshift shelf of food with Spanish-labeled Quaker Oats box. Sound: Same as B5f. The montage's focus has presented the underlying context of its previous images of abundance -the same context whose challenge of imageability was firmly kept in check through the representation of the anonymous "extras" in A's opening Somoza footage. Similarly, the absence of this human dimension in the scenario of abundance of sec- tions B5a-n helped contribute to the "naturalness" of those images. Significantly, B's textual inquiry does not pose abundant productiv- ity as the problem, but rather disregard for the human basis of that productivity. The series of patterns and devices established in these opening se- quences of Bananeras lends particular significance to the film's con- cluding sequence. B13 Image: Color. Lone banana worker, center frame, advancing from far a-b background to tight zero-degree shot, overcomes and blackens frame. Sound: Nonsync folk guitar. Nonsync sound effect: wind/echo chamber. Aside from B's inaugurating sequence, this is the only other time that the lone worker is seen advancing. This, the film's last image brings us full circle in endorsing working-class authority through this charac- ter's progressive dominance over the frame. This textual dynamic re- calls A2's iris wipe to black that introduced the Somoza newsreel seg- ment. Conventionally, the worker's advancing figure that blackens the screen signals the end of the text. However, given the film's textual empowerment of the worker, this closing sequence significantly negates 312 Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary the conventions of closure to the degree that it parallels the Somoza iris wipe. This iris wipe signaled the Somoza title credits, thus an- ticipating the beginning of a text. The worker's image that renders the screen black similarly signals the film's closing titles, toward the an- ticipation of an Other beginning - an unfolding and a shaping situated in the extratextual reconstructive space of the Nicaraguan viewing subject. It is only by writing this history of the present that we can develop "a historical awareness of our present circumstances," that we can "know the historical conditions which motivate our conceptualization." More- over, only through this type of history, through the struggles to which it should lead, will we be able to develop "a new economy of power rela- tions." We can work towards this new economy of power by taking the forms of resistance against different kinds of power as a starting point, i.e., to study those forms of resistance which question the status of the individual, the privileges of knowledge, the misrepresentations imposed on people, as well as various forms of exploitation, domination, and subjection. 16 Through these considerations, we can begin to see the ideological dimensions of Bananeras's style, as well as the significance of partici- patory cinema to the dynamic intentionality of the Nicaraguan revo- lution. Produced in the national reconstruction atmosphere of severe economic material scarcity and on the threshold of escalating foreign military aggression, Bananeras stands as testimony to Nicaraguan Self-determination, integrity, and knowledge. As an example of the po- tential for participatory cinema, Bananeras warrants recognition as a landmark in world cinema. The film's complex interplay of national identities, histories, and textualities forges a trajectory for the inter- rogation of power and for reconstructing the "strategic connection of ['development'] discourses and practices in order to make visible the very fine web laid out by them throughout history."'7 Bananeras announces itself as a "construct." The film calls atten- tion to the disinformative dynamics of representation by encouraging the potential for Self-realization in participatory culture through the endorsement of popular experience and knowledge. Bananeras's self- reflexive style coincides with subjects empowered by their authority to recast the conquered persona. This subject-to-text relationship re- fers the identifying tendencies of conquest-associated cultural practices away from the imposing "magic" of the medium and toward the creative empowerment of active and reconstructive social participation. The dia- logic praxis of participatory cinema suggests an imaging imperative that resists perpetuating the "self" of the "imaginary" and instead en- courages a Self that is now "imageable." 313 John Ramirez NOTES 1. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 1981), pp. 84-85. 2. Roland Barthes, "Myth Today," in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill & Wang, 1970), p. 151. 3. A critique of Other-effacing tendencies in left documentary is begin- ning to be formulated. See, for example, Chuck Kleinhans, "Forms, Politics, Makers and Contexts: Basic Issues for a Theory of Radical Political Documen- tary," in Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary, ed. Thomas Waugh (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984), pp. 318-42. 4. Barthes, "Myth Today," p. 148. 5. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, pp. 84-85. 6. See ibid., and also Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum, 1981); Bill Nichols, "The Documentary Film and Prin- ciples of Exposition," Ideology and the Image: Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 170-207 (see chap. 3 of this volume); Julianne Burton, "Democratizing Docu- mentary: Modes of Address in the Latin American Cinema, 1958-72," in Show us Life, ed. Waugh, pp. 344-83 (reprinted as chap. 3). 7. Tombs Borge, preface to Humberto Ortega Saavedra, 50 aios de lucha sandinista (Managua: Colecci6n la Segovias, 1980). 8. Michel de Certeau, "The Indian Long March," in On Signs, ed. Marshall Blonsky (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 406. 9. For a detailed discussion of film practices during the Somoza dictator- ship and as developed by the Sandinista resistance during the Liberation War and into the early reconstruction, see John Ramirez, "The Sandinista Documen- tary: An Historical Contextualization," in Show Us Life, ed. Waugh, pp. 465-75; and "Introduction to Sandinista Documentary Cinema," Areito 37 (1984), 18-21. 10. Of the twenty-five noticieros (newsreels) which INCINE produced be- tween December 1979 and February 1982, twenty-two concerned social service reconstruction efforts, while three dealt directly with military defense. Of the twenty-two noticieros produced between February 1982 and December 1984, only nine dealt with social service efforts, while thirteen concerned military defense specifically in relation to U.S./contra operations. 11. This synopsis is paraphrased from the U.S. distributor's catalogue (Icarus Films: Central America Film Library, 200 Park Ave. S., Suite 1319, New York, NY 10003; 212-674-3375). 12. Nichols, Ideology and the Image, p. 206. 13. Ibid., p. 205. 14. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 86. 15. Arturo Escobar, "Discourse and Power in Development: Michel Fou- cault and the Relevance of His Work to the Third World," Alternatives 10 (Win- ter 1984-1985), 386. 16. Ibid., p. 380. 17. Ibid., p. 393. 314 16 WOMEN MAKE MEDIA: THREE MODES OF PRODUCTION Julia Lesage Drawing extensively from interviews with feminist media makers, this chapter contrasts three different modes of production common to the North American as well as the Latin American context and then offers close reading of three exceptional works, each generated within a different production context. Lesage treats exiled Chilean filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento's Un hombre cuando es hombre (A Man When He is a Man, 1983) as an example of an independent production that tries to develop innovative usages of cinematic language in order to inter- rogate aspects of women's experience and of the phenomenon of gen- der differentiation not previously explored on the screen. Lesage then discusses Carmen Carrascal (1982), produced by the Colombian femi- nist collective, Colectivo Cine Mujer, as an example of a particularly sensitive and effective collaboration between metropolitan feminists and their rural subject, a peasant whose basketry won her fleeting national recognition. Finally, Lesage uses the Nicaraguan Popular Video Workshop's video La Dalia (1983), which intercuts scenes from the lives of two women on a Nicaraguan farm, to illustrate collective production within a mixed-sex group. Here Lesage is particularly in- terested in the lack of distance between the videomakers and their subjects. Her own experience as a maker of women's video with a cross-cultural emphasis, and her first-hand experience in Nicaragua, enrich this chapter. SINCE THE mid-seventies, films and videos made by Latin American women specifically about women's concerns have been shaped by three dominant modes of production. A few women work as indepen- dent artists trying to create a new film and video language to express women's experience in new ways. Such artists' work often derives from an analysis of the ideological constraints inherent in traditional cultural 315 Social Documentary in Latin America Dutch documentarist Joris Ivens Isecond from right), one of the first European film- makers on the scene in postrevolutionary Cuba. Credit: ICAIC invariably circumscribed by inescapable social, economic, and political realities. This explains why, even when not explicitly political in origin or orientation, this surge of experimental and documentary activity would soon acquire a political dimension. As Uruguayan documentar- ist Mario Handler, whose own initial predilections were toward scien- tific cinema, has said, "The filmmaker inevitably begins to become politi- cized, because the existing situation prevents him from being simply a filmmaker." On the other hand, to the degree that, in the aftermath of World War II, the creation or resuscitation of a national cinema began to be viewed by countries around the world as a requisite ex- pression of nationhood - a coming into history and modernity, an ob- jective correlative of self-determination - this cinematic effervescence was political to the root. Film's ability to capture particularity - specificities of faces, places, and customs -is closely related to its nationalistic appeal. This might partially explain why the descendants of one of the early experimental genres, the "city symphony" film (most notably exemplified by Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures, 1926, and Walter Ruttman's Berlin: Symphony of a City, 1927) populate successive decades of Latin Ameri- can production. Examples may be seen in films as diverse as Saba 19 structures and institutions. These women strive to free both their own work and their audiences from dependence on traditional, class-bound, gender-inflected forms. More frequently, Latin American women have entered into media production as part of a collective political effort, usually making traditionally structured documentaries with feminist goals.' In terms of production process, these feminist media groups have tried new forms of collaboration with each other and with their sub- jects. The third common mode involves a mixed-sex, often leftist, pro- duction group dedicated to depicting the situation of the poor or other acute social problems. In Cuba and Nicaragua, such women artists usually work within established media institutions, and in the rest of Latin America, they often work as part of organized mass movements. The feminist collectives and mixed groups frequently do film and video distribution. Their projects in this area range from establishing distri- bution companies, repertory theaters and videoth6ques, to showing film and video to trade union groups, in poor neighborhoods, and in the streets. In practice, Latin American women media makers often move from one mode of production to another. Few women in Latin America have had the chance to direct feature fiction or produce television. When they have had such an entree, they could rarely focus on women's concerns. As in the rest of the Third World, few Latin women have had the chance to develop the media skills needed to enter into these positions, nor have they had access to the financial or institutional backing to embark on large-scale media proj- ects. Furthermore, few Third World directors, male or female, have ac- cess to the multinational media production and distribution networks dominated by Europe and the United States. What has assisted the growth of Latin American women's mediamaking over the last fifteen years is the artists' participation in international feminist gatherings, where they have shared a common anti-imperialist perspective, pro- moted and viewed exhibitions of film and video by women, and estab- lished ongoing women's media networks.2 Furthermore, the spread of consumer-format video technology has led to an extensive use of video in Latin America, especially among independent artists and media groups working within movements for social change.3 Different social circumstances create different opportunities for and limits on women's media production. In this chapter I will offer an example of each of the above three modes of media production and trace how the filmlvideomakers' political concerns, production processes, and aesthetic choices are related. I will closely analyze examples of each kind of work and draw on interviews (in some instances, personal con- versations) in which women mediamakers discuss their history and po- litical and aesthetic goals. I am particularly interested in examining Julia Lesage 316 Women Make Media the relation between the artists' production processes, political goals, and certain formal aspects of their work -visual construction, use of music, and narrative structure. As a feminist videomaker who has made documentaries with and about Nicaraguans, I have a personal stake in this critical evaluation. I am concerned with the relation between formal choices, political goals, and my own social situation as I do media work because I have found no overarching solution to the for- mal problems facing me as I construct intercultural feminist represen- tations for political use in the United States.4 The representative film and videomakers whose work I will analyze are Chilean exile Valeria Sarmiento and her feature-length documen- tary, Un hombre cuando es hombre (A Man When He Is a Man, 1983); the Colombian feminist media collective, Cine-Mujer, and their bio- graphical film, Carmen Carrascal (1982); and the Nicaraguan Taller Popular de Video "Timoteo Velasquez" (Video Workshop) of the San- dinista industrial workers' trade union (CST) and the salaried farm- workers' union (ATC) with their videotape, La Dalia (1982).5 Valeria Sarmiento learned filmmaking at the University of Valpa- raiso during Chile's Popular Unity period and has made most of her films in exile in France. Her sixty-six-minute documentary A Man When He Is a Man depicts a whole range of social and cinematic structures that reinforce patriarchy, interweaving sequences of interviews, mostly with men and boys, with sequences of mariachis performing in an out- door setting and images of 1940s Mexican matinee idol Jorge Negrete. Sarmiento says that the distance from Latin America imposed by exile allows her to express a new kind of critical perspective, a more syn- thetic one. Living in a different cultural context has influenced her view of her original culture, especially how she analyzes sexual politics and sees connections between European and Latin life.6 In contrast, both in subject matter and style of production, Cine- Mujer's Carmen Carrascal is similar to the documentaries made in the context of the U.S. women's movement in the seventies. Cine-Mujer is a women's filmmaking collective founded by professional women in a capital city, Bogota, who wanted to find nonhierarchical ways of making films and to create representative works that would take up important women's themes and be useful in organizing. Reflecting their feminist consciousness, they gave much thought to the process of mak- ing Carmen Carrascal-both to their personal and political relation with their subject, a farm woman living on the Atlantic coast of Colombia, and to how they structured the film's script. The third group includes women working within a mixed-sex video group, Taller Popular de Video, serving the Sandinista trade union movement in Nicaragua. Entering members learn videomaking skills 317 Julia Lesage (usually one role - camera, sound, editing) according to the group's cur- rent needs. Periodically the group makes tapes specifically about women's lives and concerns, and often the principal speaker or "voice of authority" in their documentary videos is female. Building the Nica- raguan revolution is the Taller's main concern. Because the videomakers come from poor families and are politically oriented toward the work- ing class and peasantry, their documentaries seem not just about but from the people filmed. Valeria Sarmiento - Independent Filmmaker in Exile Although Valeria Sarmiento learned filmmaking during the Popular Unity period, she could not get funding to do a film about women's condition. She faced both technical and attitudinal obstacles, especially sexism in the film industry, even among socialists.' In Chile in 1972, with her own financial resources, she did make Suen-o como de colores (I Dream in Color), a twenty-minute black-and-white docu- mentary about two strippers. Sarmiento recounts: "I have a scene in which the first stripper, who lives in a slum, says with great pride that, thanks to her work, she bought a refrigerator and a dining room set. Really, the film deals with the ambiguity in which the dancers live, sell- ing themselves as sex objects and then buying some liberty because of that."8 Shown privately, the film was not well received because it seemed "tangential" to the political process Chile was going through. In a simi- lar vein, Sarmiento's first film made in exile in France analyzes the con- sciousness of the "pots and pans" demonstrators - middle-class women who had been moved by right-wing scare tactics to demonstrate against the Allende government. Called La femme au foyer (The Housewife, 1976), Sarmiento's film presented a claustrophobic mixture of a day in the life of a housewife intercut with shots of bourgeois women salut- ing the airplanes attacking Santiago. At this time, most other exiled Chilean filmmakers were making solidarity works condemning the mili- tary; hence the lukewarm reception of Sarmiento's second film. Though she began by making political films, Sarmiento has always been both a political and aesthetic maverick, using formal innovation to express her political perspective. It is a tendency she recognizes: "I think that [my work] searches for a personal language and that to the degree that I keep making films, I'll clarify that language more and more, so as to reveal a world that is not obvious. All my films invoke a different kind of vision, but one based on elements from daily life."' With the same knack for revealing political contradictions, Sarmi- 318 Women Make Media ento proceeded to make several films about Chilean exiles in France. In Le mal du pays (The Bad Thing about This Country, 1979), for example, exiled working-class Chilean children, age five to eight, who had just arrived from the Santiago slums, say they would like to re- turn home but to a house like the one they have now in France. As Sar- miento put it, "These children already had such a strange memory of Chile ... some had a vision of French comforts and wanted to hang on to them."'0 In France, Sarmiento found work as a film editor. This was both by choice and also a necessity, since in her early years in exile the fam- ily faced economic difficulties and she had to put food on the table."' Later she had difficulty breaking out of that job into directing. The French film industry (and the government's system of preproduction loans) classifies filmmakers as either editors or directors. Also, because she is married to film director Rau l Ruiz, funders either thought her work would be derivative or that he, not she, deserved funding. How- ever, she feels that her work as an editor has allowed her constantly to refine her filmmaking skills.12 Because she is living in Europe, Valeria Sarmiento has the economic opportunity to make "thrifty" independent cinema-like many inde- pendent media artists in the United States and Europe. She received DM100,000 to make A Man When He Is a Man, a sum that covered all production expenses, including crew's salary and travel expenses to Latin America as well as the cost of making final prints. Shown first on German television, then in an edited version on French television, and now in 16mm distribution in the United States and France, the film has enjoyed modest success. When a German television producer funded A Man When He Is a Man, Sarmiento filmed it in Costa Rica, partly because that was the only country where she could get a visa at the time she was ready to begin production, but also because the specific country was not a major consideration; Sarmiento saw her theme as pan-Latin American.'3 In that sense, the film is both "feminist" and "Latin" in broadly general- izable terms. Later, Sarmiento commented that she was lucky that she had turned down Costa Rica's offer of coproduction because, had she accepted, A Man When He Is a Man "would have been like my Chilean film, de- stroyed or locked up somewhere."'4 After the film was shown on French television, the Costa Rican government protested that she had pre- sented their people unfairly - Costa Rican women in particular. A blame- the-victim mentality can be seen in the letter written on embassy sta- tionery from the Costa Rican charge d'affaires in France, Dr. Fabio Rosabal, to the director of French television's Channel 2. (A long ex- 319 Julia Lesage tract from the letter was printed in Le Monde.) Rosabal wrote about the film: "It is a defamatory campaign against Latin American women, especially Costa Rican women. In letting adolescents, prostitutes, and murderers speak, the director presents an image of the Latin Ameri- can woman as easy to conquer and as a sex object, without value, while men are presented as 'macho.""' Sarmiento began her filmmaking career presenting an "unpopular" point of view. In her later work she continued to develop perspectives on some of the most painful, and therefore unexplored, contradictions in women's, children's, and working-class people's lives. At the same time, she develops new media forms to present and expose the social and discursive structures that keep those contradictions underground: I never thought you can change people with a film. You can only show a situation, leaving people free to think about it or not. Of course, I use editing to select certain material and I choose how to organize it, so I pre- sent my thoughts and speak my mind, but without imposing it. I refuse to use any kind of explicit narrative voice. ... Every time I have shown this film, I have had problems. In France I have had to defend it among the Latin Americans in exile. They want political films. People on the left never want to pose the problem of sexism except as an "internal issue" or [one to be faced] "after the Revolution." Now I think that you have to take up the issue [of sexism] beforehand because if not, afterward, you'll always have it around.16 A Man When He Is a Man: Narrative Accumulation Sarmiento's work cloaks rage in an elegant style. At first, A Man When He Is a Man seems both witty and aggressive, especially in its attack on machismo and on the idealized, traditional gender roles perpetuated by the myth of romantic love. When we look at its total construction, however, A Man When He Is a Man exposes analytically a whole set of attitudes, behaviors, and cultural patterns that sustain male privilege, particularly in a Latin American context. The film has a narrative polish in which every element reflects an auteur's political and aesthetic control. A Man When He Is a Man in- creases in irony and tension as the viewer is deliberately misled by the "normal" tone of the interviews and the lightheartedness of the music and musical performance sequences. The film collects details from every- day life, and this accumulation becomes progressively more sinister. Sarmiento evaluates the film's impact: "After seeing A Man When He Is a Man, no one can fail to recognize that this is an everyday phe- nomenon. The small details that keep accumulating form a threaten- ing whole.""17 320 Women Make Media The narrative structure seems shaped by a woman's self-conscious rejection of the fraudulent promises and consequences of the myth of romantic love. In the narrative construction, established at the editing stage, Sarmiento analyzes a range of social patterns and cultural in- stitutions that depend on romanticizing male dominance and female subordination.18 "A Man When He Is a Man is mostly about men. ... I had to demonstrate who those characters were, very attractive and sim- patico men, and that there is a whole folklore around machismo that is very popular, too. In our popular film tradition, stars like Jorge Negrete project that image - that is to say, there's a whole process of conditioning."19 As one watches A Man When He Is a Man, it seems that all the people interviewed reveal their frankest opinions. The interviews and the images principally indict men for unscrupulously exploiting women sexually, but a few sequences show women's complicity in their own oppression. For example, a young woman sitting in a living room com- pares the traits of Latin and European lovers, and tells how the women in her family collude with her brother's lies when he brings different lovers home for dinner and introduces each as his fiancee.20 Members of the audience vary as to the time they require to realize that an outrageous kind of sexism is being depicted in A Man When He Is a Man. The images and situations are carefully constructed so that some viewers may interpret them as depicting very "ordinary" so- cial experiences. For example, opening sequences go from an extreme close-up of grandmotherly hands piercing a baby girl's ears to a girls' sewing class, where the teacher demonstrates how the girls can do in- visible mending - so they can repair daddy's suit when he burns a hole in it with a cigarette ash. Later sequences interview two adolescent males, each filmed in a "normal" living room environment and each con- ventionally handsome. They talk about common sexual experiences they and their friends have had, what they expect from the girls they date, and what they want from a wife. Sarmiento explains her method: "I did not hinder people from expressing themselves and I did not twist their testimony. That is why I never put a commentary over docu- ments I have collected."21 A later interview shows a taxi driver who drives around as he talks about his sexual appetites, admonishing us that a man has to make a pass at a woman right away: "You have to eat the bread while it's hot, or otherwise you'll have a hell of a time sticking a tooth in." Sarmi- ento's tour de force is that she shows him with three of his wives, in their respective homes. The furnishings indicate that he is a good pro- vider, a trait each of his wives praises him for. The narrative climax is structured in a low-key and ironic way. It exposes a brutal social reality beneath the ideology of romantic love, 321 Julia Lesage Jorge Negrete, romanticized prototype of Mexican machismo. Credit: CLASA Films an ideology that Sarmiento exposes as serving men's interests through- out the film. Brutality is not conveyed visually but only by the words that the men speak. Two interviews filmed against neutral outdoor back- grounds each show a man addressing the camera. The first says that his wife, who had taunted him with infidelity and whom he had tried to win back, served him on a china plate, mockingly treating him as a guest. "I was alterado (beside myself)," he explains. The other relates 322 Women Make Media that when his wife decided to go out to work, he told her that he would support her. "'I don't care,' she said. That's why I killed her." In a sense the scenes with these men are edited backwards. Only at the end of each interview do we realize that they murdered their wives. Thus, some viewers are led to sympathize with these "poor men" who tried to do everything for their wives, before the shocking revela- tion that they are killers. Sarmiento admits that this kind of editing sets a trap, but she justifies herself: At first everyone's going along with the film and saying, "Oh, machismo is so ugly." Suddenly they begin listening to those men complain about women - "She was humiliating me, blah, blah, blah." Then a lot of viewers believe the men are suffering because of women - then suddenly they dis- cover that no, the men killed the women. It's a trap that I consider neces- sary. That is, we listen first to what he says, then we discover he's a mur- derer. If you know right away that he is a murderer, then you'll listen to him differently, inclined to discount what he says.22 Editing Strategies and Music as Tactics for Deconstruction A Man When He Is a Man has been received as either humorous or insulting. This contrast derives from the wit of its con- struction. As Sarmiento puts it, it is a film de montage - that is, con- structed in the editing. It intercuts interviews about family life and notions of sexuality with two kinds of musical sequences that show how Latin popular culture has traditionally presented romantic love. Some- times we see a complete performance of a romantic ballad, sung by a group of traditionally costumed mariachis in some leafy glade. Other times we see black-and-white images of Jorge Negrete held on screen briefly and manipulated by repetition and brusque cutting on gesture. The editing here makes the actor's gestures of love and bravado seem foolish. Music, in fact, gives the film its structure. Music punctuates the film. Yet the musical interludes often seem more pleasant or comic than critical. Although Sarmiento uses lyrics from exaggerated ballads about romantic love to comment humorously on the documentary sequences, it is not at first apparent why we should take these lyrics seriously. Jorge Negrete's face and sometimes his lyrics are literally punctuated by rapid editing; often a rapid cut or repetition satirically emphasizes his smooth manner, dress, or silly romantic gestures. Often it seems that the musical interludes detract from the film's seriousness. In fact, it would be difficult to get most Latin viewers to take the Latin American tradition of romantic cinema and the even 323 Julia Lesage Left to right: Eulalia Carrisoza (left), Sara Bright (right) with basket weaver Carmen Carrascal. Carmen Carrascal (Cine Mujer, 1982). Credit: courtesy Women Make Movies longer tradition of romantic soulful ballads as seriously "harmful" to women. Thus, as the musical sequences alternate with the interviews, Sarmiento creates a narrative structure in which the music comments on the "real people's" behavior, and the film as a whole comments on the ideology of romantic music and film. The seeming casualness or lightheartedness of that narrative structure is an analogue of how ro- mantic ballads influence emotions in an ongoing way. The film's atti- tude toward that music is both analytic and easygoing, creating aware- ness by laughter, even ridicule, rather than denunciation. Artifice marks the visual background, exaggerated costumes, and most of the musical interludes. This is especially true of the manipu- lation of the images of Jorge Negrete. One effect of this is to make the interviews' dramatic climax, where the convicts talk about killing their wives, such a surprise. In contrast to the interviews, the musical performances are set pieces, empty of narrative tension. An opening sequence shows a folklore troupe dancing on the broad lawn of a rich person's estate, perhaps the stud farm that opens the film. Shots just before the dance sequence had shown a stallion being brought to a mare (her hind foot tied up so she could not kick) and then the school- ing of a mare on a rope. As part of the folk dance, young male danc- 324 Women Make Media ers lasso their partners. The dance itself is filmed in an elegant com- position emphasizing symmetry and rows. The mise-en-scene of this sequence establishes one of the film's major thematic concerns, the arti- fice of what people ordinarily take for granted as "natural" - especially the oppression inherent in seemingly natural gender roles. The fact that Sarmiento includes entire musical performances in A Man When He Is a Man alongside the interview sequences indicates that she is challenging the traditional documentary form. She uses the fiction of the musical lyrics, juxtaposes artifice and "nature" in the mise-en-scene of the musical pieces, and uncovers the lies and the self-deception (that is, the fictions) of the people filmed in an everyday milieu. The use of the Negrete image and romantic songs seems to be one of the main ways of directing the film at women viewers, who Sarmi- ento wants us to understand are complicit in their own oppression. Jorge Negrete was the most popular Latin American matinee idol of his day, and his day lasted many years. He offered viewers the ideal "mythic" version of the Latin American male. As Sarmiento edits his image, she exposes the inherent ridiculousness of the "ideal" Latin man, trying to dissolve a myth - one that still appeals to women - into laughter. Early in A Man When He Is a Man, Sarmiento cuts Negrete's image and lyrics into a documentary sequence that shows how women start shaping the next generation into female subjects, for it is they who in- troduce infants into their role as girls. We see an older woman's hands, in extreme close-up, piercing a baby's ears and inserting tiny earrings. On the sound track we hear the baby's cries and the woman's soothing words. The sequence is jarring because of its framing and its immedi- ate existential quality - the filming of a real baby's pain so deliberately and at so close range. Intercut with this imagery is Jorge Negrete sing- ing. Sometimes we see clips showing Negrete with a cigarette hanging insolently from his lips, or with a fighting cock in his arms; later we see other men's reactions to him in a cantina. His song, "Mujer" ("Woman"), runs under the scene of ear piercing and the baby's cries: "I beg you not to be ungrateful or to make me suffer.... I love you so much that I would die without you.... Your accepting me gives me my life and my heart... Love of all my loves." This same song, over an image of a full moon and ocean beach, ends the film and comments on it. The film itself has exposed the pain that is inflicted on women yet masked by the ideology of love: "Let me ex- press the sweet truth that love's suffering can bring," Negrete sings. Expressing that truth for women is just what the film has done. Any editor of documentary films would understand this process of juxtaposition. Artifice always intrudes on documentary, both in the 325 Julianne Burton Cabrera Infante's PM (1960), a "celebration" of nocturnal Havana that was banned by a new regime unwilling to have precisely that aspect of the nation's capital celebrated; Che, Buenos Aires (1960), a combina- tion of four documentary tributes to the Argentine capital assembled by Fernando Birri; Nelson Pereira dos Santos's uncompleted fictional trilogy based on Rio de Janeiro, Rio, quarenta graus (Rio, Forty De- grees, 1955); Rio, zona norte (Rio, Northern Zone, 1957); Aldo Fran- cia's neorealist-style feature, Valparaiso mi amor (Chile, 1969); and An- tonio Eguino's four-part feature Chuquiago (1977), a study of social stratification in the Bolivian capital. Memorias de un mexicano (Mexico, 1950) is the first notable Latin American example of the history-of-the-nation-on-film compilation docu- mentary. (A European equivalent is the Italian production, Cavalcade of Half a Century, 1951.) However divergent its ideological orienta- tion, La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, 1968), as a com- pendium of representations of "Argentineness," displays its link to this tradition. The neorealist-style feature Cuba baila (Cuba Dances, 1960), however different in approach and tone, testified to a similar urge to capture a national "essence" on film. At the end of that decade, Hum- berto Solas's epic trilogy Lucia (1969) allegorized national history in a trilogy of love stories, each presented in a style appropriate to its period. More recently, Tizuka Yamasaki's Patriamada (Beloved Coun- try, Brazil, 1985)- a jubilant reappropriation of the symbols of nation- hood in response to Brazil's return to civilian government- strikes a similarly rich balance between realistic representation, symbolic equiva- lency, and formal experimentation. The documentary dimension of Solas's film is highly modulated and largely indirect: hand-held, high- contrast sequences juxtaposed to classical camera movements and modulated tones. In the Yamasaki film, fictional narrative and docu- mentary chronicling of contemporary events are intricately, exuber- antly entwined. Film festivals in Vifia del Mar, Chile (1967), and Merida, Venezuela (1968), both of which concentrated on documentary production, bore witness to the explosion of cinematic energy that had occurred in the decade since Birri and Grierson crossed paths in Montevideo. Among the films screened at Vifia for Latin American filmmakers from around the continent, gathered together for the first time in such numbers, were Santiago Alvarez's Now (Cuba, 1965), Jorge Sanjines's Revolucidn (Bo- livia, 1963), Mario Handler's Carlos (Uruguay, 1965), and a revival of Fernando Birri's Tire did. Also included in the seventeen Brazilian docu- mentaries screened at the event was Geraldo Sarno's Viramundo (1964- 65). Among the sixty films screened at Merida's Muestra de Cine Docu- mental Latinoamericano the following year were premieres of Fernando 20 Julia Lesage filming and in the editing. Yet the role of music in documentaries is rarely commented on. Here the artifice of the editing, especially the use of Negrete, is made highly visible. Even so, the deconstruction and con- sequent ideological analysis effected by this editing style is conveyed primarily by humor, especially humor juxtaposed against "brutality"- that is, the ear piercing. Music gives A Man When He Is a Man its structure, but the deconstruction is achieved in the way that music it- self works, more emotionally than rationally. Both from interviews that Sarmiento gave about making A Man When He Is a Man and from internal evidence, we can draw some con- clusions about Sarmiento's production process. She takes sole respon- sibility for the final version of the film. During the filming, neither her crew (two Chilean exiles, Leonardo de la Barra, cameraman, and Joaquin Pinto, soundman) nor her subjects knew what the final work would be. The people filmed took the cameraman to be the director, and Sarmiento did not correct their misperception. She said that people liked to talk openly to her, a stranger, about sex and love, and even her crew believed they were making a film about romantic love.23 Looking at the way the interviews are filmed, how the subjects act and the kinds of things they say, we can see that the people filmed wanted to talk about their lives, but that they did not feel intimate with the interviewer. Instead, we get a sense of good-natured participation. Furthermore, the texture of the footage comes less from regional speci- ficity than from individuals telling about their lives and ideas in a way that lets them be interpreted as "types." Other images are filmed from the perspective of an onlooker, especially at a quinze arZos (coming out) dance or in and around schools. The mariachi sequences shot outdoors are as carefully staged as a dance sequence in a Hollywood film, and their charm comes from both the humor of the lyrics and the isolation of the singers from any social context. Editing the footage back in Europe, Sarmiento could juxtapose and make connections between broader aspects of Latin cultural life, particularly traditions of popu- lar romantic music and film, and the specific situations of the individuals whom she had interviewed for the film. Sarmiento has adopted a mode of production common to many independents. She prefers an artisanal, self-directed work process. She works within the tradition of the "political" avant-garde, in which the artist understands politically the need to create a new film/video language in order to take on new or unexplored social and personal themes.24 It is perhaps because she had to go into exile that she de- veloped both the aesthetic skill and the syncretic overview that allowed her to create a work with the analytic power of A Man When He Is 326 Women Make Media a Man, which dissects oppressive cultural and interpersonal structures.25 As she puts it, Now that I have the distance, I can reflect on what it means to be a Latin American. Europe has given me the chance to develop as an artist be- cause it has given me the technical means to work in film. I could not have done [these kinds of films] in Chile because people could only accept an image of themselves that was pleasing. Europe lets me put forth the image of Latin life that I must show.26 The final interview in A Man When He Is a Man is with a pharma- cist, a genial older fellow, who says that what he wants is a woman who will appreciate the aesthetically finer things, like his 'cello play- ing, and who will say, "What is that beautiful piece? You play it so well. Please play it again." He says that is what his daughter, a single woman, does for him, and that this is how a woman should live with a man. As an independent media artist making films within a capitalist pro- duction and distribution structure, Sarmiento has inherited the cultural tradition of the outsider and artist from nineteenth-century romanti- cism. She exploits that tradition thematically in her insistence on ex- ploring and presenting the "darker" contradictions that mainstream culture ignores. Following in the same vein as the interview with the pharmacist, Sarmiento's project after A Man When He Is a Man is Our Marriage, a feature fiction in which a man marries his adopted daugh- ter after his wife dies. The film's plot draws out the implications of in- cest inherent in the marriage tradition so common in Mediterranean and South American countries-that is, that a man marry a woman much younger than himself.27 Our Marriage is based on a novel by Corin Tellado, the most well-known author of the equivalent of Harlequin novels in Spanish. Sarmiento said that her choice grew out of her own reading of such novels, in which eroticism is presented as a "transgres- sion, always hidden.... We Latin American women grew up reading Corin Tellado. I'm working through an emotional history that's my own. It's very important to me."28 Incest themes shape media culture as well as social life, but are rarely commented on. Sarmiento's work foregrounds these deeper struc- tural forms that shape both behavior and expressive means. Thus she feels that her films elicit a gender-inflected response. As Sarmiento says about the reception of A Man When He Is a Man, when a macho viewer recognizes himself in the film, he responds, "Sure, we're that way. So what?"29 On the other hand, women viewers of A Man When He Is a Man are often led to question the entire process of social conditioning, espe- 327 Julia Lesage cially the romantic conventions found in popular culture which they so dearly enjoy, and to understand that this conditioning, from girl- hood on, literally embeds them in the structures of their own oppres- sion. Perhaps only the woman artist working alone or as an auteurist director can take on the most taboo themes. It is a difficult task for a feminist artist to present the social/psychological formations that women participate in (and usually do not want to see) and simultane- ously to challenge the media structures that women enjoy. I suspect that such cinema or video depends on an individual woman's analysis of her own subjective formation. It would be difficult to make as a col- lective project. As I will demonstrate below, such projects tend to take up hegemonic feminist themes and use hegemonic media forms.30 Cine-Mujer- Women's Movement Films In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many radical 16mm film production groups in the United States attempted to incorporate prin- ciples of skill-sharing and nonhierarchical, collective scripting, filming, and editing. Many times this came about as a response to women's or- ganized demands, to learn how to do camerawork, to take directorial control, to make films explicitly from a woman's point of view. Few groups still work like this. Members sometimes dropped out of film- making, or sometimes the group got a slightly larger budget to do a more ambitious, more commercially viable project - the production of which had to be organized hierarchically because of economic and time constraints. Political arguments hold up production, and irrevocable aesthetic and political choices must always be made, especially at the editing stage of a film or videotape. Furthermore, if the group gets enough funding to buy cameras and editing equipment, rent office space, hire staff, and try to distribute films/tapes nationally or internationally, it becomes a small business and faces the same dilemma: to incorporate principles of managerial efficiency or to fold.31 Cine-Mujer's history runs parallel to that of many such groups in the United States. For their first several productions, the group func- tioned in a utopian way -making a work in which the politics and aes- thetics of the piece were discussed and decided collectively at every stage of production.32 Carmen Carrascal is one of these: a film con- ceived as important to the Colombian women's movement, a work in which the collective shared both skills and economic resources. Cine-Mujer's early projects gave two of its members, Sara Bright and Eulalia Carrisoza, the chance to become professional filmmakers, however marginally. The group's editing equipment allows the collec- 328 Women Make Media tive a source of income. Because of equipment maintenance costs and the difficulty of getting spare parts, these women do not train other women, even though they understand the value of having short courses only for women and acknowledge the privilege of class and race at work in their own ascent to filmmaking. Now that the group is financially self-supporting with money gained from distribution, renting equip- ment, and doing productions, they can sometimes pay themselves low wages, but they still have to work at other jobs. In their early projects, Cine-Mujer did slide shows and short films on typical feminist issues - abortion, domestic servants, the image of women in advertising. For two years, its four to six members struggled to find ways of working collectively- not only in filmmaking but also rotating administrative, public relations, and fundraising chores. Those were the years spent on developing the script of Carmen Carrascal. Cine-Mujer received a substantial grant to make Carmen Carrascal, and their budget allowed them to fly to New York to buy used editing equipment and a tape recorder instead of renting equipment in Bogota. Similarly, it was cheaper to buy film stock in the United States, smuggle it out for processing, and then bring it back for editing. But that meant that everything had to be filmed in one shoot. A woman named Carmen Carrascal had won a national prize for her basket weaving and had traveled with her daughter to Bogota to re- ceive her award. That is when the members of Cine-Mujer became aware of her. For preproduction of the film, Cine-Mujer members went to Car- rascal's farm on the Atlantic coast, to be with her in her own environ- ment. They took still photos and recorded audio interviews. During that time, they began to develop an aesthetic for the film and a way of re- lating to Carrascal personally. They wanted to respect her time and space. The second time they visited her, it was for their one and only shoot. During the editing stage, it was impossible to bring Carrascal to Bogota for consultation, but she was reportedly very moved when she saw the final version in her village; Cine-Mujer members came back with a Betamax half-inch video recorder and played a cassette version of the film.33 In a sense Carmen Carrascal represents in its production both a di- lemma and a partial solution to that dilemma: the relation between art- ists and intellectuals from an urban area and rural peoples whose lives, concerns, and points of view cry out for public expression. The farm woman from the Atlantic coast and bourgeois feminists from the capi- tal collaborated to make a biographical film in which a woman whose voice is otherwise culturally underrepresented tells about her life.34 The film depicts the life and craft of a rural artisan with whom the crew obviously developed a great personal rapport. It is also a homage from 329 media artists in the capital to a peasant artist - for the film shows Car- rascal's process of basket making from start to finish, with her expla- nations about what is involved in her craft. The filmmakers found an appropriate aesthetic form for dealing with key social and personal issues -the emotional tensions in Carrascal's life, the relationship of rural people to the capital and to the national government, and rural women's sources of income, power, and independence. Representing Rural Life As Angela Davis brought to our attention in her ground- breaking essay, "The Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves," rural family life among oppressed peoples has the potential for being the locus of revolutionary political organizing.35 It also has to be looked at closely for how it shapes women's lives and their potential for growth. Among land reform programs in the Third World, for example, only in Nicaragua have women not had to be heads of households to receive land.36 In many areas, the consequence of social isolation, especially for rural women, is illiteracy, lack of knowledge about health and nu- trition, and political powerlessness. Carmen Carrascal presents both the strength of its protagonist and of her bonds to her children and fellow basket makers, but it does not romanticize or sentimentalize rural life. Therein lies the film's usefulness to the international women's movement. Furthermore, Carmen Carrascal offers a close look at a rural wom- an's daily labor - the time-consuming tasks of cooking over an open fire and preparing and making tortillas. Carrascal is shown to have an ex- traordinarily tender relationship with her children. As she takes on the responsibility of animal husbandry, she tends a calf and speaks about her mule as if they too were her children. One sequence begins with a close-up of Carrascal's hands in food preparation; as the camera zooms back, we see her pouring milk into a bottle and putting on the nipple. She calls her little son; we think the bottle is for him, but the next shot shows the boy feeding it to a nursing calf. In a later series of shots we see Carrascal riding her mule to town to see her children, take them provisions, and sell baskets. She says the journey will last into the night and that many men would fear that, but she trusts her old mule "who is like a daughter" to her. Women's farm labor is often underrepresented in national agricul- tural reports because women's unpaid family labor is not quantified or accounted for.37 In particular, women often take on the unpaid chore of animal husbandry. In most rural or small town areas throughout the world, women make an important contribution to nutrition and/ or cash income by raising a pig or chickens, or by keeping a cow or Julia Lesage 330 Women Make Media goats for milk. The Carrascals have land and a number of cattle. Even though they look poor, they are not part of the landless, migrant work force that has so drastically increased where large multinational cor- porations dominate farming. In those cases, especially if the soil is poor or if there are a lot of children and the oldest son inherits what little land remains in the family, the men migrate to the capital looking for work. Women-headed households increasingly do the world's subsis- tence farming. The film depicts a rural family that is economically secure enough to have achieved a stable way of life. A small amount of cash in the house allows a little margin for risk-taking and imagining alternatives beyond subsistence farming. Often in such families, when women can generate an income, either by a craft such as Carrascal's, or by selling products locally, they can control more of the family's spending money. If there is any surplus, the woman often uses it to provide better nu- trition, medical care, or education for the children. Carrascal insists on the latter. Basket making brings Carmen Carrascal into the market econ- omy and gives her a certain amount of domestic independence, but it also brings her into conflict with the exploitative practices of the government-run craft shops. She and her husband argued about her going off to the local market to sell baskets because he objected to her leaving the domestic sphere. Yet such travel has led to her understand- ing of the exploitation of rural labor. She has to pay increasingly high transportation costs to get to the store, where she has a contract but not a salary, as she would prefer. The attempt to sell baskets has made her familiar with the barriers to rural progress. The government sup- ports rural crafts, but pays a very low price for the goods that will be resold to tourists. She tells us this in her own words as we see images of her packing her baskets on her mule and later on a car bound for the capital. Carrascal has empowered many of the local people because she has taught villagers in the nearest town, especially the women in two ex- tended families, how to make baskets. She has also taught her daugh- ters her craft. She invented her own process for making and decorating baskets, and she says that if her daughters do not like to do it her way they can invent a craft of their own. Carmen Carrascal looks at social structures and how they can gradu- ally change to improve women's lives. It sees the relation between a rural woman's earning a cash income and her social growth and per- sonal self-esteem. And it does this by affirming the value of traditional social structures - especially those maintained by women-that offer women more paths for growth and support than do consumer-oriented urban ways. 331 Julia Lesage Production Relations, Narrative Structure, and Visual Emphasis In A Man When He Is a Man, it is clear that the entire structure of the film comes from the editor/director. However, in mak- ing Carmen Carrascal, Cine-Mujer's goal was collectively to make a film about a rural woman's life. They formed a close personal relationship with their subject, yet she could not participate in the editing, and even more important, a huge class and regional gap existed between the pro- ducers and Carrascal. Because such a gap exists in much of the Third World between filmmakers and their subjects, it seems worthwhile to study this film for evidence indicating how the relation between bour- geois feminist filmmakers and a farm woman may have have influenced the final structure of the film. The film's history has a unique relation to Carrascal's own. After returning home from the award ceremony in BogotA, her husband Hum- berto did not ask her about the award or what had happened on her trip. She narrates this in voice-over as we see a tracking shot around her one-room house, noting the many baskets hanging from the ceil- ing, family photos, and the award along with a photo of her receiving it from the president in Bogota. She then tells us, facing the camera and wringing her hands, how after her return she became mentally dis- turbed and how her brother, a preacher, saved her. Carrascal had made up a song that she used to sing about her mad- ness. When the members of Cine-Mujer went to the Atlantic coast to collect audio interviews and to shoot slides for preproduction planning, they taped the song and used it later to introduce and conclude the film. In the film, Carrascal does not state that her husband's coldness caused her mental anguish, but she implies it: "When I came home, I said, 'These medals mean nothing to me,' and a month later I was a loca completa [completely mad]." The collective spent about two years deciding how to assemble the footage.38 While they were doing the final shoot, Carrascal had told them she did not want to sing the song anymore because she did not want to remember the "bad time" (a line in the film). However, the Cine-Mujer collective was convinced that the song was a powerful statement of her condition, and in itself poetry and folk art. After much consideration, they used it, and in a very prominent way. They did not know how Car- rascal would react to that aesthetic/political decision until she saw the film herself. That filmmakers shape the filming situation so as to elicit an excep- tionally dramatic moment is common practice in documentary film pro- duction. That the producers finally opted to use Carrascal's "madness" 332 Women Make Media song was less exploitative than it may seem. A great intimacy between subject and filmmakers is expressed in the interviews that structure the film's sound track. In particular, Carrascal's close-ups present a wide range of personal emotions - from shyness to pride to her anxiety at remembering hard times. She talks about her relations with her hus- band, her determination to give her children a better life in spite of what he thinks, her love for her mule and her craft, and her pride in teaching her craft to her neighbors. The sound track has the same effect as a woman-to-woman discourse that redefines the rules of daily life in woman-centered terms. Like cinema verite, Carmen Carrascal presents its subject entirely in her own voice and her own words. However, the decisions made in the editing are not visible. The topics covered in the interviews with Carrascal have a contemporary feminist emphasis on women's tradi- tional crafts and on sexual politics, including a discussion of contra- ception.39 These emphases shape the narrative pace of the film. We do not know, however, if this is how she would have articulated her condi- tion when talking to her friends or relatives, or if the very fact of meet- ing the Cine-Mujer collective and making the film allowed her to phrase issues in this way for the first time. In general, documentary films all too easily cloak themselves in a guise of objectivity. Filmmakers' decisions about narrative strategies or even the questions they ask their subjects (formulated in the pre- production process) are not usually made accessible for viewers to evalu- ate. Nevertheless, cinema verit6 always leaves internal traces of its own production process. Within any cinema verit6 film, for example, is mul- tiple evidence about the relation between filmmaker and person filmed. It is there in the subject's tone of voice, phrasing, eye contact, gestures, and the emotional depth with which the person tells his or her story. In this context, the producers of Carmen Carrascal seem to have drawn on the good faith established between themselves and their sub- ject to justify using her song so prominently. The song speaks pro- foundly about a woman's pain. At the film's beginning, over the credits and over opening close-ups of palm fronds in the afternoon sun, Car- rascal sings: My name is Carmen Rosa Carrascal de Novoa. Listen, Humberto, to what Carmen Carrascal has to say about lies and the truth. I was sick in Coloso. My brother cried and so did my children. "Mama, you will completely collapse." Jesus said, "Carmen Carrascal, nothing is going to happen to you. You will return home unharmed." 333 The same song brackets the film's conclusion, with the addition of two more key lines: When I was single, you called me darling, baby Carmen. Now you don't call me darling, baby Carmen anymore. The makers of Carmen Carrascal both identified with their subject and respected her capacity for self-expression. In particular, they gave cinematic space and social respect to Carrascal's madness. She speaks openly in the film about marital tensions - in particular about her need for validation of her worth, which she has not readily found in her mar- riage. Like many women, she focuses on her home and children. Her story of domestic anxiety evokes a common denominator of women's experience that women viewers can identify with across national and cultural lines. The film's image track never shows Carrascal speaking to the film- makers in the presence of her husband. In fact, he appears only in a distant landscape, in long shot. Three kinds of visual sequences are shown over the interviews. Most depict Carmen Carrascal. One kind of imagery shows her doing domestic work, usually outdoors and usu- ally with children or animals in the scene. Another prolonged set of im- ages shows her weaving a basket from start to finish, with her children weaving alongside her. A third sequence shows her taking a long trip to town on her mule. This sequence is, in a sense, representative of her entry into public space. Of particular interest and very much a part of the feminist docu- mentary tradition is the attention Cine-Mujer pays to Carrascal's craft. Labor is rarely represented at any length in cinema, unless it is the rob- bery in a heist film, and women's domestic labor or craft work even less so. Here Carrascal discusses both the history of her craft and its pro- cess, demonstrated at length. She tells how she invented this kind of basket to make school bags for her children. We see the children help- ing her hack down palm fronds and tearing the fronds into strips. As she weaves, she is filmed in the lovely light of sunset, and we watch the basket take form. The cinematic time spent on this labor indicates another bond between subject and filmmakers, who wanted to convey a vivid sense of domestic labor and the value and beauty of women's craft. Carmen Carrascal is an attractive subject for a feminist biogra- phy partly because of the extraordinary skill with which she works. It is clear that Cine-Mujer respected Carrascal's genius and also her typicality, for she represents the hope of many rural women. It is in this sense that I say that Cine-Mujer made, on the basis of a political analysis, a women's movement film. They selected an extraordinary, self-taught craftswoman and depicted her in a way that shows both 334 Julia Lesage Women Make Media her art and the representative aspects of her life. The editing of the interviews also brings out some of the personal/political structures of a woman's life as articulated by the contemporary (urban) feminist move- ment. In this way, filmmakers from the capital, with both a political commitment to their subject and a political analysis of woman's condi- tion, revealed in a more generalized way the pattern of many rural women's lives in Latin America. Perhaps it was the artistic problem of balancing the cinematic representation of Carrascal as unique and as typical that caused the filmmakers to take so long to decide on an editing strategy. Hence one can say that Cine-Mujer made Carmen Car- rascal on the basis of both personal rapport with the subject and femi- nist political analysis; indeed, this process has been repeated over and over in feminist biographical documentary film and video. Taller Popular de Video Originally begun in 1980 as a Super-8 film workshop es- tablished with UNESCO funds in Nicaragua, the Taller Popular de Video undertook to teach members of the Central Sandinista de Traba- jadores (the industrial workers' union) and the Asociaci6n de Trabaja- dores del Campo (the salaried farmworkers' union) how to make Super-8 films that would depict the lives, needs, and organizing efforts of the working class. Because the Super-8 film stock is a Kodak monopoly and had to be processed either in Panama or in Mexico (and paid for in hard currency), the group always faced a six-to-eight-week delay between shooting and editing. After editing the footage, they had only their original copy to exhibit. A Dutch foundation and a foreign filmmaking group in Managua, Tercer Cine, gave the Taller the facilities and train- ing for three-quarter-inch video, and this is the format in which they have continued to work. Their facilities are rudimentary. As of 1984, they had a portapak, a camera, a used three-tube camera, a cuts-only editing system, and a cassette audio deck and record player to lay in music on their sound tracks. Solidarity workers have occasionally provided used U-Matic tapes, batteries for the camera, and a small four-track Radio Shack sound mixer, but the group still works without a waveform monitor, character generator, sound equalizer, or time-base corrector. All their tapes, except edited masters, are recycled over and over. Photogra- phers going out on a shoot are often given only two twenty-minute cassettes -the ration for the day. There is a Sony repair shop in Ma- nagua; repair bills come back partly in cordobas, the national currency, and partly in dollars, the cost of getting spare parts. To maintain their equipment, the group has to bring in certain jobs that can pay in hard 335 Social Documentary in Latin America Solanas's and Octavio Getino's The Hour of the Furnaces (Argentina, 1968), Marta Rodriguez's and Jorge Silva's Chircales (Brickmakers, Co- lombia, 1968-70), Octavio Cort zar's Por primera vez (For the First Time, Cuba, 1967), and Mario Handler's Me gustan los estudiantes (I Like Students, Uruguay, 1968). The first seeds of this remarkable harvest of independent documen- tary production had sprouted in the mid-to-late fifties in far-flung cor- ners of the continent: in Venezuela, Margot Benacerrafs Araya (1958), in Uruguay, Alberto Miller's Cantegriles (1958) and Ugo Ulive's Como el Uruguay no hay (There's No Place Like Uruguay, 1960), in Brazil, Linduarte Noronha's Aruanda (1959), in Chile, Sergio Bravo's La mar- cha del carb6n (The Coal March, 1960).14 Though often inspired by film society activity, many of these filmmakers worked in relative isolation and saw their careers prematurely truncated precisely because they lacked a larger supporting context. Their successors, through film fes- tivals in Latin America and abroad, and through other forms of col- laboration and mutual support, consolidated a sense of shared endeavor that would become known, after the Vifia del Mar gathering of 1967, as the New Latin American Cinema movement. Internationally, it is the movement's fictional works that have generated the most widespread interest and acclaim. Anyone familiar with Latin American literature, painting, or still photography can tes- tify that the boundaries between art and actuality, fabrication and found objects, the fictional and the factual have always been tenuous. It should therefore come as no surprise that many of the most memorable Latin American features retain close ties to the documentary mode: from Brazil Os fuzis (The Guns, 1964), Como era gostoso o meu frances (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, 1971), Iracema (1975), Bye Bye Brazil (1980), Pixote (1981), and Patriamada (1985); from Chile El Chacal de Nahueltoro (The Jackal of Nahueltoro), Tres tristes tigres, and Val- paraiso, mi amor (all 1969); from Mexico Los olvidados (1950), Tara- humara (1964), and Reed, M9xico Insurgente (1973); from Peru Gregorio (1984); from Bolivia El coraje del pueblo (The Courage of the People, 1971), and Chuquiago (1977); and from Cuba Memorias del subdesar- rollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968), La primera carga al ma- chete (The First Charge of the Machete, 1969), De cierta manera (One Way or Another, 1975), and El otro Francisco (The Other Francisco, 1975), Son o no son (1980), and Hasta cierto punto (Up to a Certain Point, 1983). The regional film "cycles" that flourished in Brazil in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the early Argentine social realism of fictional film- makers like Jose Augustin Ferreyra, Homero Manzi, Leopoldo Torres Rios, Mario Soffici, and Hugo del Carril, are increasingly recognized 21 Julia Lesage currency, and they usually get several contracts a year from European television or solidarity groups. The Sandinista labor unions themselves could not support an arts project that needs dollars to survive. There are usually four to six people working in the group. Some come from the skilled trades (a baker, a grinder of optical lenses, a secretary); some are from the ranks of grassroots union organizers. None went to college. Two or three have organized trade union or Sandinista youth theater groups. In 1987 they expanded into two separate groups. The Taller de Video Popular now works exclusively with the farmworkers' union and an offshoot of the Taller, Video Alternativo, with the indus- trial union. In November 1981 I spent a month in Managua teaching the group. We worked mostly on Super-8 editing skills. I myself was doing inter- views and shooting slides for a slide show (later an experimental video- tape), Las Nicas, about women and daily life in Nicaragua. Following up on our discussions, in 1982 the Taller completed a video project on Nicaraguan women, Las mujeres. Later, at a collective farm called "La Dalia," the Taller did a short biographical videotape about two women farmworkers. And in 1985, following the first congress of farm union women, the group made a tape on women in agriculture, focusing on the gains made for women in the union, the persistence of the double workday, the contra attacks on farms, and women's need to do extra labor and learn new skills so as to supplant the production ordinarily done by men needed at the front. One of the most profound changes caused by the Nicaraguan revolu- tion has been in the quality of women's lives. Some changes are aimed directly at women - access to jobs and education, for example. Other gains such as literary training, free health care, food rationing, regional food distribution, and free and compulsory education have drastically improved most women's lives by changing childrearing patterns and family life. And women's massive participation in the militias, police, and armed forces means that they are crucial to national defense. This affects a whole society's perception of women, including their own sense of personal and social strength. Other developments are equally impor- tant. For example, in rural areas the farmworkers' union established national work norms, naming each task and deciding what quantity of labor at that task constitutes a day's work. This means that men and women farmworkers always earn the same wage for a specified amount of work. Nicaragua is a culture in constant change. The struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie has been made more acute by the U.S. government's funding of Nicaragua's internal conflicts. The Taller makes tapes within a labor-union context knowing that the Sandinista 336 Women Make Media government responds almost immediately to organized labor's demands. When grassroots union organizers tell their constituencies, "To the degree that we are organized, we have political power," the workers have seen how the FSLN responds. In that sense, the Taller's video is workers' video. With pride these videomakers give voice to those who are building the revolution in a self-conscious and often critical way. The Taller con- centrates on building the self-representation of the working class. They are concerned with how to represent the underrepresented in aestheti- cally complex and responsible ways. The Taller's work, exhibited on national television and also at union meetings, with the assistance of a Betamax video recorder, stands out even from other Nicaraguan media productions. It is characterized by a grasp of social richness within a seemingly poor environment and an artistic capacity to represent visually that social complexity. For they are taping the milieu they live in. (Their salaries are equivalent to those of skilled factory workers, with whom they share the scarcity of basic resources, including food.) In general, the group easily reaches a con- sensus about the political issues and other kinds of complexities to be dealt with in a tape. They use interviews with both officials and ordi- nary people; their emphasis on the political wisdom of the people makes their work unusual even in Nicaragua. Speaking with One Voice When I worked with the Taller, the women in the group included Amina Luna, Miriam Carrero, and Fani Ortiz. However, since aesthetics and politics are similar from one Taller production to another, the style of the tapes that concentrate on women's lives cannot be at- tributed to women media makers' taking up a "women's theme." The Taller's tapes are usually analytic and synthesize a number of points of view, expressed in interviews, about a given situation. Bio- graphical portraits of individuals are rarely found in their work, and they do not examine emotional life and subjectivity at any great length. What speakers say about oppression and resistance indicates that they represent the unified voice of many people. When conflicts are articulated - for example, between the Catholic hierarchy and the revolu- tionary church in The Pope, Pilgrim of Peace?- the individual voices speaking of those differences represent whole sectors of society in con- flict. Such conflict is also reflected visually; the affluence of the church hierarchy, visible in clothing and living quarters, serves as an index of class privilege. What is characteristic of the Taller's work, clear from their earliest Super-8 films, is that they see working-class and rural life as the source 337 Julia Lesage of the Nicaraguan revolution. People whom film viewers or onlookers from abroad might see as merely "poor" become in their tapes sophisti- cated analysts of the current situation. The Taller and those to whom they give voice are what Antonio Gramsci called "organic intellectuals" - that is, poor people who develop a keen analysis of their own situation in the course of political activism. The Nicaraguan revolution is full of such people, and they are consistently the subject of the Taller's tapes. La Dalia is a twelve-minute tape made in 1983. Significantly, the title is not a woman's name but that of a farm, "La Dalia"; the tape does not emphasize individuality as a feminist biographical film would. Two women who look very much alike narrate a few high points of their lives. The way figures are intercut, their political unity, and the similarity of their experiences make their stories fit into one flow, as if they were speaking about one woman's life instead of two.40 The similarity of their images and the flow of their story into one voice represent farmers' lives on "La Dalia" in general and also a new kind of rural woman, one who may now be an exemplar for many other women in the Third World. We see each woman at home in a poor environment - the two loca- tions could be the same shack. One is a militia trainer who is now on maternity leave. We first see her sitting on a bed, nursing her two-month- old daughter and talking to the camera. The other, a union organizer, speaks about her union leadership experiences as she stands by a wooden plank table in a cook shed cleaning a rifle. Each woman is thin, delicate, with hair pulled back in a bun from which wisps escape and fall over her forehead. One woman's hair is slightly darker than the other's. We see a farmworker's family life, presumably from the point of view of a single mother. Bracket sequences at the tape's beginning and end show the union organizer scrubbing a child in a stream by a waterfall; over the last sequence, she says that she has big dreams for her little girl, namely, that the child will learn to read. At other times we see the militia organizer bottle-feeding her baby, wrapped in a colorful new blanket, or serving her older daughter a tortilla. Intercut are two kinds of imagery that convey the changing circum- stances in the lives of Nicaraguan farmers - especially women. The two sets of images show women in a domestic interior and seen in militia training. What the women talk about in the indoor scenes as well as the images themselves suggest that these two worlds for rural women, child rearing and military defense, are now merged. It is the mother on maternity leave who is by professional a militia trainer; it is the union organizer who is filmed in military gear. As she cleans her rifle in the cook shed, a tin box of cleaning equip- ment on the table and a bench full of scuffling children in the back- 338 Women Make Media ground, the union organizer describes the starvation that farmwork- ers, like many other rural people, had always faced. She tells how, as one of its first demands, the farmworkers' union won the right to an adequate, balanced diet. She comments that after this regulation came into effect, the workers on her farm staged a riotous protest when their protein ration did not appear. She describes how she calmed the men by remonstrating, "What about before we had a union? Why didn't you scream then? You didn't get eggs at your meal today. When that hap- pened before, none of you would dare speak up about it." It is only from conversations with Taller members that I know that this woman was a union leader; the tape indicates her position only implicitly - that is, through her narration of the above incident. Both women talk about political process not as authorities in this or that field, but as shapers of the revolutionary movement on the farm. They speak not only with one voice, but also in general terms as "makers of the revolution"- which is more important to the narrative than any designated social position. Both women can be mothers, union activ- ists, and participants in miliary defense. The combination of image and narrative here signals a great change in the lives of poor rural women. Both women are slight, feminine- looking. We notice a bracelet as the union organizer cleans her gun. But both are also leaders in the public life on their farm, with wisdom and a sense of history. The cook shed is a site for rifle maintenance; the cook is responsible for defense - indeed, a mother has organized the armed defense. As the militia organizer feeds her baby, she describes how she formed the militia with another person - a man - and how the two of them kept watch even before they had guns. Later she was trained as a militia instructor but will wait until her baby is three months old before returning to work. Militia practice provides the other set of images in La Dalia. Under another woman's instruction, the union organizer practices drill forma- tions with about twenty other persons of all ages. The main camera movement is tracking around the militia members, giving close-up de- tails of heads, hands, and military gear, and then revealing in long shot the people moving. Old men, a young woman wearing a flounced dress, the union organizer in uniform and little red shoes, several people with only frayed twine for rifle slings - all line up for instruction. The woman in the dress takes aim on one knee, then we see her lying prone on the ground for target practice, laughing self-consciously because of the pres- ence of the camera. These images convey a sense of how defense in Nicaragua is often maintained by ordinary people. The tape ends with a shot of the mother nursing her baby, saying, "I hope that all the things I dreamed of for myself will become this child's 339 Julia Lesage reality. I think that it is our children who will have a full sense of the revolution. Victory really belongs to them." All the Nicaraguan women I talked to believe in the sacredness of motherhood, and the revolution reinforces that notion. But in La Dalia we see how that ideology has shifted. It is no longer about mom at home. We see a woman without a man who is a military leader. She speaks as a mother when she talks about why she does what she does -she sees herself as building the revolution for generations to come. In the English-language version of the tape, these words appear over a frozen image of the young woman who has just told us about her life as a farmworkers' organizer: Fani Bodilla was killed in a contra attack on the agricultural complex, "La Dalia," a few months after this video was made. When I was in Managua in 1984, as members of the Taller showed me their work, I often heard similar words about someone who appeared before us on the video screen. Videomaker Amina Luna told me about how a nineteen-year-old farmwoman whom we both knew had been brutally murdered by the contras. She was part of a militia defending a farm; they had kept the contras at bay for fifteen hours before fall- ing. After being captured, she was multiply raped and finally dismem- bered. I felt devastated hearing this. Amina responded, "So did I until I thought about it more." She felt a oneness with the dead woman, and knew that she herself would fight in the same way, so she could not cry too long. I mention this incident because the English-language version of the tape creates a narrative climax and a heroine. For the Taller and espe- cially for the rural peoples who are often their subjects, the revolution is the hero. Death is ever present, but mothers give up their children and grandchildren to defend that revolution. This is particularly true of the organized working class, which the Taller's work represents. The Taller never sees the necessity to pick out one person's act of valor and foreground it. They know too much about how everyone's effort makes a life for them all. For the Taller and many poor people, this is not an abstraction. All their opportunities began with a revolution, which they fought for and constantly create. Not only do they share political con- sensus with their subjects, but their work also reflects a way of living with grace under pressure. La Dalia, like many of their tapes, begins and ends in medias res. It presents women living very much in the pres- ent; some of their activity conveys a sense of urgency, and some - especially the details of child care and domestic labor - seems timeless and full of hope. 340 Women Make Media Poetry and the Revolution At various points in La Dalia, a song comes up over im- ages, often in long shot, of the surrounding environment and people on the farm. The refrain goes, Always with the trees and the clouds, They recognize each other. They confront their own loneliness. Poetry is deeply rooted in Nicaraguan culture. The national anthem contains the obscure line, "Dawn stopped being a temptation." Subjec- tivity is obliquely expressed in La Dalia by the repetition of the above refrain, used as a segue to images of militia training. The mother who is a militia organizer knows the loneliness of the organizer as well as her own experience of fighting in the mountains as an adolescent. Yet the song does not state that it is about fighting as a guerrilla; it only implies it. The song is first used as a series of idyllic shots initiate a sequence detailing aspects of militia training. Green mountains, a man on a mule followed by a dog on a dusty road, children playing in muddy pools - these images lead to the first shot of militia training where the trainees run in the background as children play in the foreground. The song is used as a link twice more, tying together shots from the domestic sphere with shots of militia training. The last time it occurs, the refrain leads into the sequence at the waterfall where the militia organizer is washing her daughter's hair. She says, "And I hope that all the things I dreamed of for myself will be a reality for her." The videomakers freely used a ballad narrating the feelings of fighters in the early days of the revolution. It is sung by a man. At the time it was composed, it was perhaps about men more than women. In La Dalia, the song expresses an otherwise unstated aspect of these women's lives. They and the videomakers recognize each other's politi- cal commitment instantly, just as the guerrilla fighters do, and know that they all must deal with the same inner stress. That seems one in- terpretation of the words, "confronting one's loneliness." What at first appears to be a lack of emphasis on woman's subjectivity in the Taller's work turns out to be the shared subjectivity of videomakers and sub- jects whose social being is unified in their shared experience and goals. Two aspects of this song trouble me, however, and I sense a cul- tural gap that prevents me from being satisfied with this interpreta- tion. The first is the reference to being a guerrilla alone in nature, since 341 these women seem firmly a part of the social life of the farm. The sec- ond, related to the first, is the word "loneliness." I wonder if it expresses aspects of the women's subjectivity that are not part of ordinary social discourse in Nicaragua, and, in particular, if the decision to bear arms sets these women apart. I know that there are often conflicts in fami- lies where the wife wants to go into the reserves, and that common lore has it that such women "don't marry" (which never precludes mother- hood). No male or adult companionship of any sort is seen in these two women's lives. The song's refrain, with its concluding word, "soledad," not only conveys poetic ambiguity but also lends a haunting note, espe- cially since that music is used as a seque between images of military and domestic life. Conclusion All the women film and videomakers discussed here have as a specific goal to express the community to itself-be it the nation, the working class, or the community of women. Valeria Sarmiento, work- ing in exile, exposes an ideologically motivated set of behaviors and institutions that cut across class and national lines. A Man When He Is a Man breaks through conventional documentary form and decon- structs the patriarchal aspect of popular romantic cinema and music. In that sense, her film can speak effectively to an international audi- ence. She is one of the few Latin American women media makers who is highly conscious of the ideology of form and who does not take docu- mentary or fiction forms as givens. To the degree that she can general- ize about cultural experience, she analyzes certain deep structures that sustain sexual oppression that other women filmmakers have not yet broached in depth. And she does this with elegance and wit. However, A Man When He Is a Man still speaks from a middle-class point of view, never from that of women and families living on a sub- sistence level. Furthermore, it ignores any kind of anthropological specificity, so that it cannot show how specific historical and social cir- cumstances shape women's lives. Furthermore, Sarmiento's cinematic strategies in the editing reduce all the persons filmed to representative examples, and I suspect that they would reject the way their image and words are used in the finished film. Carmen Carrascal won the enthusiastic approval of its subject. It depicts with lyrical tenderness specific aspects of Carrascal's life that are organized in the editing to become generalizable. The film has the power to explain other farm women's lives. This is one of the most com- mon types of progressive cinema-verite film - the representative biogra- phy. What we do not know, however, is how far such cinematic repre- Julia Lesage 342 Women Make Media sentation is from autobiography or how a woman like Carmen Carrascal would depict her own milieu. Often only the women from the capital, bourgeois women, have filmmaking skills. Yet giving a camera to "the people" does not necessarily ensure that underrepresented groups of women would be accurately and effectively depicted in the mass media. For that, not only are adequate expressive means required, but also a political analysis and an analysis of dominant media forms. Other- wise, "homemade" media replicates the most common forms that people know, such as the educational documentary with its patriarchal, con- trolling, voice-over narration. Other arguments could be made here about self-reflexive versus transparent documentary forms, but that is not my major concern. A Man When He Is a Man deconstructs many aspects of popular media and exposes the ideology behind popular cultural forms; yet it is as opaque about class issues as Carmen Carrascal. And Carmen Carrascal cannot convey politically important variations in Latin American farm women's lives, as for example the role of migrant farm labor in El Sal- vador. La Dalia also uses a cinema-verite style, but its focus and videomaker-subject relation is different still from those of the other two works. La Dalia has ties to the feminist biography, but the main tie be- tween Taller members and the persons taped is their common commit- ment to the revolution. In this sense, of all three production processes I have examined, perhaps this example represents the closest bond be- tween the participants in front of and behind the camera. It is not that the Taller consults with their interviewees about the editing (they do not), but all who are involved see the project of making a videotape as constructing some aspect of social consciousness. The people inter- viewed trust the Taller to find appropriate expressive means. Further- more, public exhibition of the work, both on television and through the labor unions, brings both the videomakers and their subjects pride and social validation. As in many media collectives working on the left, the Taller's pro- duction process is rarely oriented to the specific needs and concerns of its women members. Yet I would assert that such groups often pro- duce "feminist" films and tapes. In La Dalia, for example, the subjects are women. But even more important, many of the Taller's tapes offer a model of what it looks like when women feel they can and should construct society as a whole. The revolution has not provided mate- rial gain or eradicated machismo, but it has given women, especially poor women, the chance to take social responsibility for the whole range of human experience, from maintaining families to facing and meting out death.41 343 Julia Lesage At the same time, both La Dalia and Carmen Carrascal take as a given the naturalness and sanctity of motherhood. The ideology of motherhood is never questioned. But in La Dalia in particular ques- tions remain unanswered: Who takes care of the children when the mothers are fighting? What are the structures of the extended family network by which women assist each other and make a limited rebel- lion against a father/husband's oppression possible? This is hinted at in Carmen Carrascal, in which Carrascal's children live with a family in a distant town so as to be able to attend school. The social struc- tures deriving from extended family networks are structures of politi- cal resistance in the Third World, but they may also be structures of oppression. Like the myth of romantic love, which as Sarmiento shows covers over some of men's worst behavior, the myth of woman's natu- ral need and capacity to be mothers may cover over other forms of oppression, for example, women's inferior status in the work place and their relegation to jobs like domestic service. Third World women mediamakers often deal explicitly with women's issues, usually tracing them out in a broad social context. They take up issues of sexual politics, especially rape, reproductive rights, and prostitution. They present the double day of salaried labor and house- work imposed on women who work outside the home. They make films and tapes about women's responsibilities for domestic life and the ten- sions that exist for women in the domestic sphere. They show women struggling to enter the public sphere on an equal footing with men. They frequently present an angry view of the sexual double standard. The women who speak in these films often speak with the voice of the dis- enfranchised and poor. Such media works speak to women viewers across national bound- aries. Even though I raise the caveat of cultural specificity, it is clear that these films are structured in ways that seek to convey generaliza- tions that we can call "feminist." Their wider distribution will create a more profound sense of a "women's community" that exists through- out the world. NOTES I wish to thank Anne Fischel and Jose Arroyo for their thoughtful critiques of an earlier draft of this essay. 1. The word feminist has pejorative connotations for many women of color in the United States and the socialist bloc, including Cuba and Nicaragua. Its use was extensively debated in the First Latin American and Caribbean Femi- nist Meeting in Bogota in 1981, where the participants voted by a narrow mar- gin to continue using the term and reclaim it from its bourgeois context. 344 Women Make Media The use of the word "feminist" to define the meeting was a political deci- sion and the result of much discussion. ... Many women in Latin Amer- ica are prejudiced against this word, which has been so distorted by male- dominated media and institutions. Some feminists felt that it would alienate women, especially the more marginalized ones. However, we have chosen to reclaim the term and identify ourselves as feminists.... Cer- tain political activists, in particular, felt that class struggle takes prece- dence over women's struggles. Other women also active in political par- ties did define themselves as feminists. All this brought out discussion about women's double oppression, the intertwining of class and gender oppression. One positive outcome of the meeting is that the feminist cause is becoming less alien and increasingly less frightening to the large number of women who passed from skepticism or ignorance to conviction after their encounter with feminism at the [Bogota] meeting. Lima Organizing Collective for the Second Meeting and ISIS Editorial Collec- tive, ISIS International Woman's Journal 1 (1984), 3-4. 2. I have written on this phenomenon in "Networking," Jump Cut 35 (1990). 3. DeeDee Halleck, "Women and the Media: The 1986 Havana Film Fes- tival," Afterimage 14, no. 8 (March 1987). 4. The limitations of this article must be acknowledged: it is written from the outside. I speak Spanish, make videos in Spanish, and am very concerned that Latin American women's media work achieve a wider audience in the United States. But even a U.S. critic who is tied to her subject by bonds of solidarity has the privilege of seeing films, traveling, and publishing in magazines and books that are read internationally - privileges that Third World women media makers often do not have. The very notion of studying "Third World" films elsewhere has to be approached with the same suspicion with which we view the tools and research of anthropologists. Within that skeptical context, hop- ing that this study will be of some use, I proceed. 5. Women Make Movies distributes A Man When He Is a Man and Car- men Carrasca along with a substantial number of films and videotapes by other Latin American women artists in a series called "Punto de Vista Latina." La Dalia is distributed along with other productions by Nicaraguan videomakers by XChange TV. Another series of tapes that includes many works made by women is an extensive collection of excerpts from Latin American television and progressive groups' grassroots video entitled Democracy in Communica- tion, distributed as a package that can be programmed over several nights of screenings. (See Guide to Distributors.) 6. Zuzana M. Pick, unpublished interview with Valeria Sarmiento, 1985, translation mine. I am grateful to Zuzana Pick, Debra Zimmerman, and Cath- erine Benamou for sharing their filmographies and files with me. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 345 Julianne Burton as predecessors to the new wave of Latin American fictional films that swelled in the 1960s, crested in the 1970s, and gathered renewed force in the 1980s. At its inception, this new cinema recognized one primary source of inspiration: Italian neorealism, a feature film movement acutely indebted in both its aesthetic and its mode of production to the documentary resurgence that accompanied World War II. In its theme, genesis, and testimonial impulse, in its location shoot- ing and its use of nonprofessional actors, Luis Bufiuel's Los olvidados (1950- his first major feature after moving to Mexico) is fully consis- tent with the precepts of neorealism. Four years later, in Cuba, a group of aspiring filmmakers collaborated on a medium-length documentary- style feature in the neorealist mold, El megano (The Charcoal Worker, 1954). The film's director, Julio Garcia Espinosa, and his assistant TomBs Gutierrez Alea, had both been students at Italy's Centro Speri- mentale a few years earlier. In Brazil the following year, Nelson Pereira dos Santos produced Rio, quarenta graus (1955), the first of a projected trilogy of fictional works shot in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro with the participation of many local residents. Pereira dos Santos, pioneering and prolific leader of Brazil's Cinema Novo movement, has often asserted that the movement would have been unthinkable without the Italian example. Fernando Birri's first feature, Los inundados (Flooded Out, 1962), again made with the collaboration of the students at the Docu- mentary Film School of Santa Fe, bears the neorealist stamp of another former student of Rome's Centro Sperimentale. In the early years of ICAIC, neorealist scriptwriter and theorist Cesare Zavattini would come to Cuba to collaborate on the first postrevolutionary feature, Julio Gar- cia Espinosa's Cuba baila (1960). In Argentina from the late 1940s through the 1960s, in Cuba from the founding of ICAIC (the Institute of Cinematic Art and Industry) in 1959, and in Brazil and Chile during the 1960s, aspiring feature filmmakers got their start making documentary shorts. Leading his- torians of Brazil's Cinema Novo note that it arose largely within a docu- mentary mode of production. Certain key Cinema Novo directors pro- duced influential documentaries at the inception of their careers, among them Arnaldo Jabor (Opinito Pu blica [Public Opinion], 1967) and Leon Hirszman (Maioria Absoluta [Absolute Majority], 1964). Others like Glauber Rocha and Ruy Guerra would wait until later to try their hand at documentary. In Argentina, the "publicity generation" that included Fernando Solanas began their careers in advertising. In Chile, where incipient film activity was centered in university film societies, univer- sity control of major national television channels gave young direc- tors of documentaries and fictional shorts unaccustomed access to a mass audience. Consistent with a policy established at its inception, 22 Julia Lesage 11. Anonymous interview with Sarmiento, "Amerique Latine: les machos pi,ges par une camera 'invisible,"' Marie-Claire, October 1981. 12. Pick interview. 13. Fran oise Aude, "Entretien avec Valeria Sarmiento," Positif 296 (Octo- ber 1985), translation mine. 14. Ibid. 15. Charge d'Affaires Fabio Rosabal, letter of 13 December 1982 to Pierre Desgraupes, director of Channel 2, extracted in Le Monde, 29 December 1982; rpt. in Aude interview. 16. Aud6 interview. 17. Pick interview. 18. Julia Lesage, "Women's Rage," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1988), rpt. from Jump Cut 31 (1985). 19. Marcela Toro, "The Macho Man Exposed-in Costa Rica," Open City (Montreal), 1, no. 4 (April-May 1984). 20. In French and Spanish reviews of the film, this woman is referred to as "the prostitute." I could find no indication in either the mise-en-scene or the woman's words to justify that label. I wonder if she was referred to as a pros- titute because she spoke openly about being sexually active. If she is a pros- titute, then the film's condemnation of both her brother and the women in her family gains in irony, since the family's behavior would be considered more "nor- mal" in social terms. 21. Pick interview. 22. Ibid. 23. Anonymous interview. 24. Peter Wollen, "The Two Avant-Gardes," Studio Internationa4 November- December 1985. 25. Zuzana Pick, "Chilean Cinema: Ten Years in Exile (1973-83),"Jump Cut 32 (1987). 26. Pick interview. 27. Aude interview; I analyze how the incest theme may have a "hook" for women viewers of D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms in "Artful Racism, Artful Rape," Jump Cut 26 (December 1981); rpt. Jump Cut: Hollywood, Politics, and Counter Cinema, ed. Peter Steven (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 1985) and Home Is Where the Heart Is, ed. Christine Gledhill (London: British Film Institute, 1986). 28. Quoted in Jacqueline Mouesca, "Valeria Sarmiento, Cineasta Chilena: La Otra Lectura de Corin Tellado, desde Paris," Apsi (Santiago, Chile), December 2-26, 1985. 29. Toro interview. 30. See Julia Lesage, "The Hegemonic Female Fantasy," Film Reader 5 (1982). 31. Chuck Kleinhans, "Form, Politics, Makers and Contexts: Basic Issues for a Theory of Radical Political Documentary," in Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Political Documentary, ed. Thomas Waugh (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984). 346 Women Make Media 32. "From One Country to the Next: Sara Montgomery Interviews Colom- bian Filmmaker, Dora Ramirez," Screen 26, nos. 3-4 (May-August 1985), 99- 100. This is the major source of my information about the group's production process, along with an interview with Sara Bright by Isabel Guisan, "Les films de Sara," 24 Heures (Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland), 27 May 1982. 33. Betamax video recorders have become a major mode of media distribu- tion in Third World rural areas. See Julia Lesage, interview with Daniel Solis, "Betamax and Super-8 in Revolutionary El Salvador," Jump Cut 29 (February 1984). 34. Julia Lesage, "The Feminist Documentary - Politics and Aesthetics," in'Show us Life,' ed. Waugh, discusses biographical documentary form and the relation of the biographical documentary to the women's movement. 35. Angela Davis, "The Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves," Black Scholar, December 1971. 36. "Women in Agriculture: World Survey of the Role of Women in Develop- ment," Report to the Secretary General, World Conference to Review and Ap- praise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women, Kenya, Nairobi, 15-26 July 1985. See also Lisa Leghorn and Katherine Parker, Women's Worth: Sexual Economics and the World of Women (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). The statistics are outdated, but the book provides a useful analysis of the interconnecting issues. 37. Ibid. 38. "We worked for two years on the script in every possible way. We had the whole script on cards and used to play, as with playing cards, trying out every possibility until we finally came to what the film is" (Montgomery inter- view). 39. I had a similar experience in taping interviews with women in Nica- ragua in 1981, knowing that my audience would want to know how the revo- lution dealt with homosexuality. "I don't know any homosexuals," was the re- sponse I invariably received. However, at other points the women expressed gratitude for the interview, particularly for questions like "Would you compare your daughter's life with yours when you were her age?" It seems that a dis- cussion focused on U.S. feminist concerns let the Nicaraguan women I spoke to crystallize many of their own thoughts. 40. I took them to be the same person even after I had analyzed the film. Martha Wallner of XChange TV pointed out the error, and I found out more about the two women when I talked to Amina Luna of the Taller. The same kind of narrative structure is used in the film made by Native American film- maker Alanis Obomsawin, Mother of Many Children, a documentary made with the Canadian Film Board. In that film, the daily life experiences of women and girls from many Canadian tribes are cut together in one uninterrupted flow and with no comment about the change of locale or of the group being depicted. 41. The women in the reserve army in Nicaragua do not go into combat, but in rural areas all women in arms do. And the contras' vengeance on women in uniform is torture of a specifically sexual nature. 347 PART IV Beyond the Documentary/ Fiction Dichotomy 17 BAY OF PIGS: BERTOLT BRECHT MEETS JOHN WAYNE John Hess This essay discusses interacting fictional and documentary strategies in one of the Cuban Film Institute's most Brechtian works. Rather than rewriting a piece penned more than ten years ago, John Hess has chosen to incorporate a commentary that assesses his initial views in light of his subsequent experience in - and expanding knowledge of- Cuba and Central America. Nobody can stand above the warring classes, for nobody can stand above the human race. Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring classes. Thus for art to be "unpolitical" means only to ally itself with the "ruling" group. - Bertolt Brecht MANUEL HERRERA'S Girdn (Bay of Pigs, 1973), is a docu- mentary about the Cuban victory over the CIA-trained and equipped Cuban exile mercenaries at Bahia de los Cochinos in mid-April 1961. This seventy-two-hour war, which ended on the beach called Playa Gir6n, failed to defeat the Cuban Revolution. Between the preliminary air raids, carried out on April 15 by American B-26 bombers, and the actual landing of troops two days later, Fidel Castro declared the Cuban Revolution the first socialist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. The Cuban people rallied behind Castro and the military (regular and quickly called-up militias), easily defeating the mercenaries, many of whom had owned a great deal of property in prerevolutionary Cuba. The wide-screen format of Bay of Pigs indicates that the film as- pires to be something "larger" than a conventional documentary. At times it seems that we are watching Air Force or some other Holly- wood product of Korean War vintage. A handsome young man clambers up the ladder of a fighter plane; he adjusts his helmet and harness. The 351 cockpit cover slides to, the crew pulls the blocks from the wheels, and the sleek jet fires down the runway into the early morning sky. This fascinating, provocative film attempts to mesh documentary footage with historical reenactments shot and edited in the style of the Holly- wood war film. The documents are actual footage shot by combat cameramen plus archival war footage, still photographs, maps, narration, radio speeches, and interviews. The reenactments, on the other hand, use hand-held, subjective camera shots; multiple perspective, quick editing (sometimes approaching Eisensteinian montage); emotion-laden music, and a typi- cal war film sound track. But even more than the techniques, the struc- ture and content of these reenactments resemble those of the fictional war film. Isolated units engage in fire fights, fighter pilots exchange frantic radio messages, reaction shots are inserted into continuous ac- tion, and the activities of individual heroes are highlighted -"Here's where I was when it started. Here's what I did." Unlike Costa-Gavras, Pontecorvo, Rosi, Petri, and the creators of recent German and French historical reenactments, Manuel Herrera and his collaborators do not obscure the difference between actuality and fiction, between documentary and reenactment, between then and now, but heighten it through alienation techniques like those developed by Brecht and Godard. These intrusions supply some of the best mo- ments in the film. A small unit is pinned down by a mercenary machine- gun emplacement. The scene is a reenactment narrated by an actual veteran of the battle who appears on the screen and tells his own story in voice-over. This soldier grabs a grenade from a comrade and crawls down a drainage ditch alongside the road that separates the two em- battled groups. In the voice-over he talks about his fear and about how he had never used a grenade before. Once in position, he puts the gre- nade pin in his mouth and pulls. Nothing happens. He had seen the technique in movies, he explains, but it doesn't work-he would have pulled out all his teeth. Finally, he primes the grenade and wipes out the mercenaries' stronghold. In another reenactment, Marta Chang, a Sino-Cuban woman, vol- unteers to take a message back to headquarters from a group that has been cut off by the enemy. It is night. She and a male companion think they are surrounded by the mercenaries. She explains in voice-over how she tried to eat the letter because she had seen it done in the movies, but, she laments, the letter was a long one. These allusions to Hollywood films are double-edged. They serve to distance us from the reenactments, to show us that they are staged fictions, but they are also sly digs at the United States, whose trained mercenaries are the villains of the piece. By showing that many of the John Hess 352 Bay of Pigs: Bertolt Brecht Meets John Wayne Realism's requisite artifice: a production shot from Girdn (Manuel Herrera, 1973). Credit: ICAIC conventions of the Hollywood war film are fallacious, Bay of Pigs in- tends to shake its audience's confidence in the whole ideological base of these films. Hollywood depictions of John Wayne's heroic ability to pull out a grenade pin with his teeth have no bearing on real life in which the Cuban army can easily defeat U.S.-sponsored troops. Bay of Pigs celebrates Cuba's hard-won independence from neocolonial domination by the United States; at the same time, it declares its own freedom from Hollywood's cinematic hegemony while betraying a genuine - if critical - admiration for its effectiveness. These two scenes and their multifaceted implications show how complex and freshly experimental this film is. Several shots of ICAIC-labeled vehicles and equipment are also self- reflexive devices that denote the film's humorous attitudes. Some of the same ICAIC cameramen who shot segments of the documentary footage shot the reenacts twelve years later. The director of photog- raphy, Julio Simoneau, was a combat cameraman during the invasion. Nowadays perfect cinema - technically and artistically masterful-is al- most always reactionary cinema. -Julio Garcia Espinosa 353 Much of this experimental complexity derives from the influence of Julio Garcia Espinosa who co-scripted the film with Herrera. In his now famous essay, "For an Imperfect Cinema" (1969), quoted above, and in films such as The Adventures ofJuan Quin Quin (1967) and Third World- Third World War (1971), this influential figure in Cuban film and popular culture argues for a rough, unfinished cinema using a me- lange of genres, including documentary, to portray developmental pro- cesses rather than pat results of analysis.' Certainly this effort to counter the apparent seamlessness of Hollywood movies and the slick surfaces of European art films has been a powerful influence on Cuban cinema. Tomas Gutierrez Alea mixed documentary footage into Memo- ries of Underdevelopment (1968) in novel, questioning ways that both imitated and challenged the European art film. Sara G6mez blended fiction and documentary so closely that they cannot be separated in One Way or Another (1975-79). Sergio Giral deconstructed a nineteenth- century Cuban abolitionist novel in The Other Francisco (1975), alter- nating between melodramatic and documentary styles. More recently, Pastor Vega has made sociological problem films modeled on soap operas. These works -foremost among them Portrait of Teresa (1979) and Habanera (1984)- question certain aspects of mass culture. Their plots remain unsolved in order to generate public debate on issues of sexual politics. Bay of Pigs clearly falls into this experimental category. It is less a mix or even an interweaving of documentary and fiction than a nar- rative that incorporates a vast array of narrative techniques from both documentary and fiction films, held together by a simple historical plot line and a sound track that often helps to unite is disparate parts. The film's hybrid format questions the ability of both the historical docu- mentary and the conventional war film to convey accurately what hap- pens in battle. The precredit sequence is one example of how the filmmakers tell a story. The opening title-"April 15, 1961, 6:00 A.M."-states a spe- cific, historical date and time, claiming, in the mode of documentaries, historical veracity. Yet such specific temporal indicators also appear in fiction films based on (or pretending to be based on) real events - for example, Battle of Algiers - shot like a documentary; and Midnight Express - shot like an adventure film. In wildly unstable hand-held shots, we see smoke, people running, and planes bombing the airport. The multiple perspective of the edited shots, the hand-held camera, and even the intercut war footage tend to suggest a fictional war movie. And, as is typical of fiction films, we move from general, establishing shots to close and medium shots of an individual protagonist/participant, Captain Alberto Fernatndez (iden- John Hess 354 Bay of Pigs: Bertolt Brecht Meets John Wayne tified by a title). His first-person voice-over account of his experiences, in past tense, controls this segment. He drives through the confusion out to the runway, gets into his T-33 jet trainer, and takes off. This movement from crowded confusion to specific, heroic action also typi- fies fiction filmmaking. That Captain Fernafndez forgot his car keys in the excitement and had to run back into his house to get them under- cuts the usual heroics of the conventional war film. Throughout the film the actions are heroic, yet the heroes whom we see retelling what hap- pened turn out to be ordinary people. The past-tense voice-over narration of events, however, strongly indicates historical reenactment or documentary, since fiction films usually use dialogue or internal monologue, both in present tense. As FernAndez takes off, we hear Fidel's voice say, "Patria o Muerte, Ven- ceremos!" A montage of still images shows Fidel addressing a huge crowd. Here we are clearly in the realm of documentary - an actual speech and news photos. The immediate postcredit sequence provides a somewhat different mix. Visually, it combines documentary footage and still photos to show the CIA preparations for the invasion. The narration, however, describes in considerable detail what we are seeing in a lightly mocking, superior tone of voice, followed by a comic-martial rendition of "I've Been Work- ing on the Railroad." Clearly, this narration pokes fun at and belittles what it calls "the longest and most expensive operation in CIA history." While unquestionably documentary, this sequence makes no pretense at neutrality or objectivity. And the inclusion of Captain FernAndez in his car further breaks down the documentary by either introducing a clearly fictional element into the documentary or drawing the docu- mentary into the fiction. This productive, thought-provoking contra- diction persists throughout the film, testifying to the power and ap- peal of Garcia Espinosa's notion of imperfect cinema and the creative ingenuity of Cuban filmmaking during this period. Bay of Pigs' many alienation effects ask the audience to reflect on the film they are watching and on war films in general, while also pro- viding space for Cubans of the period to insert their own recollections of this relatively recent event into the film. But the film also testifies to the dangers involved in borrowing fictional techniques from Holly- wood films and strengthens the claim of Godard, Gorin, the Cahiers du Cin6ma group, and others, that form has no neutral existence. In their view, all aspects of film form- types of shots, modes of editing, particular camera movements - imply a certain view of the world. Since most film techniques were developed by bourgeois filmmakers, they in- evitably express, according to this view, bourgeois values. While there is much in this opinion that I find unacceptable, the presence of these 355 Social Documentary in Latin America Echoes of Italian neorealism in a Cuban swamp: El megano (Julio Garcia Espinosa, with TomBs Gutierrez Alea, 1955). Credit: Courtesy ICAIC the Cuban Film Institute continues to accord privileged status to docu- mentary production and training; aspiring feature filmmakers serve a documentary apprenticeship that may last a decade or more. The situation in Cuba was markedly different from that of the rest of the continent. The armed struggle gave way to organizational and ideological battles. The first intimations that the fidelistas might also be carrying cinema along in their revolutionary wake came in the mid- sixties with a little six-minute compilation film called Now! Its maker, Santiago Alvarez, a music archivist at a Havana television station under Batista, became editor of the Latin American Weekly Newsreel under the Castro government. Like Dziga Vertov, his counterpart in post- 23 John Hess Heroic self-parody: Girdn. Credit: ICAIC "bourgeois" forms does appear to undercut this film's revolutionary content. Bourgeois filmmakers from Griffith to Hitchcock and Truffault de- veloped these techniques (for example, invisible editing, subjective camera movements, constructing scenes from footage shot from differ- ent perspectives) the better to manipulate audiences emotionally by in- volving viewers in the action, by drawing them into the film world. The result is to deny the audience any access to a rational analysis of their situation inside (and by extension outside) the theater. In a 1974 inter- view in Cine Cubano (nos. 86-88), Manuel Herrera spoke directly about this problem and about his own intentions: "For a long time, capitalist cinema taught us to look at films, but only that: to look. It never taught us to think. The narrative structures were organized in such a way as to prevent the spectator from thinking, to prevent any possible reflec- tion. It is up to us, as Lenin said, to assimilate and to transform every- thing of value the culture has developed." But in Bay of Pigs, the aliena- tion techniques are not strong enough: the "fictional" segments of Bay of Pigs sweep the audience up and push it to accept a glorification of war, of tanks, guns, and planes, of male prowess and bellicosity, of a 356 Bay of Pigs: Bertolt Brecht Meets John Wayne "that's-the-way-it-has-to-be" attitude toward death in combat, by pre- senting war and its paraphernalia in a visually exciting way. Admittedly, anyone who thinks very carefully about it, who com- pares Cuba under Batista, Uncle Sam, and the Mafia with present-day Cuba, must rejoice in the Cuban victory at Playa Gir6n. But does that mean that we must accept the John Wayne mentality and buy into the glorification of arms simply because they serve a revolutionary end? In "For an Imperfect Cinema" Garcia Espinosa argues for showing the developmental process rather than simply the results of analysis. He says that imperfect cinema is "the opposite of a cinema principally dedicated to celebrating results, the opposite of a self-sufficient and con- templative cinema, the opposite of a cinema which 'beautifully illus- trates' ideas and concepts which we already possess."2 As a film of cele- bration, Bay of Pigs fails to "achieve imperfection" in this political, analytical way. It presents the experiences of certain, perhaps typical, individuals and seems to claim that these individual acts of heroism added up to a victory for Cuba (just what Hollywood war films say). The typical Hollywood war film shows a group of ordinary American citizens who in the course of combat distinguish themselves (or don't in some cases) by heroic actions and develop a strong group conscious- ness. Their individual concerns melt away as they merge into one pa- triotic group. Bay of Pigs performs basically the same operation ex- cept that the various alienating devices and the reenactments question and undermine heroic behavior as somehow special. In Bay of Pigs there is a disjuncture between showing the artifice of the narration (the reenactments stand out very clearly as reenact- ments) while encouraging the audience to get caught up in the heroics of a selected number of representative combatants. The film lacks an analysis of the forces behind mobilization both in Cuba and in the United States. Once the emotional rather than the analytical method of film- making is accepted, the eye becomes more important than the brain. Thus, the visually interesting exploits of a few fighter pilots are em- phasized and the mobilization of factory workers, the supplying of the defense forces, the participation of women and black Cubans are prac- tically ignored. We are told that, contrary to American expectations, the Cuban people rallied around their government; but nowhere in the film is this statement demonstrated. We see one still photograph of crowds listening to a speech by Fidel Castro on the eve of the war. Other- wise, we see only the regular military (most of the men interviewed were veterans of the guerrilla war against Batista) and the militia carrying out their assigned tasks. Clearly, many of the fighters were militiamen, quickly called up, and in one scene we see them brought to the front in commandeered buses. But we never see the process of this mobiliza- 357 John Hess The lasting appeal of the war film: hands-on action footage from Gir6n: Credit: ICAIC tion, only its results. The film leaves the participation of the civilian population unexamined. One funny sequence that details the comic re- actions of an aged peasant to the war strengthens the feeling that the civilian population did not participate or fully understand. Except for a few eyewitnesses, no civilians are interviewed. Not only does the film, by default, present an elitist view of those who participated in turning back the invasion, but also, again by de- fault, it presents a racist and sexist one. Although Cuba has a large black population, the only nonwhite specifically mentioned in the film (a mulatto) tried to run away after he was wounded. An old man physi- cally restrained him and persuaded him that it was more dangerous to run than to stay.3 Several women civilians who witnessed part of the fighting tell their stories. One, a literacy teacher, tells how one Cuban militiaman was captured by the mercenaries. An older peasant woman describes how several people were killed near her. These women, and the many other civilian witnesses they represent, are clearly a valuable resource for learning what happened during those seventy-two hours. Yet their effect in the film is to reinforce the notion that men do and women watch. 358 Bay of Pigs: Bertolt Brecht Meets John Wayne Marta Chang, the one active woman, does not alter this effect. She car- ries no weapon. One man pushes her head down; another helps her up. We never see her complete her letter-carrying mission. It must not have been very important, we are compelled to conclude. Because of its emotional impact, the film's Hollywood aspect domi- nates the documentary component. Bay of Pigs ends up glorifying the same thing Hollywood war films glorify, the military establishment. It isolates a military moment from history, and from the social, politi- cal, and economic totality of Cuba in 1961. I believe that it is much harder to "assimilate and transform everything of value" in bourgeois culture than Herrera and Garcia Espinosa seem to think. The action- war film is perhaps one of the most reactionary of Hollywood genres - as Apocalypse Now and Platoon, with all their liberal, antiwar preten- sions, amply demonstrate. Nonetheless, Bay of Pigs remains an in- triguing and valuable experiment. NOTES This is an expanded version of "Bay of Pigs: Event into Concept," Jump/Cut 4 (November-December 1974). Going back ten years to refurbish and update what was originally a quickly written review has been an interesting experi- ence. At the time I had seen only a few Cuban films, knew little about Cuban cinema, and was politically and emotionally wrapped up in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Since then I have been to Cuba, where I have seen a great number of Cuban films and gotten to know many of the principals at ICAIC, and I have taught courses and written articles on Cuban film. I subsequently spent six weeks in Nicaragua, where I lived with people very much like the poor peasants in this film and came to know at close range the effects of the CIA's effort to reinstall reactionary murderers who were overthrown by their own people. Considering all this, I am pleasantly surprised to find that I still agree with most of what I wrote then. I have added the section on Garcia Espinosa's no- tion of imperfect cinema and have greatly toned down my critique of the film's John Wayneism. In the last ten years I have come to appreciate the important empowering effect of military imagery for Third World people. I have come to see with Frantz Fanon that colonialism is a terrible form of violence imposed and maintained by violence. I have studied and seen first-hand the life-giving, liberating, and empowering effect of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the viciousness and hypocrisy of the U.S.-sponsored campaign of terror against that country. Even though I remain uncomfortable with exaggerated, roman- ticized images of military prowess and posturing, seeing them as too often part of an antifeminist, homophobic, death-oriented culture, I also see violent revo- lution and armed self-defense as essential to liberation, growth, and progress in many parts of the world. For anyone to require nonviolence on the part of 359 John Hess the Sandinistas (or Cubans or Salvadoran rebels) as a prerequisite for support is to ask them passively to surrender themselves and their children to destruc- tion at the hands of a vicious and immoral reaction. There is a great difference between an army, conscripted or volunteer, trained to dominate other people and an armed populace determined to maintain their freedom at all costs. I want to thank Gary Crowdus of Documentary Associates' Cinema Guild, 1697 Broadway, New York, NY 10019 (212) 682-0730, for providing a study- print of Bay of Pigs. 1. Julio Garcia Espinosa, "For an Imperfect Cinema," trans. Julianne Bur- ton, Jump/Cut 20 (May 1979), 24-26. See also Anna Marie Taylor et al., "Im- perfect Cinema, Brecht, and The Adventures ofJuan Quin Quin," ibid., pp. 26- 29. Garcia Espinosa became the head of ICAIC in 1982. 2. Garcia Espinosa, "For an Imperfect Cinema," p. 26. 3. Several readers have disagreed with this point, and I tried to check it out when I viewed the film again recently on a Steenbeck. Admittedly, the Cuban population ranges from Caucasian through Indian and Asian to Negro, so clear distinctions are not easy. On reviewing the film, I see that more of the speakers are perhaps mulatto than I originally thought. Yet since most of the "stars" of the film are at the light end of the spectrum and the one obvious "coward" is Negroid, my overall opinion of the film's racial politics remains unchanged. 360 18 IRACEMA: TRANSCENDING CINEMA VERITE Ismail Xavier A Brazilian critic here reintroduces the question of the referent into the ongoing discussion of cinematic - and specifically, documentary - mediations, seeking to go beyond the ontological agnosticism of de- constructive criticism. Methods of registering appearances on film vary, he argues, and variations in these modes of production and rep- resentation exert different effects on lived phenomena. Xavier analyzes a fictional film that foregrounds its documentary-style mediations, acknowledging rather than concealing the process of representation and thereby creating an unusual internal dialogue between social mi- lieu and staged action. He traces the impulse toward documentary- style "authentication" in Latin American cinema from postwar Italian neorealism, with its emphasis on creating continuity between theatri- cal performance and natural environment, through the discontinuous, montage-based, "post-Godardian" cinema of the 1970s. He argues that Bodansky's and Senna's strategy in Iracema is yet again some- thing else: the aggressive, estranging intervention of the lead actor into observed (unstaged) social contexts; the "contamination of brute experience with theater. "Like many contributors to this collection, Xavier refuses to separate textual from contextual strategies. He con- tends that Iracema, an independent production financed in part by West German television and suppressed for five years in Brazi4 is an "allegory of conservative modernization" in which "social, economic and cultural domination are not only the theme of the discourse but the organizing principle, the very process at the center of the mise- en-scene." BEGINNING IN the late sixties and continuing into the seventies, film theorists launched an attack on the premises of cinematic illusionism, striving to demonstrate a radical discontinuity between image and reality. Filmmakers and critics concerned with ideological 361 Ismail Xavier critique felt compelled to eliminate all residues of Bazinian phenome- nology and realism in the Kracauer tradition from political cinema, discarding any claim of legitimacy for the old belief in the special vo- cation of the medium for revealing the truth about the world. Decon- structive criticism, the most radical manifestation of this theoretical anti-illusionism, saw no essential difference between fiction and docu- mentary, and underlined the condition of cinematic image and sound as facts within the realm of language. Fiction and documentary, as two distinct modes, would each imply specific rhetorical ploys, but in terms of truth value, there would be no distinction in nature between the re- production on the screen of staged or spontaneous actions. The battle against the idea that cinema points to something or shows what is es- sentially real was symptomatically expressed in linguistic metaphors according to which a film "speaks" or "discourses," metaphors implying that cinematic image and sound bear no other connections with things than those which are proper to words. That they indeed have other con- nections makes the discussion of documentary in particular more chal- lenging when we regard the organized filmic material as discourse. Of course, one need not deploy the entire conceptual arsenal of de- constructive criticism to characterize the diverse mediations in docu- mentary film- to demonstrate, for example, that the editing process can connect sound in the form of applause to the image of a given po- litical leader delivering a speech, thereby creating a false impression of support. Many processes of mystification (through connotative de- vices, not blatant falsification) use composition and editing to lend specific meaning to the empirical fact registered by the camera, as in the opening sequence of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will where the ftihrer's appearance out of the sky acquires mythical overtones. Both textual analyses and our knowledge about film language con- firm the claims of the various theoretical anti-illusionisms, but once we have formulated the necessary critique of realist dogma, those of us who are concerned with cinema as a semiological phenomenon should not insist on a new dogmatism, on a kind of absolute negation of the documentary dimension of cinematic image/sound. We know that the image on the screen betrays a "way of seeing," that there is a subject behind it as well as a language governing its configuration. But image and sound imply different modes of production involving specific cir- cumstances and variable methods of registering the appearances of the world on filmic material. Film practice sometimes exploits the "captur- ing" of images as an open-ended game based on the interaction between the filmmaker's gesture and lived phenomena. This interaction displaces the question of representation in film, although it in no way eliminates it. The fact that cinema verite partisans carry the consequences of this 362 Iracema: Transcending Cinema Verite process too far, forgetting the question of representation, should not prevent us from acknowledging that the peculiar presence of the re- ferent in cinema forms part of the game and must be considered in our analysis of filmic discourse. There are certain cases, such as the film I am about to examine, where the here-and-now of the shooting become not a naive assertion of cin- ema verite techniques as an unmediated explanation of the world and its deep logic, but a piece of "authentication" inserted in a broader rheto- ric that sustains its force on the legitimate referential weight of what is presented on the screen. My purpose here is to describe and define a specific example of a lucid cinematic strategy that enhances the docu- ment while simultaneously acknowledging the process of representation. Iracema, a film made by Brazilians Jorge Bodansky and Orlando Senna in 1974-75, is a good example of how documentary footage that is presented as an actual interaction between filmmaker and social mi- lieu can produce original effects when combined with staged action that develops fiction and characters in a style having little in common with traditional realism. Iracema derives from and enters into dialogue with a rich tradition of cinema verite in Brazilian cinema that began in the early sixties and reached its peak between 1965 and 1967. Two leading examples are Geraldo Sarno's Viramundo (1965), which deals with the experience of immigrants from the Northeast in the southern city of S o Paulo (see chapter 11) and Arnaldo Jabor's feature-length Opinido Pdblica (1967), which investigates the life and opinions of Rio de Janeiro's conservative petty bourgeoisie. Iracema was shot in the Amazon during a period when the ruling military regime used both right-wing nationalism and severe media cen- sorship in their efforts to project an image of internal control and ac- celerated economic development - the now infamous "Brazilian economic miracle." The old anthems extolling the country's natural abundance were replayed in a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign that turned every geographical site into material evidence of the country's potential as a world power. The construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway bisecting the world's largest expanse of undeveloped jungle was one of the most powerful symbols of development, modernization, and the victory of civilization over hostile nature. The Amazon was des- ignated a National Security Zone the better to accomplish this feat. To document the actual process of the region's brutal transformation on film would obviously provide an invaluable counterweight to the rhe- torical constructs put forth by the regime. But Bodansky and Senna went beyond reportage to compose a multileveled masterpiece that is simultaneously specific and general, documentary and allegorical- a synthetic view of the entire process of "conservative modernization" 363 Ismail Xavier in the Third World. The authoritarian regime acknowledged the film's critical force and banned Iracema. Brazilian audiences were allowed to see it only in 1980, as a result of the political process called abertura (opening up) that preceded the return to civilian democratic rule. Given the fact that documentation is of great relevance to the film's project, the filmmakers take particular care in the authentication of image and sound registered in situ. Filming a gigantic manmade forest fire, they use a long tracking shot covering a huge extension of land to make clear that the fire's dimensions on the screen are not the result of manipulative editing. When shooting the religious festival in the regional capital of Belem, with thousands of the faithful congregating under the watchful eyes of church officials and police, the filmmakers behave like news reporters who mingle with the crowd. The hand-held camera fixes images and the tape recorder registers speeches in a frag- mented depiction of the procession. Here, in contrast to the preceding example, the editing process comes to the fore and the obvious discon- tinuity points to the fact that the producers of image and sound are limited beings who, far from controlling the event, capture it only par- tially, exhibiting irregular movements and other flaws that lend au- thenticity to the account of that specific here-and-now. With "authenticity" one of its basic drives, Iracema in its documen- tary mode emphasizes the actual extent of the film crew's travels along the Trans-Amazonian Highway and its side roads. Their itinerary cre- ates a collection of empirical data that provide a vigorous profile of the enormous natural space defiled by the impulses of progress. Ecological disaster and the exploitation of man by man define an institutionalized hell whose end product is no more than a detour through the core of the jungle leading from nowhere to nowhere. Images and dialogue are compatible with a view of the highway project as designed to create a privileged setting for the "free investment" of distant capital (from southern Brazil and abroad) that organizes the intensified exploitation of the labor force, illegal land seizures, contraband in precious hard- woods, and new kinds of circulation of both goods and human beings that bring new and destructive rhythms to the Amazon region. Inter- estingly, the documentary aspects of Iracema do not bear exclusive responsibility for sustaining this point of view. The overall circulation of goods and human beings captured by em- pirical observation with camera and tape recorder includes two par- ticular figures that the accumulation of episodes eventually brings to the foreground: Iracema (Edna di Cassia) and Tiao Brasil Grande (Paulo Cesar Pereio). Their interaction weaves together an otherwise random succession of incidents, images, and "documentation," converting a simple collection of data into a linear succession of moments within the 364 Consumerism conquers the Amazon: Iracema (Jorge Bodansky, 1975). Credit: Stopfilm, Inc. Julianne Burton Arresting images of the underclass: Maioria absoluta (Leon Hirszman, 1964). Credit: Courtesy Cinemateca Brasileira revolutionary Russia (whose work he did not view until his career as a film editor was well advanced), Alvarez was charged with assembling an amorphous collection of bits of still and moving footage- borrowed from archives, rescued from oblivion, pirated off Miami television broad- casts, or caught on the fly by photographers whom, initially, he could in no sense "direct" - into a coherent, meaningful whole for circulation throughout the island. Alvarez revitalized a moribund format with wit, passion, humor, graphic ingenuity, and a commitment to drawing con- nections where conventional newsreel formats erected walls of dissocia- tion; thus he forged the newsreel into an effective and popular tool for unification, edification, and entertainment. In addition-like Vertov before him- Alvarez revealed himself to be a masterfully innovative documentarist in his own right. In films like Now.' and Hanoi, martes 13 (Hanoi, Tuesday the Thirteenth, 1967), LBJ (1968), Despegue a las 18:00 (Takeoff at Eighteen Hundred Hours), and 79primaveras (Seventy-nine Springtimes, 1969), Alvarez elevated the collage film to a pinnacle of artistic expressiveness and political im- pact. In the intervening decades since Vertov brilliantly assembled "fragments of actuality" into a cohesive vision of national endeavor and 24 Ismail Xavier progression of personal lives. With these characters and their inter- action, the film develops its narrative according to a classic pattern - the fall of the innocent, precipitated by that person's abandonment of an isolated community close to nature in favor of the "civilized world"- while simultaneously commenting critically on that pattern. The opening sequence of Iracema's boat ride through the calm Ama- zonian backwaters to the thronging port of Belem becomes in retrospect a fugitive moment of peace never again recaptured. Once she goes ashore in Belem, she gets swallowed up in an urban miasma. Her moderniza- tion is synonymous with her prostitution. She absorbs a succession of increasingly profound humiliations with the fatalistic conviction, "My destiny is to be 'on the road."' Her desire to incorporate herself within a larger world results in a loss of identity without compensations. In- dignity becomes her sign and commodity her form. Tiao Brasil Grande comes from the prosperous and highly developed South to enhance the circulation of goods. He hauls wood and women along the highway in the hope of getting rich and never returning to this "end of the world." He feels superior to Iracema and disdainful of her innocence. She is a casual diversion who quickly becomes an incon- venience to be summarily deposited at the next stop. Transported first by Tiao's truck and then by others, Iracema circulates like lumber and livestock; her useful life in the sphere of market values follows the usual pattern of any commodity. In the final scene, a desolate open space frames the image of abandonment: alone in the middle of the highway, one foot bare and the other shod in an ill-fitting unlaced boot, Iracema looks helplessly after Tiao's receding truck and the camera that recedes with it. Her cycle as a marketable commodity is complete; Brasil Grande has no further use for her. From beginning to end, this is a pitiless narrative, displaying a typi- cally naturalistic crudeness. The deterioration of appearance is ironic because the visible signs of social bankruptcy are exaggerated, and their grotesque theatricality functions as an alienation effect beside which the images captured in situ acquire a new meaning. Though the stage of this social drama is a new one in the context of Brazilian cultural conventions, the nature of the narrative as cliche is not disguised. Far from being a sign of weakness, this use of cliche is one of the film's prin- cipal strategies. Taking advantage of the familiar pattern, the film- makers make no effort to weave a consistent plot, provide motivation, or follow Iracema's trajectory in detail. Instead, they simply set loose a de-dramatized succession of images and dialogues along a very simple chronological scheme. Observation is cool, matter-of-fact. The camera behaves like a detached observer, but the world it looks at is filled with rather ludicrous theater. The documentary trajectory of the film crew 366 Despair in the wake of developmentalism: Iracema. Credit: Stopfilm, Inc. Ismail Xavier mingles with a self-conscious make-believe performed by the actors in an original combination of role-playing in and against natural settings. The interaction of fiction and documentary is hardly a novelty in film, and even less so in Latin America, where this became a privileged strategy during the sixties- in Cuba, Brazil, and elsewhere. Before the advent of direct sound and cinema verite, neorealism had offered a celebrated moment of authentication for narrative fiction through its incorporation of the real space of the city, the village, the plantation. The basic principle of this insertion was continuity, a method of meld- ing theatrical performance and natural environment so as to disguise the "joint" or passage from make-believe to natural setting. Everything was designed to give the impression that the environment and the ac- tors all belonged to the same homogeneous world. In the sixties, filmmakers created new methods of combining document and mise-en- scene. Through their use of discontinuous editing, they turned juxtaposi- tion into a characteristic feature of modern films. By the early seven- ties, the articulation of documentary strategies and sheer fantasy was already part of an established code in "post-Godardian" cinema. In the process, collage became the basic principle of modern film editing. The juxtaposition of different genres was achieved without forcing a leap from one level to another, replacing the homogeneous world of realist cinema by the heterogeneity of self-conscious representation. Like many other contemporary filmmakers, Bodansky and Senna do not mask their process of production; they do not disguise represen- tation in search of a reality effect. But their method is neither collage nor discontinuous editing. It consists instead of an incongruous com- bination of documentary strategies derived from the cinema verite tradi- tion "made strange" through the cynical intervention of the lead actor (Pereio) in the "real world and people" framed by the camera. Here, heterogeneity is projected onto the continuous flow of each take. The actor's behavior subverts the natural gaze of the cameraman, destroy- ing the supposed separation between film-work and reality, observa- tion and the world observed. The mise-en-scene of the film, including the direct conversations between the people met by the crew and char- acters as the professional actor Pereio talks with people in character as TiAo Brasil Grande, makes it impossible to attribute a contempla- tive stance to the filmmakers. The collage strategy juxtaposes blocks that are homogeneous segments in themselves and that only cause es- trangement when confronted with one another. In Iracema, the aliena- tion effect works within the shot, produced by the mediation of Pereio who provokes people to words and action, contaminating brute expe- rience with theater. As simultaneously TiAo Brasil Grande and a kind of cinema verite interviewer, Pereio both plays in and comments on the 368 Iracema: Transcending Cinema Verite Seduced and abandoned by the Brazilian economic miracle: the final shot of Iracema. Credit: Stopfilm, Inc. scenes, openly intervening to make the theatrics of the documentary image visible on the screen. The utterances he provokes acquire a pe- culiar ambivalance: they are simultaneously spontaneous statement and representation. The game-playing of the cinema verit6 filmmaker, usually concealed, here comes to the fore. The ventriloquist strategy, the hidden manipulation -each interview as the masked voice of the filmmaker - suffers ironic exposure in Iracema. The asymmetry of power that marks the dialogue proposed by the filmmaker is made explicit; 369 Ismail Xavier the film reveals the invasion that its look implies. Here social, economic, and cultural domination are not only the theme of the discourse but also the organizing principle, the very process at the center of the mise-en-scene. Pereio's theatrical intervention also undermines the audience's de- mand for identification, melodrama, compassion. By his very gro- tesquerie, Pereio displaces our emotions and invites us to face our own "bad conscience"; the mask of humanitarian concern gives way before our acknowledgment of complicity in the deplorable invasion of the Amazon. Matter-of-fact, and matter-of-representation, the empirical world touched by film's mediation becomes the setting for theater, dia- lectically revealing the process of invasion and contamination that turns nature and people into representation. The level on which this process is most clearly exposed involves the interaction between the two actors, Pereio and Edna di Cassia. The dramaturgy that invents Tiao Brasil Grande and Iracema requires these two performers to move in opposite directions. He is the (developed) simulator who masters representation and knows that his role is to "quote" (in Brechtian terms) Tido Brasil Grande while continuing to be Pereio. She is the (indigenous) role-player who fails to master represen- tation and sees her role turned into a quotation of herself, her actual self, while she tries to be Iracema. Representation, like many other games, is imposed upon the Amazonian; the players who come from outside the region are much better versed in the rules. In the fiction, TiAo Brasil Grande is the truck driver who takes Iracema "down the road"; in the film-work, Pereio is the actor who conducts the naive Edna into the space of representation. On both levels, dominant collides with dominated, innocence with malice-yet another instance of the figur- ing of invasion within the film. Exploring the sharp contrast between this exposing of representa- tion and the indices of "authentic realism," Iracema's story reveals it- self as allegory. The filmmakers use the cliche of romantic disenchant- ment to reinforce the symbolic nature of the girl's descent. In the nineteenth-century romantic novel of the same name written by Jose de Alen ar, Iracema embodied the noble savage, the native woman who responds to colonization by offering her love to a Portuguese knight. The conquistador of the twentieth-century Iracema is called Tiao Bra- sil Grande in clear reference to the jingoist slogans of the early seven- ties that proclaimed world-power status for Brazil. These and other in- tertextual elements turn the documentary footage into a collection of emblems condensing the critical notion of the Brazilian "miracle." Through these emblems, Iracema builds an allegory of "conservative modernization," while its multiple strategies "theatricalize" cinema verite 370 Iracema: Transcending Cinema Verite 371 and duplicate before its audience a notion of invasion also exemplified by the film itself. The camera work goes beyond conventional observa- tion to denote interference, creating an original dialectic in which em- pirical observation sustains the allegory and the allegory contaminates each particular image captured in situ. Cinematic images and sounds do not lose their referential power, their density as material obtained through the interaction of film technique and actual process, yet at the same time they demystify the idea of disinterested observation and the belief in cinema verit6 as democratic dialogue. The remarkable achieve- ment of Iracema is its synthesis of the impact of documentary with the reflective quality of drama. NOTE This essay was translated from the Portuguese by Julianne Burton. 19 TRANSITIONAL STATES: CREATIVE COMPLICITIES WITH THE REAL IN MAN MARKED TO DIE: TWENTY YEARS LATER AND PATR IAMADA Julianne Burton This chapter compares two films produced in Brazil in 1984, during the complex and contradictory process of redemocratization - one a documentary assembled according to fictional constructs, the other a fictional work shaped by dynamics generally restricted to documen- tary. Both films are deeply involved in reappropriating and redefining concepts and symbols of the national, long monopolized by the mili- tary. Through their intricate mediations between the fictive and the factual, their refusal to dichotomize imagination and history, these two films work to decenter hierarchical conceptions of authority, morality, and social system. They compellingly challenge rigid cate- gories of social organization and cultural symbolization, suggesting the multiplication of alternative possibilities generated during "tran- sitional states." IN EARLY 1985, spurred by the largest rallies and demon- strations in the history of the country, Brazil returned to electoral de- mocracy after two decades of military dictatorship. That lengthy and complex political transition - with its decade-long succession of stages: alivio, distensao, and abertura-had echoes in neighboring Argentina and Uruguay, in Peru and Ecuador, and, more inconclusively, in Chile where the military regime stubbornly refused to relinquish its grip. Two Brazilian films made in 1984 stand out for their uniquely syn- thetic rendering of the transition from military authoritarian rule to forms of participatory democracy -not simply because of the density of their historical referentiality, but also because of their concomitant 373 Julianne Burton emphasis on the effects of these massive historical shifts on personal and creative life. In their mixing of great events and ordinary people, the monumental and the quotidian, Eduardo Coutinho's documentary Cabra Marcado para Morer: Vinte aios Depois (Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later) and Tizuka Yamasaki's feature Patriamada (Be- loved Country) compel their audiences to reflect upon the nature of the complicity between lived reality and cinematic creativity, both docu- mentary and fictional.' Coutinho's film was, by the most comprehensive count, twenty-two years in the making. By the most conservative count, Yamasaki's was produced in barely twenty-two weeks. Coutinho's black-and-white foot- age dates from 1962 and 1964; his color footage spans the years 1981- 1983. He edited his film in 1983 and released it in the following year. Yamasaki shot the first three sequences for Patriamada in April 1984 and, after a long hiatus, completed shooting between late October and early December of that same year. Patriamada was released in March 1985. Significantly, both films had their genesis in political rallies (comi- cios). The small 1962 demonstration in the provincial town of Sape, in the northeastern state of Paraiba, which catalyzed Coutinho's project, was organized to denounce the brutal murder of a peasant leader. The 1984 rally at Rio de Janeiro's Candelaria Square that catalyzed Yama- saki's film was a celebrative assertion of over one million people's uni- vocal support for direct presidential elections. The 1962 event prompted an investigative journey to the past, not once but twice: first in the planning and disrupted production of the original neorealist-style feature, Man Marked to Die, based on the life and death of the assassi- nated leader Jodo Pedro Texeira; then, nearly two decades later, in the relocation and reconstruction of the subsequent history of the Galilea community and the Texeira family for the documentary eventually en- titled Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later. The 1984 Candelaria rally, in contrast, impelled Yamasaki and her collaborators forward into a future whose trajectory they could not predict and into the elabo- ration of parallel lines of fictional narration capable of weaving those disparate and unpredictable political events into a unified whole.2 Both films are the creations of an intricate editing process that establishes multiple and contradictory resonances between fictional and documentary footage. Both can be viewed as metameditations on their transitional era, as emblems of a historical process characterized not only by "what hurts" (to borrow Fredric Jameson's phrase) but also by what heals. Their formal and narratological intricacy is an expression of the multifaceted complexity of the transitional states of which they are both the product and the expression.3 374 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada Two Films Summarized The melange of fictional and documentary modalities in Tizuka Yamasaki's Patriamada has moved one critic to compare it to Andrzej Wajda's Solidarity films, Man of Marble and Man of Iron.4 The comparison is apt but insufficient, since Patriamada's historical-personal synthesis is both more intricate and more dynamic. Into their great documentary kaleidoscope of the 1984 mass movement in favor of di- rect elections, Yamasaki and her collaborators insert a love triangle be- tween three fictitious characters: a prominent middle-aged industrial- ist, Rocha Queiroz (Walmor Chagas); a struggling thirty-five-year-old filmmaker and single father named Goias (Buza Ferraz); and an ebul- lient twenty-year-old reporter, Carolina Diniz (Debora Bloch) who has no memory of life before the military regime. This unconventionally resolved love triangle has certain allegorical dimensions. Characters from three generations also represent three strategic sociopolitical sec- tors: industrial entrepreneurs, artist-intellectuals, and the media. Sym- bolic equivalences, however, are submerged beneath the sustained dra- matic credibility of the fictional characters, who constantly manage to interact on screen with major figures of Brazilian national life, includ- ing the outgoing military president and the eventual president-elect. Coutinho's film takes its viewers on a quest to recapture a violently truncated and long submerged past as a means of settling accounts on the eve of a more open, promising future. The link between the pres- ent, full of cautious expectation and possibility, and the past, with its bitter charge of repression and betrayal and permanent loss, is a fic- tional artifact constructed out of the life stories and with the collabora- tion of real people. The whereabouts of his former cast, particularly Texeira's widow Elizabeth and her dispersed offspring, are the enigmas that catalyze Coutinho the reporter into action. The result of his quest, Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later, constructs an intricate palimp- sest of documentary and fictional, historical, and contemporary modes of representation that is less concerned with the man marked to die, or with the film his death inspired, than with Elizabeth Texeira, a woman marked by life, and with Coutinho himself, a filmmaker marked by silence. Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later defies quick summary. It opens with a long shot of a silhouetted hill at dusk. A burst of light illuminates the foreground. Two figures thread film into a projector while several others look on. An open-air screening is about to begin. Eduardo Coutinho and his assistants are preparing the first public showing of the surviving footage of his unfinished neorealist-style feature, Man Marked to Die. Seventeen years after production was halted by invad- 375 Social Documentary in Latin America identity, the kinds of material available to the cinematic chronicler have been vastly expanded. Techniques for animating still images with a mov- ing camera, inspired in the National Film Board of Canada's City of Gold (1957), encouraged the film chronicler "to consider almost any his- toric relic or artifact a potential narrative instrument."'"5 Alvarez literally took the whole world - and particularly the "for- gotten" continents of Asia, Africa, and Latin America- as his poten- tial subject and source. Seventy-nine Springtimes, a eulogy to Ho Chi Minh, opens with a sustained juxtaposition: time-lapse shots of buds opening into flowers are intercut with real-time footage of mushroom clouds, in the wake of descending bombs, billowing into analogous spherical forms. Images of mourners filing past Ho's casket are slowed and manipulated to keep pace with the orchestral music on the sound track, by the American rock group Iron Butterfly, a combination that is as culturally and ideologically unlikely as it is emotionally effective. Such startling, even defiant, eclecticism was the cinematic correlative of the ideological and practical experimentation of the young revolu- tion that provided the impetus and the context for Alvarez's work. ICAIC's commitment to the documentary mode has nurtured a number of other talented documentarists. In contrast to Santiago Al- varez's montage-based style, with its dramatic juxtapositions of "found" imagery and nonsource sound, Octavio Cortizar, whose career began after the introduction of synchronous sound to Cuba, explored the pos- sibilities of mise-en-scene, direct address, and the synchronous record- ing of the self-presentation of his subjects, often encouraged by his own off-camera questions. Por primera vez (1967) and Hablando del punto cubano (Talking About "Punto Cubano," 1972), the most com- pelling examples of his early work, carry the tradition of direct testi- mony, pioneered by Grierson and Cavalcanti (Housing Problems, 1935) and Humphrey Jennings - and vastly expanded three decades later by practitioners of French cinema verite and American direct cinema- to an uncommon level of achievement. The history of postrevolution- ary film in Cuba is punctuated with brilliant documentary gems too numerous to name, much less to describe in this limited context. The witty, highly personal styles of documentarists like Luis Felipe Ber- naza, Rolando Diaz, and Enrique Colina have won them a large follow- ing in Cuba, but their films remain unknown abroad -not simply be- cause of their specificity, which is one of their virtues, but due to the restricted international market for documentary shorts. By now it should be abundantly clear that this Latin American docu- mentary renaissance has gone hand in hand with social and political ferment. Production activity continued to accelerate and innovation to flourish in those countries which, in the late sixties, seemed on the verge 25 Julianne Burton Goias (Buza Ferraz) offers baby gifts of both genders to the newly expectant Lina (Debora Block) in Patriamada (Tizuka Yamasaki, 1985). Credit: Punto Filmes ing troops on the day of the 1964 military coup d'etat, Coutinho has reassembled the social actors who had collaborated on that ill-fated ven- ture. (Their reunion was made possible by a political amnesty, one of the stages in the abertura that prepared the way for the return to de- mocracy in Brazil.) There are two lengthy "prologues" before the "show" begins. In the first, over a montage of music and imagery from the early 1960s, Coutinho narrates a minihistory of the genesis of the original project. His 1980s voice, heard over footage he shot as a youth, both recapitulates the dominant cultural and political discourses of twenty years before and injects an ironic distanciation from them. Over mov- ing footage and stills from the period, he recounts a student bus tour 376 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada Rocha (Walmar Chagas) prepares dinner for Lina in Patriamada. Credit: Punto Filmes around the Northeast in 1962 sponsored by the National Union of Stu- dents and the Popular Culture Centers. Over a shot of a crowded mar- ketplace dominated by towering signs for Esso and Texaco gasoline, he comments wryly: "The image of misery contrasted with the presence of imperialism-that was a tendency typical of the culture of those times." And over images of an oil derrick: "I also paid my tribute to the nationalism of the era - by filming an oilfield in Alagoas that Petro- bras was just beginning to exploit." The group arrived in Jodo Pessoa, capital of the state of Paraiba, in April 1962, he recalls, two weeks after the assassination of Peasant League leader Jodo Pedro Texeira. The following day, while filming a protest rally in neighboring Sape, Coutinho had his first meeting with Texeira's widow, Elizabeth. That encounter gave rise to the idea for a feature film based on the life of the assassinated leader, to be filmed at the actual locations with a cast of actual participants: "Elizabeth and her children would play themselves." Continuing violence in Sape made it necessary to change the film's location to the Galilea planta- tion in the neighboring state of Pernambuco, where the first peasant league was founded in 1955. Over still and moving images from the pro- 377 Julianne Burton duction, Coutinho recounts the inception of the filming in February 1964 and its definitive disruption thirty-five days later by soldiers who con- fiscated all related material and equipment and arrested the principal peasant leaders as well as several members of the film crew. A brief cut back to the opening scene, the threading of the projec- tor, introduces the second prologue sequence: a minihistory of the genesis of the actual film project. Over pans of the Galilea region, Cou- tinho narrates his return seventeen years later determined "to complete the film in whatever way possible." Though he had no script this time, he tells us, he did have an agenda: he wanted "to locate the peasants (camponeses) who had participated in the original film and get their testimony (depoimento) about that experience, including the raid that shut down the project; to reconstruct the real story of Joao Pedro Tex- eira's life, and of the struggles of the Peasant Leagues of Sape and Galilea; and to trace the trajectories of each of the film's participants, from the disruption of the project to the present." This second prologue also narrates the history of the Galilea Peasant League up to 1964 pri- marily through two figures: Joao Virginio, one of two surviving found- ers, who was also part of the cast of the original Man Marked to Die, and Francisco de Souza (nicknamed Zeze da Galilea), deceased former president of the league. A shot of the site of the readied projector, as a van full of "special guests" arrives, signals the end of the double prologue. The actual and former residents of the rural community of Galilea are presented to the viewer in a casual, observational style as they reencounter each other and Coutinho after a hiatus that has, in many cases, spanned the full seventeen years. Three generations crowd around the projector as the screening finally begins. Again, Coutinho's voice-over on the sound track explains, "The footage was shown exactly as it was filmed - out of order, with some scenes incomplete, others repeated, with the clapper board to identify the takes, etc." After an initial pan from the black-and-white projected image to the assembled audience, including Coutinho him- self and various former "actors," there is a great deal of cross-cutting between the black-and-white close-ups on the screen and the campo- neses' bemused reactions to these uncanny incarnations of their for- mer selves. One key member of the cast is missing: Elizabeth Texeira, after briefly assuming the mantle of her dead husband's militancy, speaking at numerous demonstrations and even traveling to the national capital to denounce his murder, had disappeared without a trace. Cutting away from a black-and-white close-up of comely young Elizabeth, the film pro- ceeds to document how Coutinho and his crew tracked her down nearly two decades later, living under an assumed name in the remote com- munity of Sao Rafael, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. 378 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada Elizabeth Teixeira and offspring mourn the death of Jodo Pedro in Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later (Eduardo Coutinho, 1985). Credit: World Artists Releasing Coutinho's interviews with Elizabeth constitute the core of the film. She recounts her life with Joao Pedro, the beginnings of their activism, Joao Pedro's assassination, her response, her brief militancy, persecu- tion by the police, and flight into anonymity. Coutinho re-edits his ses- sions with her according to the chronology of events rather than the sequence of her recollections, and "illustrates" her narrative with scenes from his unfinished feature. And so the fictional reenactment, originally inspired in historical events, but in fact incorporating only one histori- cal personage (Elizabeth herself)- along with numerous social actors from another, similar community -is recruited two decades later as a kind of "indirect documentary," providing evidentiary weight to the story Elizabeth tells. A fiction based on real events is here recruited to serve as a substantiating evocation of the life experiences of a group of historical individuals elicited through interviews and related in docu- 379 Julianne Burton Elizabeth Teixeira, twenty years later, recounts her shattered life to the filmmaker who seeks to piece it back together in Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later. Credit: World Artists Releasing mentary format. Fiction thus "stands in for" the mediations of mem- ory. "Whoever remembers the past is also an actor," Coutinho asserted in a discussion of the film.5 Two Films Compared In summary, both films depict the process of transition between authoritarian and democratic regimes, and in their depiction of it, both are shaped by that process. Neither displays a "pure" or con- sistent mode of cinematic representation; both are hybrids. Coutinho's Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later is a documentary grounded, 380 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada from its remote genesis to its final conclusion, in fictional strategies. Yamasaki's Patriamada positions its fictional narrative against kalei- doscopic documentation of contemporary Brazilian civic life, particu- larly but not exclusively related to steps in the process of recuperating democratic government. Fictional constructs reinforce the narratives that Coutinho elicits from his informants, fitting the past into a styl- ized mold, while Yamasaki's fictional narrative is the product of only relative rather than absolute narrative autonomy, evolving in response to unfolding historical-and visually documentable - events.6 Both films adopt paradigms shaped by television: investigative jour- nalism in Twenty Years Later, news reporting in Patriamada. In each case, however, these approaches are leavened by both complementary and contradictory modes of signification: direct or observational cinema, collage, and montage of documentary and fictional images of the past in the former instance; appeals to emotionality through melodrama, music, and kaleidoscopic montages of the national in the latter. A re- viewer for Veja magazine observed that Patriamada "is a cross between the Nightly News and the prime-time soaps ... as if television was craz- ily switching channels." Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later pro- voked a similar quip from an American viewer, who described the film as "a cross between A Terra Trema and Sixty Minutes." Brazilian filmmaker Walter Lima, Jr., in writing about Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later, reflected on the ethics of its hybrid aes- thetics: Without concealing the adventure of its realization, it transforms that adventure into a filmic style using devices from television journalism, direct cinema, traditional documentary and montage. To walk amidst reality with tape recorder and camera turned on can signify a gesture of power that will certainly subvert or contradict the real unless the film- makers renounce the ease of domination which their tools confer upon them. In front of a camera, a person is much more than simply a person; they are the awareness of their own image.... a more acceptable "hy- pothesis" of his or herself. Cinema carries with it a strong dose of ideal- ization of the real, and the understanding of this phenomenon is not achieved simply by giving primacy to the filmmakers' good intentions. It is essential to ... submit oneself to the temporal rhythms of the people whom one wants to film. An ethical issue determines a new aesthetic form.7 Given the apposite nature of their project, the makers of Patriamada had to submit themselves to the vagaries and arbitrariness of histori- cal rather than individual rhythms. In contrast to Coutinho, who used the physical apparatus of filmmaking to bring his own interventions into the foreground, the physical presence of the cinematic apparatus 381 Julianne Burton allowed Yamasaki to subsume the fictional under the documentary, to suture the work of the imagination into the documentary mosaic of public events and national history in the making. Lima observes, "The peasants who view Coutinho's original footage are no longer the same [when he films them] the next day. Provoked by an anterior (cinematic) reality, they begin to act again, this time establishing new directions for the [subsequent] film which is being made. What is really new about Twenty Years Later perhaps lies precisely here, in its extraordinary complicity with life."8 Patriamada elicits the inverse of this transfor- mation from person to persona: if Coutinho's film acknowledges cinema's tendency to turn social subjects into actors, Yamasaki's film seeks to blur the line between professional actors and social subjects.9 Coutinho has differentiated between the initial and definitive ver- sions of Man Marked to Die by observing that the first film "is made from the outside looking in" while the final film "knows that it is made from the outside looking in-a film which, while not made by peas- ants, ... still does not patronize or idealize them."0 Yamasaki's film does not trail in its wake the same intimations of ethnographicity. If Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later is still reacting against the accusa- tions of facile populism once leveled at the first phase of Cinema Novo, Patriamada risks accusations of a naive "neopopulism" because of its attempt to argue for the consolidated interests of Brazilians across eco- nomic, generational, and ideological cleavages. Yamasaki's film acknowl- edges the problems and needs of less privileged sectors -homeless street people, urban slum dwellers, unemployed workers, displaced indigenous tribes -but in its fictional manifestations it concentrates upon varia- tions within the "self' rather than explorations of the "other." Like the filmmakers, the fictional characters in Patriamada are, despite pivotal differences, members of an articulate and ambitious urban middle class with a liberal orientation. This configuation recalls the alliances that characterized the early days of Cinema Novo, when ideologies of develop- mentalism and nationalism temporarily united liberals and radicals, in- tellectuals and industrialists, professionals and proletarians under the same banners." At a time when critics in the metropolitan countries herald the advent of postnationalism, postfeminism, and postmodern- ism, Patriamada is one of a number of films from the periphery that embrace forms of nationalism, feminism, and modernization whose pre- ferred prefix would clearly be "neo-" rather than "post-." With only a few sporadic forays into urban environments, Twenty Years Later is as tied to Brazil's rural Northeast as a paradigm of na- tional underdevelopment as were the Cinema Novo films of the early sixties, among which the original Man Marked to Die - had it been completed - would have been counted. Patriamada, on the other hand, 382 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada is overwhelmingly urban, with only an isolated foray into the Amazon jungle and a few passing references (visual and verbal) to the continu- ing need for agrarian reform. Its opening pans of skyscrapers and free- ways glittering in the deepening night constitute a sort of 1980s pastoral, analogous to Coutinho's green and rolling landscapes. Despite this contrast in setting, both films offer an allegorization that super- imposes the national onto the individual and large movements of po- litical history onto the small incidents of personal life. Both establish an equivalency between the geography mapped in their narration and the space of the nation as a whole. Both invoke the female as a figure for the historical past, present, and future of the country. Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later chronicles a process of disaggregation-of a rural community and a particular peasant family. Patriamada com- memorates a process of reaggregation, simultaneously celebrating and catalyzing the recuperation of national pride and the reconstitution of national identity. It is not incidental that, as part of their multifaceted projects, both films present a meditation on the social role of the artist. Self-reflexivity Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later and Patriamada make ample use of self-reflexive techniques. Both display unfinished films-within-the-film whose author is, in the first case, Coutinho him- self, and, in the second, a male surrogate (an actor who is in "real life" also a threatrical director) for the female Yamasaki. Each film opens with a self-referential sequence: the setting up of projector and screen, silhouetted against the sunset sky, in Twenty Years Later; the film- maker Goi"s and his assistants recording images of SAo Paulo after dark in Patriamada. Coutinho and members of his crew are frequently on camera, as are Goias and his crew-particularly Nonato Estrela, who functions as both a character in the fiction and the actual second camera for the production. While Coutinho emphasized observation as intervention (through the retention of awkward hesitations and pauses in some of his inter- views, for example, or the image of one potential informant slamming a door in his face), Yamasaki goes to elaborate lengths to ensure that the documentary and the fictional skeins of her narrative are inextrica- bly and invisibly entwined. Both films incorporate explicit acknowledg- ment of people who refuse to be photographed and/or interviewed. Coutinho makes certain vows on camera to his informants that their interventions will be included in the final film. Yamasaki has Goias and Lina discuss what footage will be incorporated into (his) Patriamada, and later inserts a sequence in which actors, crew, executive producer, 383 Julianne Burton and other financial backers sit around discussing how the film should end. This is a doubly self-reflexive device, since the discussion is ac- tually "documentary" in the sense that the participants are all part of the actual Patriamada project (Yamasaki's) rather than the "fictional" Patriamada project (Goias's). The awareness that Goias's film was to be "pure" documentary while the metaproject that encompasses it is hybrid (fictional with a constant documentary "inner text") only gives to this intricately fashioned screw yet another turn. Composite Styles Coutinho uses three voices to narrate his documentary;12 Yamasaki creates three fictional characters to "focus" the subjective impact of historical events. Both films are composites that combine dis- parate kinds and categories of images (and sounds). In Twenty Years Later, contemporary footage, shot in color during 1981-1982 using a style associated with investigative television journalism, is continually juxtaposed to historical images shot in black and white. This historical footage is of several kinds: compilation sequences constructed of news- paper articles and other period documents; still photographs; archival footage; production stills from Man Marked to Die and, most impor- tant, the footage from that unfinished feature which is parceled out in such a way that it functions as "images of illustration" for the auto- biographical accounts Coutinho elicits-the interviews that make up the contemporary core of the film, bridging the gap from truncated past to uncertain present. These black-and-white sequences, with their hier- atic positioning of actors accentuated by a predominance of low-angle shots, their spare, stark mise-en-scene and stiff acting style, conform to the neorealist aesthetic characteristics of the period. Patriamada com- bines off-the-air television newscasts, documentary sequences expressly shot for the film, purely fictional sequences, and "hybrids" that either include the fictional characters as incidental observers of historical personages and events or feature them interacting in the foreground against a backdrop of historically verifiable figures and events. Cou- tinho emphasizes the stylistic contrasts between the now stilted "neo- neorealist" style of the early sixties and the contemporary idiom of the color sequences with their "invisible" style of investigative journalism "naturalized" by contemporary television reportage practices. Inserts of television news coverage punctuate Patriamada. These static, often monochrome sequences - often "talking heads," as in the speech by out- going military president Figueiredo which opens the film - set off the luminous coloration, the richly varied mise-en-scene, the fluidity and rhythmic kineticism of the style that Yamasaki develops for her origi- nal footage, so indebted to the pacing of music video. 384 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada The titles of both films turn out to be quotations within quotations. Man Marked to Die, the title of Coutinho's unfinished feature, refers to the slain leader whose death inspired that inconclusive undertaking. Patriamada is not only the title of the film within the Yamasaki film (Goias's all-encompassing "music video" of contemporary national life) but also the lyrical focal-phrase of Brazil's national anthem. As sung a capella by Olivia Byington, the anthem becomes a pivotal element in the trajectory of popular reconciliation with symbols of the national charted in the film. Man Marked to Die reconstructs exemplary per- sonal instances of the kind of political and socioeconomic repression responsible for the prolonged public repudiation of national symbols like the anthem and the green and yellow hues of the Brazilian flag, while Patriamada details and participates in the reappropriation of such symbols. Equations of the National and the Feminine Though the associations of their titles are masculine (patria [fatherland] derives from the same root as paternal), both films pivot around images, associations, and potentialities of the female. Both use motherhood as a dominant metaphor. In Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later, the husband/father/leader has been so effectively obliter- ated that his only visual remnant is a pair of police photos of his bullet- ridden corpse. The film revolves instead around historical and actual images of Elizabeth Teixeira-wife/mother/teacher/repressed activist - who represents a displaced, bereaved, silenced mother(land) compelled to abandon her children and only now, through the persistent inter- vention of the filmmaker, free to emerge from hiding, reassemble her dispersed family, and reassert her right to speak out. The deteriora- tion of Elizabeth's haunting beauty in the twenty-year lapse between historical and contemporary images is a locus of visual fascination - one more tragic and irrevocable loss in this lament for a stolen past. Midway in Patriamada, the industrialist Rocha Queiroz observes that Brazil "has had its fill of stepfathers" (padrastros, a word that car- ries connotations of authoritarianism, illegitimacy, antinurturance), to which Lina replies, "What Brazil needs is a loving mother." The con- cluding sequence takes place at a Sao Paulo rally: a pregnant Lina is flanked by her two lovers, Rocha and Goias. It is unclear which of the potential fathers planted the seed for the Brazil(ian) of the future. This uncertainty, which would have assumed much greater importance in a film that privileged more traditional gender orderings, is brushed aside in favor of an assertion of the far greater importance of the quality of fatherly nurturance once the child is born and a sentimental deference to the older man. 385 Julianne Burton of sweeping transformations: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Bra- zil, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia, among others. The installation in the 1970s of a series of iron-fisted military regimes in the first five of these countries, and sharp moves to the right in the latter group, endangered many filmmakers - halting their efforts, driving many underground or into less controversial areas of media production, and forcing others into exile. The two most monumental examples of Latin American docu- mentary, both three-part, collaborative works incendiary in content and innovative in form, date from this tumultuous period. The Hour of the Furnaces (Argentina, 1968) surveyed the history of the nation and the continent from a Peronist perspective, provoking a reassessment of the exiled leader both within and outside of Argen- tina and contributing to his eventual return to the country and, briefly, to the presidency. The filmmakers - Fernando Solanas, Octavio Getino, and Gerardo Vallejo-used a freewheeling, iconoclastic editing style that emphasized stark juxtapositions of both image and sound to struc- ture their amalgamation of highly diverse footage - archival material, candid and clandestine footage, publicity clips, quotations from films by Fernando Birri, Joris Ivens, and others-into a coherent and provo- cative "essay on neocolonialism, violence and liberation" in Argentina and Latin America. In Solanas's and Getino's widely reprinted essay, "Towards a Third Cinema," as well as in numerous other writings and interviews, the filmmakers insist that any innovations in cinematic lan- guage in a film that was hailed for its originality, sparking imitations throughout Europe and the Americas, derive from their desire to fa- cilitate a more active relationship with the spectator. Assembled after the clandestine distribution of part I, parts II and III include several breaks in which the audience is encouraged to discuss among them- selves issues raised by the film. These are presented throughout as a call to action. The historical importance of The Hour of the Furnaces cannot be separated from its makers' commitment to undertake, with it, the simultaneous and interdependent transformation of structures and relations of cinematic production, diffusion, and reception. The Battle of Chile (1974-77-79) was shot by a group of six people over a ten-month period prior to and immediately after the violent over- throw of Chilean president Salvador Allende. After the coup, the foot- age and sound bands were promptly smuggled to safety in Europe. Five members of the Grupo Tercer Afio, including its director, Patricio Guz- man, managed to leave the country in unobtrusive and carefully orches- trated fashion; the sixth, cameraman Jorge Muller, was abducted by the secret police in late 1974 and never heard from again -one of sev- eral militant Latin American filmmakers who paid for their political commitment with their lives. The editing of the three parts - The In- 26 Julianne Burton This apparent idealization of the maternal role in Patriamada is not accompanied by the traditional reduction of the female to a passive in- cubator. The film partially resists conventional spectacularization of the female, since Lina represents action rather than stasis and has posi- tioned herself between two men as chooser rather than chosen, as the subject who unites rather than the object who divides them.13 Patria- mada simultaneously feminizes conventional political discourse and demonstrates the political relevance and viability of feminist discourses. All too recently taboo issues - a woman's right to abortion on demand, male impotence, and the nature of female sexual pleasure - subtly find their way into this dense narrative. The predominantly female composi- tion of grassroots political leadership is suggested by documentary footage focusing on female spokespeople for such disparate groups as Amazonian tribes and urban slum dwellers. The emphasis on coopera- tion, collaboration, and direct negotiation over confrontation and polarization along party or other affiliative lines replicates the evolv- ing political practice of feminist and women's groups during the re- democratization process. 14 Discourses of nationalism are also feminized in various ways, not the least of which is the lone female voice singing the national anthem a capella in a sequence that marks both the tem- poral midpoint and the diegetic turning point of the narrative.15 Public and Private Spaces Redefined: Patriamada The deployment of space in Patriamada is particularly in- triguing in its suggestion of a mutually expanding redefinition of pub- lic and private spheres. It is a critical commonplace to note that melo- drama and the woman's film are distinguished by their privileging of domestic space; in these genres, the world is subsumed into the home. Male-centered genres often exclude the private sphere altogether; be- cause he is so completely "at home" (capable and dominant) in the world outside, the hero has little need to be anchored in a domestic environ- ment. In generic terms, Patriamada combines elements of epic and melodrama. Each of the protagonists has a broad range of spatial iden- tifications - domestic, professional, recreational, civic - that are essen- tial to their characterization. In a reversal of conventional depictions, the male characters - relative to both standard representational prac- tices and to their female counterparts in this particular film - are more often presented in their domestic contexts. Conversely, the female char- acter is here associated with all possible spaces. Lina never fully shares her domestic space with her male counterparts (both come to her apart- ment but cannot "enter": Goias is temporarily impotent after the ex- 386 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada citement of the Candeldria demonstration; Rocha knocks for admission into an empty flat while Lina is at the abortion clinic), but she tempo- rarily inhabits both of theirs while declining invitations of more perma- nent occupancy from both men. She also accompanies the men to their places of work (Goias's film studio; Rocha's office, limousine, private jet, and various of his factories), though neither of the men enters her newspaper office. Her job as reporter extends her "work space" far be- yond her desk. Her "beat" encompasses all of Rio, from the squatters' neighborhoods on the periphery to downtown's power-pulse skyscrapers; her interviewees range from an anonymous parking lot attendant to world-famous celebrities like Sonia Braga and Milton Nascimento. Her collaboration on Goids's film extends her radius to the nation's capital and, metonymically, the entire country. In one of the more thoughtful Brazilian commentaries on Patria- mada, writer Roberto da Matta argues that Brazilians tend to confuse their political regime with their society and consequently learn to hate them both. The result is a split between their "clinical attitude" to pub- lic life and the complimentary centering of all positive affectivity on the personal sphere. He observes that this leaves a great void between the two spheres that can only be temporarily filled with rallies or car- nival festivities, and he credits Patriamada with exploring ways of bridg- ing that limiting polarization. In its complex redefinition of personal and public spaces, Patria- mada incorporates a number of devices used by Cuban director Sara G6mez a decade earlier in a much-discussed film that challenged the boundaries between fictional and documentary discourses as well as those between male and female gender orderings. Apropos of One Way or Another, critics have noted a correspondence between documentary modes and the public sphere, on the one hand, and fictional modes and the private sphere on the other. Ana Lopez writes in the following chap- ter that "the fictive discourse explores the domestic or interpersonal effects of the [material changes brought about by the revolution, whereas] the documentary is primarily used to provide a record of changes in the public/social sphere." One of the expressions of the in- tricacy of Patriamada's deployment of narrative space, which far sur- passes that of its Cuban predecessor, is the blurring of the equations between the fictive and the personal, the documentary and the public. Lopez contends that Yolanda, the female protagonist of One Way or Another, is the only character identified with "an undifferentiated mode of discourse." In Patriamada, all three leading characters constantly negotiate the boundary zone between fictional and documentary modes, broadening it with their constant traffic. A third observation that Lopez makes apropos of One Way or Another is also relevant to a considera- 387 tion of the deployment of narrative space in Patriamada: "Unlike the standard fiction films, where locations are subordinated to narrative drives, the narrative space [in the G6mez film] becomes a social space where the fictional drives are challenged by the force of social deter- minations." In the genesis of Patriamada, social determinations did not simply challenge fictional drives; they called them into being and forced their constant reshaping as the result of an aleatory contract between the filmmakers and their historical moment. The public and private diegetic spaces of Patriamada can be sub- divided along the following continuum: domestic space (the homes of the three protagonists); private, nondomestic space (such as hotel rooms, hospital corridors, the operating room at the abortion clinic); transitional space (elevators, cars, boats, helicopters, airplanes); social- recreational space (cafes, bars, parks, tourist monuments, and mu- seums); interior work space (press rooms, board rooms, cutting rooms); exterior work space (cement yards, toxic waste sites); civic space (con- stituted by the concerted occupation of urban or rural space for the purposes of expressing cultural identity or political will- for example, CandelAria Square during the rally supporting direct elections or the streets of Rio during carnival); gubernatorial space (congressional chambers, the presidential palace, local campaign headquarters for an oppositional candidate); national space (Rio, Sdo Paulo, Brasilia, the Amazon - the composite multiplicity of Brazil invoked by the film as a whole). It is important to note that Lina's and Goias's occupations - reporter and documentary filmmaker-make for a potential subsum- ing of categories, in particular the latter three. On a separate plane from this spatial continuum is a disembodied "media space"- the space of the televised speech, interview, or event, loosed from its actual physi- cal site and endowed with the ability to be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. This supraspatial dimension is always presented as if in quotation marks - framed by a television set and/or horizontal scan lines that give these images a very different visual quality. Part of Patriamada's remarkable kineticism derives from the inordi- nate number of different diegetic locations it employs.16 The film can be segmented into fictional, documentary, and hybrid components. The fictional components supply the narrative threads that knit together the public, historical events recorded in the documentary mode; the hybrid components combine fictional characters with nonfictional events and personages. There are more than forty separate sites for the fict- ional action alone, and these locations are multiplied by the practice of shooting each separate sequence in a different space-within-the-space. For example, there is no spatial overlap between the various sequences that take place at Goias's house: the argument between him and his Julianne Burton 388 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada former wife takes place in the living room and entryway, a subsequent sequence occurs in the kitchen, another in the dining room and child's bedroom, and the fourth in the yard. Similarly, none of the several scenes at Rocha Queiroz's estate repeats a particular location: the first scene there takes place in the dining and living rooms, the next one in the foyer and parking area, the third on the terrace, the fourth on a bal- cony. Of the twoscore documentary locations, several are unspecified, while others are easily recognizable landmarks. The hybrid sequences alternate between Brazil's three major urban spaces: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasilia. The three "montages of the national"- the nocturnal street scenes of the opening, Goias's "Brazil-as-cinemascope" sequence near the middle of the film, the concluding montage - metonymically stretch the film's spatial parameters to encompass the entire country. Patriamada opens with a fragment from a televised speech by out- going military president JoAo Figueiredo, emphasizing the urban con- centration of more than two-thirds of Brazil's 130 million people.17 A lyrical montage of urban spaces as dusk cedes to darkness is under- scored by a thematic counterpoint on the sound track: Alceu Valenqa singing "SolidAo" (Solitude). The president's official, statistical discourse is thus juxtaposed to an artist's subjective invocation of loneliness and isolation over images of urban density. Song alternates with silence, and both are occasionally punctuated by traffic noise and other source sound. The conclusion of this opening sequence synchronizes the final gestures of a Tchaikovsky ballet with the final syllables of Valenqa's song - a startling melding of elite and popular cultural forms. However effective it is as evocation and contradiction, the entire sequence also assumes a retroactive diegetic motivation in that it in- troduces one of the film's three protagonists, Goias, at work with his crew recording the sights and sounds of nocturnal Sao Paulo. The fol- lowing sequence, in a slum neighborhood in Rio where a stream has ignited because of the density of the toxic wastes dumped into it, in- troduces a second protagonist, Lina, also at work. In the next scene, Goias, having a drink at a bar with his cinematographer and sound man, interrupts their conversation to concentrate on a figure being inter- viewed on television. This turns out to be the third protagonist, Rocha Queiroz. The supraspace of the television medium transports us from the social space of Goias in the bar to Queiroz's own domestic space, where he simultaneously watches the conclusion of his own interview on television, averts a physical attack by his sullen wife, and fends off a telephone threat from an unspecified caller. Subsequent sequences of this twenty-five-minute "exposition" pre- sent, in order: Goias and crew shooting a commercial on the beach until 389 Julianne Burton work is disrupted by the temporary disappearance of his five-year-old son; Goias at home arguing with his estranged wife who has just re- turned from a year in Europe with her lover; Rocha Queiroz at one of his factories being informed of a precipitous drop in prices; Lina re- turning home from work and listening to her telephone messages; Lina joining Goias at the "usual" bar where he tells her of the previous day's filming (self-reflexively recounting the film's opening montage se- quence) and asks her to conduct interviews for his film during the Can- delAria demonstration scheduled for the following day; Goias at the bank getting a loan and trying to arrange for a helicopter to film the Candel"ria rally; Goias at his studio interacting with his producer and various crew members; a political discussion at the newspaper office between Lina and her colleagues which ends with her boss announcing hyperdramatically: "THE ONE AND ONLY STORY OF THE DAY: THE CAN- DELARIA RALLY!" The following ten-minute sequence, made up primarily of live foot- age of this massive political demonstration (with occasional corrobora- tive televised footage) is the culmination and the conclusion of this in- troductory section, finally bringing all three protagonists into the same (civic) space, though not yet in simultaneous interaction. Lina inter- views celebrities and anonymous participants for her newspaper and for Goids's documentary, while Goias and Nonato film different aspects of the event and Rocha Queiroz concludes a business meeting in an office building above the square. Rocha watches the event on television, from his office window, and eventually from the rooftop. For a brief moment, he descends to street level and mixes with the crowd. It is then that Lina spots him and tries unsuccessfully to get an interview. Rocha de- murs, too moved by events to speak, but Lina extracts a promise for an "exclusive" interview later on, setting the stage for the relationship that will develop between them. It should be clear from the above that Patriamada's prolonged ex- position locates each of the three principal characters in several differ- ent kinds of spaces: professional, domestic, and social. After all three characters intersect for the first time in the civic space of the Cande- Iaria demonstration, the pluralistic distribution of narrative space per- sists; none of the characters is subsequently reduced to a single kind of spatial identification. Yet curiously, for the final quarter of the film, Lina, having lost her job and her apartment, "floats" without explicit link to any particular domestic or professional space. She is seen in civic, recreational, and transitional spaces (visiting a museum and on a boat ride with Goias, at a rally at Sao Paulo's Ze Square with both men, at Sao Paulo's town hall where the three are greeted by President-elect Tancredo Neves), but the only domestic space she appears in seems to 390 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada be Rocha's, where again (but this time in a more ambiguous conversa- tion) she declines a proposal that they live together. Since she is preg- nant and unemployed, this "discretion" about her actual arrangements is troubling; the viewer can hardly avoid assuming that she expects one or both of her men to shelter and support her and her offspring. Yet with the exception of the scene just mentioned where Rocha pre- pares dinner for Lina, and another on his balcony where she announces her pregnancy to him, the final quarter of the film eliminates domestic space for all three characters; and the tension around Lina's unemploy- ment is partially allayed by the check Goi"s gives her in compensation for her work on his film. The concluding sequence emphasizes unifica- tion: all three characters, who had previously debated whether and to what degree they would support opposition candidate Tancredo Neves, exchange greetings with him and attend an outdoor rally on his behalf. Narrative chronology and shooting chronology coincide here; this final sequence was the last one filmed. By this date, December 7, it was clear that the electoral college, scheduled to meet the following month, would name Neves president-elect.'" The concluding montage reaches beyond the triangle of fictional characters to include shots of outgoing mili- tary president Joao Batista Figueiredo's "final" departure from Brasilia's Planalto Palace, as well as a reprise of images that include the Txucar- ramaes Indians, the futuristic architecture of Brasilia, carnival scenes, street scenes in Rio and Sao Paulo, before returning to the three pro- tagonists holding aloft the banner that was the emblem of the film pro- duction: the legendary figure of Saint George and the dragon under the letters, PATRIAMADA. The Feminization of Political Discourses Returning to the theme of the feminization of political dis- course, it is also important to note the Lina character's alignment with what is generally regarded as the most progressive of the five national political parties established shortly before the 1984 elections: the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores or Workers' party) incorporated demands and constituencies from the "new social movements" - neighborhood groups, ecology movements, organizations that militated for the rights of women, blacks, and gays - that had sprung up during the transi- tion. The overall discourse of the film, however, assumes a more "broad front" alignment, endorsing Tancredo Neves's candidacy even while criticizing him for his ties to the military establishment. Political al- ternatives - the Labor party, grassroots political organizations - are not given commensurate diegetic space, an omission that provoked severe criticism among Brazilian audiences. 391 Julianne Burton Though Lina does not engage in explicitly feminist discourse, her commitment to her profession and her sexual independence coincide with the concerns of what Sonia Alvarez refers to as the middle-class or "ideological" strain of Brazilian feminism.'9 In its discourse on the politics of female sexual pleasure, Patriamada displaces the phallus. The only orgasm we witness is female, achieved, judging from the posi- tioning of the characters, without benefit of penile penetration. The fram- ing is discreet: a medium close-up of two prone bodies, Lina lying in the foreground, looking upward (face in profile) while Rocha, lying be- hind her, faces her, the camera, the audience. (The two love scenes with Goias, in contrast, feature the more conventional missionary position, with Lina on the bottom. Both omit representations of both penetra- tion and orgasm, though the first includes a discussion of GoiAs's tem- porary impotence.) Lina is not compelled to choose between her lovers, or between her offspring and her future. That she is not simply a passive incubator for "the new Brazil" is underlined by a brief, inconclusive scene in which a female doctor is in the process of performing an abortion on her. Lina cries out and then leaves the room, but it is not until several scenes later that we are able to confirm that she actually halted the abortion. Though she decides to take the pregnancy to term after all, the abor- tion scene is crucial in affirming her right to make her own decision on this matter, in either direction. Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will Coutinho's film testifies to the resurgence of long- suppressed creative possibilities, yet its predominant mood is a wist- ful nostalgia for lost opportunities that cannot be recaptured.20 Its stance toward the future is both wary and ambivalent. The final shot of Elizabeth, spontaneously holding forth as she and Coutinho say their goodbyes and he departs with his crew, elicits contradictory readings. On the one hand, Elizabeth can be viewed as vociferously reasserting her former militancy. "The struggle is the same as in 1964. It hasn't changed an inch. ... The struggle must go on!" she proclaims. The image of her filmed from the departing vehicle, still talking and gesturing after her words have ceased to register on the sound track, suggests that her renewed energy will persist long after those who catalyzed it have once again vanished from her life. On the other hand, her speech has been cut off in the final editing and mixing. It is supplanted first by music and then by Coutinho's voice-over revelation that, as of June 1983, when the text for the film was completed, Elizabeth had still 392 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada only managed to arrange reunions with two of her remaining seven children.21 This privileged directorial intervention, in the guise of an objective factual update, undercuts the political determination that Elizabeth exhibited in the final scene, calling into question her mater- nal devotion and the reliability of her expressed intention to "return to the world" and tomar conhecimento (take cognizance) of her children. The longing to reconstitute the shattered collectivity proves a false hope, persistently deferred. Coutinho underscores this pessimistic note with a brief coda: over images of Jodo Virginio enjoying a carnival pro- cession near his house, Coutinho's voice notes that ten months after that footage was filmed, he died of a heart attack on the same spot and is buried beside Zez6 da Galilea, president of the original peasant league. From his first appearance in the second prologue, Joao Virginio func- tions as a surrogate for Joao Pedro Texeira - a militant peasant leader who was imprisoned rather than assassinated for his commitment to the cause. This concluding announcement of the "second demise" of the father, following on the suggestion that more than half of the Texeira children remain unreconciled with their mother, conveys a profound skepticism about the healing potential of Brazilian redemocratization. The nation-family has been irreparably sundered. For too many, Cou- tinho insists, the return to civilian government will offer too little, too late. In contrast to Coutinho's "pessimism of the intellect," Yamasaki asserts a fervent "optimism of the will." Patriamada's concluding im- ages are conciliatory, euphoric, literally pregnant with possibilities. Such unbridled optimism risks being dismissed as "naive" and "utopian." But this kind of informed naivete or tendentious utopianism must be rec- ognized as the potential product of political reflection and negotiation rather than merely the sign of their absence. The original Man Marked to Die was the object of suppression and repression. Coutinho's "sequel," on the other hand, has been enthusias- tically received both in Brazil and abroad. Fellow filmmaker Walter Lima, Jr., recounts viewing the film for the first time with a group of contemporaries - "friends, actors, film people of the same generation who cried at the end and clapped for five minutes straight. No one wanted to go home; the film kept us there at the door of the theater, talking in response to that unequivocal proof of our tenacity, our capacity to hope." He adds, almost in passing, "Of course there were the malcon- tents [who didn't share in the enthusiasm] -belonging, as always, to another generation. They thought that the simple fact of being from another generation freed them to view the film from a different angle."22 The politics of reception of Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later are facilitated by the film's unigenerationality: the same twenty years 393 Julianne Burton that register on the faces of Coutinho's informants register on his own. (The precredit montage includes a photograph of the aspiring director as he looked in 1962.) Despite differences of class and gender, subjects, filmmakers and (as in the instance Walter Lima recounts) potential viewers and critics traveled from youth to maturity across the same historical "moment," under similar repressions imposed by the same political regime. The same nostalgia for lost youth, the same shared skepticism of the middle-aged who have "seen too much" color their reception of the film. Patriamada, by a post-Cinema Novo director whose "generation" by definition lacks the cohesiveness of that of its predecessors, seeks cross-generationality in its characters, in its style, and in its ideologi- cal stance. Rather than recapitulating the journey from past to pres- ent, it attempts to sketch a trajectory from present to future. The film's reception in Brazil was highly problematic. Its conciliatory, neopopu- list optimism made it vulnerable-not only to preposterous twists of fate like Tancredo Neves's untimely death before taking office, but also to competing readings of the contemporary political conjuncture and to impasses and reversals on the economic front. Yamasaki recalls the group's disappointment when the film failed to elicit the anticipated response: What disappointed us most was that it never provoked the kind of de- bate we thought it would - not even in the filmmaking community. At the annual Gramado Awards (the Brazilian equivalent of the Oscars) we won the award for best sound-period. I was very struck by this nonresponse because it was so completely at odds with my sense of the film's experi- mental approach, which was meant to stimulate and challenge people, to encourage others to engage in the kinds of political discussions we had had while making it.23 The Political Is Personal Both films mediate between history and personal life in a way that emphasizes the personal dimensions of politics. Reflecting on how his film developed, Coutinho says he "never thought that the [Texeira] family would become as important as it became in the end": "The family ..., which at first seems less 'political' is ... in this sense, fundamental; more essential than that which is political per se. For that kid [referring to one of Elizabeth's children], 1964 means the day that he saw his mother for the last time -just [as] war, for Mother Courage, is the day her daughter died."24 These remarks echo the subsequent reflections of a fictional filmmaker from a neighboring country, direc- tor of another landmark film that attempts to confront an authoritarian 394 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada past. Discussing The Official Story, Luis Puenz6 explains: "In Latin America, when we talk about authoritarianism, we are not always talk- ing about it in the government, because it begins in the home, in the relationships between men and women, parents and children, [in] the idea of... the wife or the child as property."25 These attitudes are consistent with a process of critical reassess- ment currently under way throughout the redemocratizing countries of Latin America. Traditional definitions of the political that suppress or exclude the personal are increasingly being identified with the ex- cesses of authoritarianism. To borrow Edward Said's terminology, tradi- tional, affiliative forms of political association are being challenged by new social movments based instead on filiation (intrinsic or "natural" rather than exclusively voluntary alignments). These new social move- ments are characterized in part by their acknowledgment of the inter- relationship between public and personal life. From the inception of the Patriamada project, Yamasaki insisted on the necessity of creating fictional characters to ground the events subjectively and emotionally. Speaking for herself and her crew, Yama- saki recalls, "Our guiding concern was not to lose touch with the emo- tional high which we all felt when we were filming in the streets. We had to find ways to sustain that emotional intensity."26 Music, melodrama, and celebrative montages of "Brazilianness" ground the documenta- tion of historical personages and events in an emotive subjectivity that personalizes both politics and history. Here the metaphorical fam- ily deviates from the nuclear model: it is trigenerational and matri- focal, its dual-father configuration the product of unresolved paternity and a commitment to collaboration over confrontation, mutuality over exclusivity. Patriamada inscribes this figure of original synthesis on micro, macro, and meta levels. The lyrics of the film's theme song, heard over the middle and final celebrative montage sequences, evoke the culinary image of feijoada, the Brazilian national dish (a melange of ingredients expressive of Brazil's triple ethnic heritage - Indo-Afro-European) being prepared with a laser beam, a startling trope that juxtaposes the essence of homeliness with the ultimate in high-tech. The film's stylistic debt to music video is analogous in its use of an ultracontemporary form to convey a distillate of national actuality and potential. Patriamada's incorporativeness, its will to transcend dichotomies and to juxtapose the traditional with the ultramodern, echoes major national movements of cultural synthesis - from the modernism of the 1920s to the tropical- ism of the 1970s. But if its synthetic mode mimics the past, it also, even more notably, confronts the future, expressing the sensation of living "close to the fulcrum of history," inhabiting- in Salman Rushdie's 395 Social Documentary in Latin America surrection of the Bourgeoisie, The Coup d'Etat, and Popular Power- took five years. The scope and density of this record of a tumultuous, unpredictable, and ultimately tragic political process is unprecedented. The Battle of Chile's creative synthesis of documentary approaches, its collaborative mode of production, its methodology for breaking history-in-the-making into discrete components susceptible to cinematic recording make it a film of lasting importance. A commitment to political transformation has indeed motivated much of Latin American social documentary production over the past four decades. Many filmmakers have found themselves acting, through the agency of their films, as advocates and accusers, agitators and dissenters - if not voluntarily, then compelled by the contradictions of their situation. But other orientations and tonalities-poetic, ethno- graphic, celebratory, experimental-also warrant attention. The ethnographic contributions of the Peruvians Manuel and Vic- tor Chambi, founders of what film historian Georges Sadoul identi- fied as "the Cuzco school" (1955-65), of Argentines Jorge Prelorin and Raymundo Gleyzer during the subsequent decade (e.g., It Happened in Hualfin, 1969); of producer Thomaz Farkas's CondiVao Brasileira cycle of nineteen documentaries by various directors life and culture in the Brazilian Northeast (among them, Man of Leather and The Sugar Mill); of Gabriela Samper and the team of Colombians Marta Rodri- guez and the late Jorge Silva, have yet to receive the critical attention they deserve. Many important works are difficult to classify - Cuban director Hum- berto Solas's Simparele (1974), a performance documentary that recon- structs a people's history of Haiti through song and dance, for example. Or Argentine Alejandro Saderman's equally experimental and visually stunning Men of Mal Tiempo (Cuba, 1968), a "fiesta of memory" which records an encounter between centenarian veterans of Cuba's war for independence from Spain and a group of actors preparing for fictional roles based on their exploits. Examples from the past decade, a time of remarkable fecundity for Latin American feature and documentary filmmaking, multiply beyond counting. Eduardo Coutinho's Cabra mar- cado para morer: Vinte anos depois (Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later, Brazil, 1984) juxtaposes the neorealist style of the early 1960s with a self-reflexive contemporary news-gathering style in order to re- trace the lives of a peasant family and their community, dispersed by the 1964 military coup. Marisol Trujillo fuses performance and testi- mony in her Mujer delante del espejo (Women in Front of the Mirror, 1984) in which a young Cuban dancer recounts her entry into mother- hood and reentry into ballet through interviews, verite sequences, and choreography. Trujillo's Oraci6n por Marilyn Monroe (Prayer for 27 Julianne Burton phrase-"a time when all things, all possible futures, [are] still (just) in the balance."27 Mutual Mediations of the Fictive and the Factual Their very conjunctural specificity condemns too many documentaries to transitory interest, whereas a certain degree of docu- mentary contextualization lends a haunting substantiality and on- going resonance to many fictional narratives. For nearly four decades now, many of the most memorable expressions of Latin American cinema - from Luis Bufiuel's Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned, Mexico, 1950) and Fernando Birri's Los inundados (Flooded Out, Ar- gentina, 1962), through Tombs GutiBrrez Alea's Memories of Under- development (Cuba, 1968) and Miguel Littin's The Jackal of Nahuel- toro (Chile, 1970), to Sara G6mez's One Way or Another (Cuba, 1974) and Jorge Bodansky's Iracema (Brazil, 1975)- are products and expres- sions of "transitional states." These transitions may involve changes in forms and structures of governance: from neocolonial capitalism to nationalist socialism in Chile when Littin was filming The Jackal, for example. or they may involve a more sociological register, as in the recognition of the uneven impact of political and economic changes on structures or race, sex, and class stratification in Cuba in the mid- 1970s which prompted G6mez's One Way or Another. Or yet again, the transitions in question may be more personal in nature, as when Bufiuel marked his relocation to Mexico City with a film that explored the most marginalized elements of that New World metropolis. In their modes of production and in their modes of signification, all of these films display complicities with the real- through the incorpora- tion of social actors, the reciprocally denaturalizing juxtaposition of staged and observed events, the acknowledgment of the visual media's multiple and inevitable mediations, the problematization of the view- er's status as historical subject rendered passive voyeur. These com- plicities are made most explicit in the overt recruitment of documen- tary elements into fictive realms, since documentary, however much it defies rigid definition, is associated with a direct, ontological claim to the real, a congruence with the world we ourselves inhabit. In "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," metahistorian Hayden White voices the following "suspicion": "that narrative in general, from the folktale to the novel, from the annals to the fully realized 'history,' has to do with topics of... authority." "If every fully realized story," he continues, "is a kind of allegory... or 396 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada endows events, whether real or imaginary, with a significance that they do not possess as a mere sequence, then it seems possible to conclude that every historical narrative has as its latent or manifest purpose the desire to moralize the events of which it treats..., that is, to identify [them] with the social system that is the source of any real- ity we can imagine."28 Films that refuse the hegemonic cinematic di- chotomization of fictive and factual and that resist the narrativizing impulse of closure take their stand between the discourse of reality and the discourse of the imagination, using each to mediate the other. Their effect is to decenter authority, morality, and social system. These products of transitional states envision and embody transi- tional spaces, broader - if temporary - realms of possibility, figurations of pre- or post- or antiauthoritarian regimes. Retroactive nostalgia for what almost was; "anticipatory" utopian nostalgia for what almost could be. In their modes of production and in their modes of signification, both Man Marked to Die and Patriamada question authority - that of the practices and practitioners of their chosen medium, as well as the au- thority of the prevailing social system. In its opening shot, Patriamada invokes the authority of General Figueiredo as he addresses the nation over television; in its final montage, the film underlines the demise of that military authority through the shot of the palace door being locked and bolted behind the departing general. Between these two images, Patriamada repeatedly invokes the competing authority of a massive, popular will. It ends in the interregnum between the (literal) stepping down of the military and Tancredo Neves's assumption of power. Man Marked to Die examines the abuse of institutionalized authority and grassroots alternatives to it. Coutinho's efforts to foreground his own interventions and mediations as well as the performative elements in his subjects' responses interpolate the viewer as active participant who must reconcile various layers of fictive and self-representational discourses. Both films recognize a larger experiential and historial realm that can never be adequately narrativized; the elements spill out over the sides of any container designed to "hold" them. Distilling the ex- perience of making Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later into a kind of credo, Coutinho evokes not only Patriamada but also all of the land- marks of Latin American cinema mentioned above: "I believe that with fiction, as with documentary, we should let the audience participate in elaborating the thing. Fiction can even render a better account of an historical moment than documentary can. Things should not resolve themselves on the screen. The tomorrows of the future will sing their own song."29 397 Julianne Burton NOTES A shorter version of this chapter appeared in Studies in Latin American Popu- lar Culture 7 (1988). Reprinted by permission. 1. For the filmmakers' recollections and observations related to these pro- ductions, see Ana Maria Galano, Aspasia Camargo, Zuenir Ventura, and Claudio Bojunga, "O real sem aspas: Uma conversa com Eduardo Coutinho," Filme Cultura 44 (April-August 1984), and Julianne Burton, "Sing, the Beloved Coun- try: An Interview with Tizuka Yamasaki on Patriamada," Film Quarterly 41, no. 1 (Fall 1987). (Discrepancies between citations from the latter interview cited here and the published version are due to editorial cuts made because of Film Quarterly's space constraints.) 2. According to Yamasaki, "The overriding concept was for the three fictional characters to interact with and against Brazilian society in transi- tion, .... with many of the leading figures in the national drama the country was living at the time ... but always with one of our actors within the scene to ensure the continuity of the fiction" (Burton, interview with Tizuka Yamasaki). 3. Brazil's "bloodless" coup d'etat of April 1, 1964, was followed in the sub- sequent decade by military takeovers throughout southern Latin America. The imposition of military rule was most brutal in the Chilean coup of 1973, which was responsible for the deaths and disappearances of an estimated 30,000 people and the eventual exile of several times that number. The Grupo Tercer Afio's three-part documentary The Battle of Chile (1974, 1977, 1979) offers an unequaled cinematic register of that heavily contested but eventually overpowering pro- cess of submersion under military dictatorship - the inverse of the political pro- cess during which the Coutinho and Yamasaki films emerged. His training in fictional filmmaking notwithstanding, director Patricio Guzman opted for documentary because, in the context of the sociopolitical ferment that characterized the Allende years, "[his] ideas were completely out- stripped by reality" ("Politics and the Documentary in People's Chile: An Inter- view with Patricio Guzman on The Battle of Chile," in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers, ed. Julianne Burton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 57). In chronicling the prelude to and ac- tual overturning of Allende's democratic socialist experiment over a ten-month period, director Patricio Guzmin and his crew distributed their attention across the full range of civic life -elections, the government and the courts, schools, mines, factories, the transportation sector, political pressure groups, neighbor- hood organizations, public rallies and demonstrations, the armed forces. In the editing process, which continued for six years after completion of the filming, Guzmin lamented the lack of footage depicting how transformations and conflicts in the public sphere had affected personal and interpersonal life. The more "intimate" perspective sought for part 3, Poder Popular/Popular Power, did not materialize. In a personal conversation (Havana, December 1980), Guz- man ruefully observed that "the footage had let [him] down" ("El material me defraud6"). A decade later, the two Brazilian films under discussion here achieved an exemplary balance between public and private perspectives. (See chapter 14 for a sustained contextual analysis of the Chilean film.) 398 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada 4. Michael Chanan, "1986 Havana Film Festival," Border/Lines 7/8 (Spring- Summer 1987), 15. 5. Galano et al., interview with Eduardo Coutinho, p. 41. 6. Yamasaki describes the process of preparing the screenplay: "We began by constructing a fictional storyline capable of interweaving the three docu- mentary sequences which we initially shot [CandelAria demonstration, congres- sional session in Brasilia, uprising of the Txucarramaes Indians in the Amazon], but that story line also had to take into account events that were happening as we filmed and future events which we could not predict with any certainty. So the shape of the story was constantly changing.... We started each day reading the morning papers. Every new political development caused us to modify our story line.... We filmed several interactions between our charac- ters which we eventually had to throw out because either the situation had changed markedly or else our perspective had" (Burton, interview with Tizuka Yamasaki). 7. Walter Lima, Jr., "Cabra Marcado para Morrer: 0 Cinema 'Cumplice da Vida' de Eduardo Coutinho," Filme Cultura 44 (April-August 1984), 35. 8. Ibid., pp. 34-35. 9. Ironically, the mixture of professional and social actors, both renowned and anonymous, may function more effectively with non-Brazilian audiences. As Randal Johnson, a leading scholar of Brazilian culture, has argued: "The actors are all well known in Brazil. They, like the politicians, have celebrity status, and their access to the political space of the "social actors" derives pre- cisely from that celebrity. The film asks the [Brazilian] spectator to partially suspend disbelief, to recognize political figures and some media starts (Milton Nascimento, Sonia Braga), but not to recognize the main actors. The film would have been more effective for a Brazilian audience if the actors were not so well known" (personal correspondence, May 1987). 10. Galano et al., interview with Eduardo Coutinho, p. 40. 11. Later in this chapter, I will attempt to argue that Patriamada's "neo- populism" is not easily dismissed as either naive or atavistic. It is important to note in this connection, however, that references to one of the leading spokes- men for such an alliance - two decades earlier - abound in this film. The figure of Saint George that emblazons the Patriamada banner (seen in the precredit animation sequence, the concluding scene, and periodically throughout the film) has been associated with Cinema Novo filmmaker Glauber Rocha since Antonio das Mortes (1966). Goiis and his former wife dispute the ownership of "the book by Glauber." The filmmaker's surname figures as the given name of the fictional industrialist. Through greatly revered in Brazil even before his death in 1980, Glauber Rocha has seldom been associated with political clarity, coherence, or consistency. 12. In addition to Coutinho's own voice, those of novelist Ferreria Gullar and Tete de Lemos also narrate Coutinho's film. I have not attempted here to articulate a rationale for this alternation. When I attribute specific narrative interventions to Coutinho himself, I have taken care to verify that they are in fact his own, spoken in the first person. 13. In order to appreciate the extent of Patriamada's deviation from nar- 399 Julianne Burton rative norms, it is useful to consider observations made by Elice Munerato and Maria Helena Darcy de Oliveira, "When Women Film," in Brazilian Cinema, ed. Raudal Johnson and Robert Stam (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), p. 346. On the basis of a systematic content analysis, the authors maintain, "The destruction of [amorous] triangles and the sanction- ing of the couple is the rule in all [of the twenty films made in Brazil by women from the 1940s through the 1970s]. Although each decade has its specificity, the rule spreads across the history of Brazilian cinema." Even Dona Flor's two husbands, one might add, inhabit different realms, creating an amorous triangle only in fantasy, not in "reality." Earlier versions of Patriamada conformed to the dictate that the triangle had to be dissolved to make way for the couple. One discarded scene had the Queiroz and Goiis characters coming to blows over Lina prior to a final resolu- tion in which Lina abandons both men. (Original screenplay, courtesy of the filmmaker.) 14. For an illuminating summary of recent women's movements in five Latin American countries including Brazil, see Jane Jacquette, "Women in the Tran- sition to Democracy," in Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Record, vol. 5,1985-86, ed. Abraham F. Lowenthal (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1987). For an extensive study of the Brazilian instance in the context of a regional history of political participation among Latin American women, see Sonia Al- varez, The Politics of Gender in Latin America: Comparative Perspectives on Women in the Brazilian Transition to Democracy, Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1986). 15. Various sequences in which enormous crowds of people sing the national anthem were discarded in the editing process. One had Goias recalling how, as a political prisoner, he had been forced to sing the national anthem by his jailers. Only the one rendition remains in the final version, all the more moving for its tenuousness. In an interview for Istoe (March 6, 1985), Yamasaki ex- plained the instructions she gave to the singer Olivia Byington, "I asked her to sing in a sweet, tender, feminine way - completely different from the way we had all been taught to sing the national anthem in school" (emphasis added). 16. In Film Art: An Introduction, rev. ed. (New York: Knopf, 1986), David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson state that as a rule, narrative films seldom have more than forty separation locations in which the action transpires. Patriamada easily triples that number. 17. The English subtitles leave this emphasis on the population's predomi- nantly urban concentration untranslated. 18. Neves would never take office, however. A week after Patriamada's re- lease, the president-elect was hospitalized with a "minor ailment." Minor turned to major and from day to day, over a period of three weeks, his condition de- teriorated. After his death, Vice-President-elect Jos6 Sarney was inaugurated as Brazil's first civilian president in twenty-one years. 19. In discussing her film with me, Yamasaki stated: "I wanted the Lina character to embody the desires of my generation, which is somewhat older than hers - to be freer, more independent, less shackled by compromises, less inclined to respect the rules of a retrograde, machista society. I wanted to use 400 Transitional States: Man Marked to Die and Patriamada her character as a means of provoking my own generation to take a new stance toward their country" (Burton, interview with Tizuka Yamasaki). 20. In the Filme Cultura interview, Coutinho recalls, "Before making the film I said to myself, naively, 'I want to make a film which will mean death to illusions'- a film against illusions, by which I mean many things- ideology which does not know itself to be ideology, revolutionary optimism in quotation marks, etc. As things turned out, I was mistaken: if you kill certain illusions, others take their place" (Galano et al., interview with Eduardo Coutinho, p. 48). 21. Since, as Coutinho notes, the eldest daughter committed suicide ten months after Joao Pedro's assassination, Elizabeth had ten living children, not eleven. Because the town of Sao Rafael, where she had found shelter under an assumed name for so many years, was about to be inundated as part of a dam building project, Elizabeth returned to Paraiba state. There she lived with her son Carlos, whom she had always kept with her, and her eldest, Abrao, with whom she had maintained contact throughout her internal exile. She reestab- lished contact with the two of her children who had remained in Paraiba, Nevinha and Jodo Pedro Jr. (Peta). This leaves six children - not seven, as Coutinho states in his concluding voice-over. One of those, Isaac, has lived in Cuba since 1963. (Coutinho includes footage of an interview with him, provided at his request by a Cuban film crew.) The remaining five live over a thousand miles to the south, having emigrated to Rio de Janeiro - as documented by Coutinho and his crew, who sought them all out and interviewed them for the film. One can surmise that it is considerably easier for someone of Coutinho's social and pro- fessional position to navigate those vast distances than it would be for Eliza- beth herself. These facts qualify the negative judgment implied in Coutinho's closing statement and suggest a submerged bias. 22. Lima, Cabra Marcado para Morrer," p. 34. 23. Burton, interview with Tizuka Yamasaki. 24. Galano et al., interview with Eduardo Coutinho, pp. 46, 48. 25. "Dialogue on Film: Luis Puenz6," American Film 12, no. 2 (November 1986). 26. Burton, interview with Tizuka Yamasaki. 27. Quoted in Michiko Kakatami, review of The Jaguar Smile, New York Times, 21 February 1987. 28. Hayden White, The Content of Form (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 13-14. 29. Galano et al., interview with Eduardo Coutinho, p. 44. 401 20 AT THE LIMITS OF DOCUMENTARY: HYPERTEXTUAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE NEW LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA Ana M. Lopez Taking as her point of departure theories of textuality and parody as ar- ticulated by Gerard Genette, Margaret A. Rose, and Linda Hutcheon, Ana Lopez understands the documentary component in films pro- duced by the New Latin American Cinema as the carrier of history and historical consciousness in an effort to create a counterhegemonic cinema. Five feature-length works combine documentary and fictional modes to create a new, transformative discourse- one appropriate to a transformative cultural project that challenges the prevailing so- cial, political, and economic order, and questions conventional modes of historical and fictional representation. T6mas Gutierrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment (Cuba, 1968), Miguel Littin's Jackal of Nahueltoro (Chile, 1969), Sara Gdmez's One Way or Another (Cuba, 1974-77), and two films by Jorge Sanjines and the Bolivian Ukamau group, The Courage of the People (1971) and The Principal Enemy (1973), are the texts-as-palimpsests whose multiple orders of social and (hyper)textual discourse are examined here. Lopez also retrospec- tively illuminates the four features discussed in the foregoing chap- ters of this section. WHEN WE think of the New Latin American Cinema, cer- tain images and adjectives immediately come to mind: a bearded guer- rilla, weapon in hand and ammunition belt across his chest; a crowd of peasants defiantly holding up their weapons in protest; a mass dem- onstration with banners waving. If asked to describe the New Latin American Cinema, we might enlist one of the suggestive phrases that Latin American filmmakers have coined to describe their own practices: an aesthetics of hunger, a cinema of poverty, the camera as gun, an 403 Ana M. Lopez imperfect cinema, a third cinema, an aesthetics of garbage. Most of these terms and images refer us to documentary practices, for, in fact, al- though the New Latin American Cinema has activated almost every mode, genre, and style of cinematic production, documentary realism - as transformed by different contextual pressures-has served as a springboard for the movement's transformation and retheoretizing of the cinematic apparatus and its social functions. Eschewing the tradi- tional distinctions between documentary and fictional modes of film- making in its search to produce a "new" cinema with a renewed social function, the New Latin American Cinema has questioned, juxtaposed, transposed, and, ultimately, transformed each mode so that their various ontological and epistemological claims are mediated by the forces of past and present historical contexts.' The New Latin Ameri- can Cinema is best characterized as a transformative cinema - a counter- cinematic practice for a continent struggling to defy the incapacitat- ing logic of underdevelopment - and the nature of its transformation can be analyzed as a special kind of intertextual mediation where tex- tual operations spill over into social, political and historical realms. In light of recent work by Gerard Genette, Margaret Rose, and Linda Hutcheon, among others, this transformative practice can be can be analyzed as a form of parodic discourse.2 Although linking the term parody to serious, politically motivated texts might seem surprising, since the term is most commonly associated with imitation as ridicule, early uses of the word, its etymology, and contemporary artistic prac- tices justify its use in this context. The prefix para refers to something that is simultaneously "beside and against" and 6ide (song), indicates that parody (paroidia) is literally a beside-against song, contrechant or musical counterpoint. It is this sense of the word, rather than its iden- tification with humorous mockery that has concerned contemporary the- orists. Although there is no general consensus among them on the specificity of parodic forms of discourse, all agree at least, on the im- portance of dissociating the term parody from ridiculing imitation and (to different degrees) on its status as a special kind of intertextual transformation. Genette, for example, argues that parody is a form of hypertextuality, a mode that is distinct from other intertextual rela- tions (such as citation, paratextuality, metatextuality, and architex- tuality), while Rose equates parody with self-reflexivity, and Hutcheon posits it as a form of imitation or repetition with critical distance that permits the ironic signaling of difference within similarity. For Genette, the defining characteristic of parody as hypertextual- ity is the relationship between the texts in question. In hypertextual- ity, Genette argues, a semantic and/or stylistic transformation of text A (the hypotext) takes place in text B (the hypertext). The terms of 404 At the Limits of Documentary that transformation vary, but it is the transformation itself - turning texts into palimpsests- that describes the specific character of hyper- textuality.3 Although Genette's exhaustive classification of hypertex- tual relations as transformative practices is extremely suggestive, his analysis limits the parodic, as a hypertextual category, to its satiric or playful dimensions and subsumes its other possible functions under other hypertextual forms. Because his is primarily a structural schema, Genette's categories are exclusively limited to textual relations. As Hutcheon points out, they ultimately fail to take into account the her- meneutic or interpretive dimension of parody's transformative work. In Rose's and Hutcheon's less formalistic analyses, however, par- ody is also analyzed as a transformative critical practice, a form that by challenging antecedent texts, conventions, or prevailing modes of thought, can disturb preconceptions and prejudices and give rise to new forms of consciousness. In The Order of Things (as Rose points out), Foucault points to the parodic as exemplified by Cervantes's Don Qui- xote as ushering in the critical and self-reflexive modern episteme. As most theorists of parody from Bakhtin to Foucault have argued, parody is central to the promotion of new discursive formations, to the trans- formation of the discourse of an age. Parody, like ostrananie or aesthetic distancing, "lays bare the device" of a text, discourse, or social order and promotes a renewed relationship to the world. However, the "struc- tural and functional relationship of critical revision" mobilized by par- ody is, according to Hutcheon, always paradoxical.4 The capacity of parody to transgress boundaries - its critical potential - is still depen- dent on the affirmation of that which is being challenged. In Hutcheon's words, [The] paradox of legalized though unofficial subversion is characteristic of all parodic discourse insofar as parody posits, as a prerequisite to its very existence, a certain aesthetic institutionalization which entails the acknowledgement of recognizable, stable form and conventions.5 However, this neither negates nor dismisses the revolutionary poten- tial of parodic work. On the contrary, that potential can ultimately only be activated in history, by taking into account the text's inscription in specific sociohistorical conjunctures. Because of its double-voiced nature - a form of discourse with two or more competing "voices" in counterpoint - "parody involves not just a structural enonce but the entire enonciation of discourse," in short, a context.6 In fact, the poten- tial for renewal in parody is especially visible in particular historical periods, such as the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America, that can be de- scribed as markedly heteroglot. In such periods, a great number of competing voices or discursive options are available to underline, as 405 Julianne Burton Marilyn Monroe, 1986) uses techniques of collage and montage to illus- trate Ernesto Cardenal's poem of the same name. In Rte: Nicaragua, Carta al mundo (Letter from Nicaragua, 1985), Fernando Birri compiles an audiovisual ode to Nicaragua's struggling autonomy by combining his own poetry with images recycled from INCINE's (the Nicaraguan Film Institute's) discarded out-takes. Various works by Chileans living abroad demonstrate a remarkable degree of critical and self-critical incisiveness along with a "polyglot" approach to film language-both qualities clearly the distillate of the painfully broadening experience of exile. Valeria Sarmiento's El hom- bre, cuando es hombre (A Man When He Is a Man, Costa Rica, 1985) gently but decisively pulls the rug out from under Latin machismo through its imaginative juxtaposition of romanticized expressions of popular culture, observational footage, and startlingly candid inter- views. Marili Mallet's Journal inacheve (Unfinished Diary, Canada, 1983) uses self-reflexive discourses of intimacy (the "diary" format, in- terior domestic space, mirrors, family relations) to convey the inner ex- perience of exile and transculturation. Rail Ruiz's meditation on local elections as viewed from his Parisian neighborhood, Des Grands evene- ments et des gens ordinaires: Les elections (Of Great Events and Or- dinary People: The Elections, 1979), with its successive, accelerating reprises of its own exposition, is an observational and self-reflexive tour de force - an anthropological reversal in which the "native" scru- tinizes the exotic rituals of the European. Any list of directors, titles, and genres is problematic because of its inevitable partiality, in both senses of the word. My purpose is not to compile the definitive catalogue of Latin American documentary. I question the value of attempting to substitute or supplement the pre- vailing ethnocentric canon, though if such canons are to be perpetu- ated, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the formulation of a more socioculturally representative set of criteria. My primary goal in preparing this volume is to encourage a reconsideration of the social uses of documentary by making accessible for examination and com- parison specific strategies and practices that have expanded those uses in the Latin American context, innovating and renovating not only the content and form of documentary, but also its modes of production, diffusion, and reception and, in a more epistemological dimension, prompting a reconsideration of notions of the real, the national, the popular, the revolutionary. It is my hope that the general issues raised in these introductory pages - and in the ones that follow - will be as salient as individual films, filmmakers, and national and regional trajectories. Foremost among those general issues are: the viability of existing documentary typolo- 28 Ana M. Lopez Bakhtin would have said, the primacy of context over text for the ne- gotiations necessary for the production of meaning. In the fictional films of the New Latin American Cinema, the con- ventions and styles of the documentary - with their claims to immedi- acy and presence - are semantically and stylistically called into ques- tion, while their transformation provides access to a broad historical context that exceeds the analogical realm of fiction and mediates among text, spectator, and social process. The resulting texts, palimpsests of fiction, realism, and the "real," as a result, insert themselves differently into Latin American society. The Development of the New Latin American Cinema The New Latin American Cinema is predicated on the con- sciousness of the cultural ramifications of underdevelopment and de- pendency. Neither "dependent" nor struggling to become developed, it rejects the entrapment of conventional developmentalist logic and ag- gressively asserts its own underdevelopment - its hunger, imperfection, violence, and poverty - as an empowering, transformational device. For this cinema to exist, Latin Americans first had to realize that the an- swer to underdevelopment was not development according to the logic of the metropolis, but revolution. They also had to realize that revolu- tions could not be successful without the active participation of cul- tural/ideological forces. The development and maintenance of national cultures became a survival issue, the first step in the establishment of national and continental autonomy. Thus Latin Americans strove to develop and maintain autonomous national cultures in order to chal- lenge attempts at "developing underdevelopment," asserting cultural nationalism as an integral part of the struggle to establish a different order of things on the continent. Seizing one of the least likely tools for the development of national culture - a mass medium that is inescapably associated with the de- veloped world - Latin Americans attempted to fashion the cinema into an instrument for national and popular expression and a form of resis- tance to capitalist/imperialist domination. This entailed challenging the cinematic apparatus at every level: technology, aesthetics, language, and modes of production, distribution, and consumption. It also entailed questioning conventional beliefs about the role of the cinema (or any other art) in the maintenance and transformation of society. Establishing the specificity of the New Latin American Cinema was a complex and prolonged process. It involved more than overcoming a general "anxiety of influence" about predecessors and dependence on 406 At the Limits of Documentary foreign models. In fact, those imported cinematic models could not simply be directly applied in Latin America; straightforwardly dupli- cating simple realist forms was perceived as leading to passivity, while extreme modernist and avant-garde forms seemed to run counter to the filmmakers' social concerns and to appeal only to elite audiences. In addition, the characteristics of the dominant Hollywood cinema- transparency, illusionism, commercialism, gloss - were considered in- appropriate and counterproductive of cinematic practices seeking to promote sociopolitical liberation. Faced with the old questions regarding form versus content and debates about realism and modernism, the New Latin American Cinema looked for solutions in history and historiography.7 Through both con- temporary history as exemplified by documentary reportage and fic- tional reconstructions or rereadings of the past, the New Latin Ameri- can Cinema assumed the historical as the basic intertext necessary for its own intervention in the region's sociopolitical struggles. Above all, filmmakers sought to emphasize and transform the social and political effectiveness of the cinema. Although the historical focus of the New Latin American Cinema is self-apparent at the content level, this pro- cess also challenged the history of cinematic representation itself: the critical juxtaposition or "repetition with critical distance" of traditional cinematic modes - the documentary and the fictional cinemas and their accompanying conventional demands and effects on spectators- in the context of a search for realist, popular, and socially significant repre- sentational strategies. As critical realists, politically committed filmmakers like Fernando Birri and the students at his Documentary School in Santa Fe, Argen- tina, the first generation of ICAIC filmmakers in Cuba, and some of the practitioners of Cinema Novo in Brazil recognized Latin America's need for a particular kind of critical consciousness of the social, eco- nomic, and political aspects of life in an underdeveloped region. This awareness enhanced cinema as an instrument of demystification and "dealienation." These early films and declarations signaled a naive be- lief in the camera's ability to record "truths" - to capture a national real- ity or essence without any mediation- as if a simple inversion of the dominant colonized culture were sufficient to negate that culture and institute a truly national one. Gradually, the kind of knowledge the cinema was asked to invoke and produce acquired a different character. "Realism," no longer seen as tied to simple perceptual truth or to a mimetic approximation of the real, was increasingly used to refer to a self-conscious material prac- tice. The cinema's powers of representation-its ability to reproduce the surface of the lived world - were activated not as a record or dupli- 407 Ana M. Lopez cation of that surface, but in order to explain it, to reveal its hidden aspects, to disclose the material matrix that determined it. This pro- cess was, furthermore, not an end in itself (as it often is in traditional ethnography, for example) but was articulated as part of a larger pro- cess of cultural, social, political, and economic renovation. The cinematic analysis of the real was meant to serve as an enabling mechanism for the transformation of that reality. As a re-presentation or restructur- ing of the "real" conditions of life in Latin America, it sought to bring to light that which was kept in darkness and silence by the sociopoliti- cal and economic mechanisms of underdevelopment. And this light would also illuminate the process of representation itself, questioning the filmmaker's own position in the filmmaking process, their engage- ment with their subjects, their position as social actors in the universe being recorded. As part of this process, this cinema also sought to pro- vide spectators with a different consciousness of their worlds, to dis- turb the apparently natural order of things and to break down ration- alizations and preconceived ideas. The best available cinematic model to fulfill this kind of social func- tion was the poetic and morally committed realism proposed by the Italian neorealists, especially when combined with the didactic social commitment of Griersonian documentary - as in Fernando Birri's work for the Documentary School of Santa Fe. Birri's practice combined an essentially documentary impulse - to record the unrecorded as it "really was"-with fictive strategies - a narrative and poetic recreation of events. In subsequent transformations, although the realistic commit- ment of the documentary remained central, it was increasingly juxta- posed to and mixed with fictional strategies in order to generate differ- ent modes of cinematic address more directly associated with social reality and its transformations. This transformative process that increasingly confuses the tradi- tional distinctions between documentary and fictional modes of film- making (and their respective potential social effectiveness) is a central characteristic of the New Latin American Cinema. Within the universe of a given fiction, a historical/real/documentary text is persistently transformed semantically and/or stylistically. Although the terms of the transformation vary widely, this kind of operation transforms texts into palimpsests and reinscribes their textual operations into different orders of social and textual discourse. The textual operations that embody these representational and dis- cursive challenges are what I have here chosen to call "parodic." Al- though in the New Latin American Cinema this semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic confrontation is evident in films that are either primarily documentary or primarily fictional, here I shall focus on how the tra- 408 At the Limits of Documentary ditional, conventional, historical force of the documentary has been grafted onto the fictional. I will briefly analyze a number of ostensibly fictional films from different countries, each illustrating an increasingly more complex parodic hybridization of documentary and fictional voices. As each voice grapples for ascendancy, it transforms the other's op- erations while attempting to generate new modes of consciousness for the spectator. These parodic, contestational works simultaneously offer a critical revision of the principal modes of cinematic representation and establish the possibility for a different relationship among cine- matic texts, subjects, and contexts: "a perspective on the present and the past which allows [both filmmakers and audiences] to speak TO a discourse from WITHIN it without being totally recuperated by it."8 Documentary material is most obviously crossed with fiction in the New Latin American Cinema, first of all, to provide a context for fictive discourses. But it is also invoked to complicate the relationship between the fiction and its audience, to alter the significance of a film as well as the protocols required for its reception. The parodic relationship be- tween fiction and documentary - a pervasive mixing and sharing of the codes of each mode - sets up a dialectical relationship between iden- tification and distance: "like Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt, parody works to distance and, at the same time, to involve both artist and audience in a participatory hermeneutic activity."' Memories of Underdevelopment: History as the Present In Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelop- ment, 1968), one of the most acclaimed works of the New Latin Ameri- can Cinema, TomBs Gutierrez Alea makes extensive use of documen- tary footage of historical and contemporary events to submerge the angst of the film's protagonist in a historical context.1' The film makes use of archival documentary footage of historical events (like the Bay of Pigs invasion) as well as other forms of documentary material such as TV broadcasts, photographs, clips from fiction films, and filmed speeches by Castro. The documentary strategies of Memories, how- ever, exceed the simple insertion of documentary material as proofs of authenticity or "realism." The structure of the film itself is predicated on the juxtaposition of the strategies of fictive discourses and the power of the filmic image as document. The relentless introspection of Ser- gio, the film's protagonist (a frustrated bourgeois intellectual who can neither leave the revolution nor participate fully within it), is constantly juxtaposed to "objective" versions of the world in which he lives. These documentary insertions into the fictive text do not merely serve to 409 Ana M. Lopez The self-indulgent intellectual (Sergio Corrieri, left, as Sergio) disciplined by levels of de- privation he would prefer to ignore in Memorias del subdesarrollo (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968). Credit: ICAIC guarantee the objectivity of the film's discourse. Rather, in a parodic movement, they relativize the force of that discourse, of any particular discourse, as an indisputable "truth." The film achieves this balance by inserting its principal character into the "documentary" mise-en-scene. From the beginning of the film, we are introduced to a world that seems "real" rather than fictional- that is, an environment that clearly exceeds the needs and drives of the plot. The dance hall scene that accompanies the credits is shot in an aggressively direct, hand-held style associated with documentary. The scenes at the airport, where Sergio says goodbye to his wife and parents, and his ride back to the city on a bus function like slices of everyday Cuban life at the same time that they introduce the protago- nist's distance from that life: the richness and authenticity of what we see is not perceived by Sergio himself. Other scenes function similarly, with Sergio serving as the subjective foil against which the documen- tary force of the mise-en-scene is deployed: at the swimming pool, along the streets of Havana, the view from his telescope, in the Hemingway house. As Enrique Fernandez has argued, Sergio functions both as the 410 At the Limits of Documentary protagonist of the drama and as the spectator of the transitions and events of during a certain period of Cuban history." And it is his tran- sition from spectator to pseudo-participant - his failed seduction and transformation of Elena - that serves as the central conflict of the film. This transition is articulated as the distance between the fictiveness of the diegesis - Sergio's self-appointed role as a witness or spectator of the revolution - and its insertion into a historical universe that ex- ceeds the boundaries of Sergio's acerbic and limited vision. The longest explicitly documentary sequence, an elaborate recon- struction of the trial of the Bay of Pigs invaders, is motivated by Ser- gio's anger at his friend Pablo's assertion that he will assume a po- litical stance once he gets to Miami. Narrated in voice-over by Sergio himself, this sequence analyzes the motivations of the invaders in the context of the aftermath of the events at Playa Gir6n. Archival foot- age of the invasion and the public trials as well as still photographs and newsreel footage from the Batista period are used to expand the historical horizon of the narrative as well as to point out the limits of Sergio's own perceptual horizon. More complex uses of documentary strategies abound. The round- table discussion on "Literature and Underdevelopment" that Sergio at- tends, for example, is a reconstruction of an event that actually took place in 1964. At that discussion, one of the participants is Edmundo Desnoes, the author of the novel Memories of Underdevelopment, who pontificates on the racial prejudice against Latin Americans in the United States, while a black attendant silently fills water glasses in the background. During the discussion, the sequence is "fictionalized" through the filter of Sergio's subjective reaction to the events and in- dividuals present. As Desnoes lights a cigar, Sergio's voice-over ques- tions Desnoes's actions and his illusions about himself, despite his rela- tively important position in Cuba: "Eddie, outside [of Cuba] you would be nothing." In yet another sequence where the documentary emerges next to and within the narrative, Sergio takes Elena to meet a friend at ICAIC. That friend is Tomas Gutierrez Alea himself, who is introduced view- ing a sequence of repeated clips from films censored by Batista offi- cials. When Sergio asks Gutierrez Alea what he intends to do with the clips, he answers that they will be part of a film he is working on that will have "a bit of everything." Sergio's doubts over whether or not such a film would be released are obviously unfounded, since the film we are watching is precisely the film Alea refers to. By grafting the documentary onto the fictional, juxtaposing a per- sonal/subjective point of view to a historical vision, Memories of Under- development complicates the film's point of view to the point where the 411 Ana M. Lopez Playing himself in the film he co-scripted, writer Edmundo Desnoes (left) shares the dias with Argentine novelist David Vifias. Memorias del subdesarrollo. Credit: ICAIC "story" and its protagonist/spectator within the film are clearly dis- cernible from another position, that of the spectator of the film. We see through Sergio's eyes, but what we see also stands on its own, re- corded by a camera that sees on its own and that answers Sergio's individual uncertainties with the certainty of the Cuban people's col- lective transition to socialism. The Jackal of Nahueltoro: A Criminal Wild Child More distant from the fictional than Memories of Under- development, Miguel Littin's first feature-length film, El Chacal de Nahueltoro (The Jackal of Nahueltoro, 1968-69), is an elaborate recon- struction and analysis of a real crime that scandalized Chile in 1960. Jose del Carmen Valenzuela, called the Jackal of Nahueltoro, was an illiterate vagrant who murdered a woman and her five daughters. Con- demned to death, he was educated and acculturated in prison before finally being executed by a firing squad. The film reconstructs the crime and the public attention that it elicited in order to disclose that both 412 At the Limits of Documentary the crime and the criminal are the products of a corrupt society that invokes the bourgeois judicial apparatus against those who have been deliberately and completely marginalized from bourgeois society. The Jackal exhibits a parodic form that directly challenges the rela- tionship between documentary and fiction filmmaking. In fact, the film parodies the mechanisms of "reporting" or documenting by highlight- ing the dialectic between the (story)telling and showing functions of fictional narratives and documentaries in an explicitly dialogical fash- ion.12 The ultimate crime exposed by the film is that Jose's first contact with a social order responsive to his physical and spiritual needs oc- curs inside prison walls. There he learns to tell a story, to compose a poem, to kick a ball, to fashion a guitar; yet he is executed at precisely that point where he is capable of recognizing his social responsibilities. The Jackal of Nahueltoro begins with a series of statements that position the film (and the spectator) at the limits of the fictional. Statements of "fact" offer the journalistic and legal record of the case of the Jackal as the raison d'etre of the film. They thus serve a function opposite to the disclaimers of the conventional fictional cinema that deny any relationship between the fictional work of a given film and similar characters or events in real life. Positioned as a second-order discourse imposed upon an existing discourse about the Jackal, the film begins its operations under the aura of the real, as a documentary reconstruction of prior efforts to document the tragedy - already, in Genette's terms a "hypertext." The film's distance from the real Jackal and its position as a com- mentary rather than a documentary is reinforced throughout the first half by the relations established between the image and the sound tracks. The sound track is used as "the record," as the arbiter of differ- ent "truths." It is used to give voice to four different kinds of texts, four different interpretations of the Jackal's story: a female voice-over (actually the voice of Shenda Roman, the actress who plays Rosa, the Chacal's victim) reading, in a cold and mechanical fashion, the legal record of the case; a news announcer who sensationalizes the search for Jose and, later, his petition for a pardon; the interviews conducted by a radio reporter in the second half of the film; and the voice of Jos6 himself, mostly serving as a voice-over narrator, but also in several brief synchronous conversations. None of these voices is colloquial or spon- taneous; they are either guarded (the interviews), cold and formal (the legal record), sensationalized (the announcer), or distant (Jose's voice- over). Even in the conversations between Jose and the priest or between Jose and the reporter, language does not serve its usual communicative purposes, for Jose's halting entreaties ultimately receive no response. Words and sentences function as explicit representations rather than 413 Ana M. Lopez The still uncomprehending criminal cornered by the "long arm" of the press and the po- lice. El Chacal de Nahueltoro (Miguel Littin, 1969). Credit: Unifilm; courtesy Gary Crowdus "slices of life" and do not participate in the film's own "representing" work. Spoken or read language thus serves as a record or testimony for the film rather than as a communication device for the characters or as a dramatic device for the film's fictional work. That fictional work takes place primarily on the image track. The images accompanying the different voices that narrate the texts of the case embody the opposite characteristics of the spoken word. These images, often subjective point-of-view shots, are always impassioned, yet they are also challenged by the authenticity of the direct-cinema documentary style that is used to record them: wild hand-held camera movements, awkward transitions, and an oscillating point-of-view structure. In the first half of the film, conflict is generated by the juxtaposi- tion of the "stories" told in voice-over and the present/past dichotomy of the visual track. The images of the film begin at a "present," the cap- ture and interrogation of Jos6, from which we are led by the sound track to Jose's past. The difference between Jose's voice-over text and the visualization of his tale is parodied by his presentation as a prisoner under interrogation at the same place where the crimes were commit- 414 At the Limits of Documentary In a paradox expressive of his extreme marginalization, Jos&'s only constructive social- ization takes place behind bars. El Chacal de Nahueltoro. Credit: Unifilm; courtesy Gary Crowdus ted (in Nahueltoro, where a furious crowd screams for his blood in the background). These contrasts clearly serve to relativize the power of all of the discourses offered to the spectator: we are shown and we are told many things from several different perspectives. The scenes of Jos6 as a prisoner are brutally direct, but reflect the point of view of an in- visible participant in the spectacle of his arrest, capture, and interroga- tion. When he is being questioned by the judge, in contrast, the camera is placed directly between them and functions like a witness by dra- matically panning back and forth between the two. The images of Jos6's arrest and interrogation and the flashback ex- plorations of his life are excruciatingly direct and physical. In Jose's world, as a child and as an adult, words have little effect against harsh- ness and misery. The elegant words of the rich landowner who refuses to help yet another "little beggar" and the proselytizing of the priest who wants him to take "the body of God" are contrasted to the silence of the officer who does try to offer some material help, as well as against the child's own silence and incomprehension. The boy's future - unending poverty, brutal unrewarded labor, society's scorn-is already present 415 Social Documentary in Latin America gies; modes of verbal and visual address; methods for activating social actors and viewers; the particuliarities that distinguish documentary from fictional mediations; the centrality of historical, sociopolitical, and ideological urgencies to the Latin American documentary project; the relationship between political systems and documentary practices; the implications of intermingling diverse media and modalities; the es- sential symbiosis between text and context; the imprint of history upon documentary and documentary upon history; and, finally, the implica- tions of all of the above for an increasingly transcultural world. If domi- nant cultural and economic forces enable the audiovisual media to play an increasingly alienating, dehumanizing, deracinating role, the films and approaches discussed in the following pages pose an enriching, em- powering range of alternatives. NOTES 1. In the development of this paradigm, Bill Nichols made numerous criti- cisms and suggestions that have substantially enriched the final product. 2. Lewis Jacobs, The Documentary Tradition, rev. ed. (New York: Nor- ton, 1979), p. 516. 3. Eric Barnouw, Documentary, A History of the Non-Fiction Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. v. 4. The Sociedad de Difusi6n Radio-Electrica (Radio-Electric Broadcast- ing Society) was, in the words of the head of one of its many sections, a kind of "unofficial national ministry of culture" (interview with Danilo Trelles, head of SODRE's film section for many years, Madrid, 1981). 5. Paulo Antonio Paranagua, Cinema na America Latina: Longe de Deus e Perto de Hollywood (Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul: Colegao Universidade Libre, 1985), the first synthetic history of the film medium in Latin America, makes a major contribution. Not the least of its virtues is its careful attention to the development of documentary forms and practices. The most extensive history of Latin American cinema is still Les Cinemas de l'Amerique Latine, ed. Guy Hennebelle and Alfonso Gumucio Dagr6n (Paris: L'herminier, 1981). In this collection of essays on the cinematic histories of all the countries in the region, the degree of attention to documentary varies from chapter to chapter. Part I of my collection of interviews, Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers, is dedicated to the "documentary impulse." Jean-Claude Bernardet, Cineastes e imagens do povo (Rio de Janeiro: Brasiliense, 1987) examines documentary production in a single country (Brazil) from the 1950s through the 1970s. Finally, for the assessment of three "generations" of national film histories published between 1959 and 1982, see Ana Lopez, "A Short History of Latin American Film Histories, Journal of the Latin American Film and Video Asso- ciation 37, no. 1 (Winter 1985), 55-69. 29 in those early biographical moments. Temporal expansion underscores the most prototypical actions - being picked up for vagrancy as a tod- dler, hoisting heavy sacks as an adolescent, drinking cheap liquor to the point of unconsciousness as an adult. Exploiting the potential of the documentary style, the camera probes Jose's early life and the actions that lead to his crime. It investigates the spaces, refusing to privilege speaking voices and emphasizing the inappropriateness of the conventions of civilization - and the conven- tions of narration in the fiction cinema- for the lived experiences of someone like Jos6. For example, in the sequence when Jose meets Rosa (the woman he will murder) the camera tries to remain between them: Rosa and Jose are always apart, in different offscreen spaces. Every time Rosa addresses him, Jose refused her gaze. Even his most con- ventional response to her - chopping wood in exchange for a glass of water - takes place in offscreen space, far from the conventions of "civi- lized" representations. In the second half, the tone of the film changes to coincide with Jos6's immersion into language and culture under the auspices of the judi- cial/correctional apparatus. This shift is marked by a freeze frame of his smiling face after learning, in the prison yard, what to do with a soccer ball. This is the first time we have seen him smile. We subse- quently see him cleaned up, getting a haircut, learning how to read, being taught about patriotic moments in the history of Chile, partici- pating in religious ceremonies, weaving baskets. Without the hyper- active hand-held camera, sequence shots, and shifting past-present perspectives of the first half, this second half increasingly approaches a more conventional fictional representational style. The camera is for the most part static and invisible, simply recording what lies in front of it. Jose's relations to the individuals he meets in prison are explored through editing. The taming of Jose exhausts his-and the film's- techniques for resisting cultural and economic aggression, and the film begins to shift its focus. Jose himself, as portrayed by Nelson Villagra, loses his difference-the marginality that defined him-and becomes simply one more prisoner, in long shots indistinguishable from the others. This difference is also indicated by a marked shift in the point of view of the film's discourse. The fictional drama abandons the perspec- tive of Jose to follow the research undertaken by a moustachioed re- porter (never identified by name within the diegesis) who records inter- views with all those related to the case - the prison chaplain, the judge, the captain of the execution squad-in an effort to construct a vision of the judicial system that could have prevented the execution of Jos6 but chooses not to. Ana M. Lopez 416 At the Limits of Documentary The Jackal of Nahueltoro depends upon this grafting of the docu- mentary upon the fictional to unleash its analysis and critique of the Chilean judicial system and of a society that unfairly plays the games of civilization - and enforces its sanctions - against those without the resources to understand or comply with its rules. That it does this suc- cessfully does not mean, however, that the film is free from a certain cinematic Manicheanism that privileges the direct - the documentary - against the fictional, associating the former with liberation and the lat- ter with the subjugation and depersonalization of underdevelopment and class society. One Way or Another: Another Marginalism Not unlike The Jackal, the subject of Sara G6mez's De cierta manera (One Way or Another, 1974-77) is also marginalization - specifically, the patterns of cultural resistance to underdevelopment among the underclass. However, the context of this film is radically different. Within the Cuban revolution, marginalization has ceased to be primarily an economic phenomenon, and One Way or Another chal- lenges not only the material conditions of marginalization, but also the subtler social mores and attitudes that sustain it. Specifically, the film focuses on how the legacy of marginalization is manifest in contem- porary sexual relationships in Cuba. Unlike The Jackal, One Way or Another is not interested in eliding the distance between documentary and fictive discourses. In fact, the entire film - especially its genesis - is grounded more in the documen- tary than in the fictional mode. This is not to say, however, that One Way or Another is not a fiction film. The subtitle, About Real and Fic- tional People, unites the fictional and the documentary. But the use of documentary and fictive discourses in the film underlines the differ- ences between both "voices," while clearly demonstrating their conven- tionality as forms of representation. In One Way or Another, a traditional expository documentary mode-complete with authoritarian voice-over-is set "beside and against" a realist fictional narrative. The narrative is a fairly standard romance. Mario, born in the Havana slum of Las Yaguas and still learn- ing how to adjust to the changes brought about by the revolution, meets and falls in love with Yolanda, a young teacher from a bourgeois fam- ily assigned to work in a school in the new community of Miraflores - one of the five new neighborhoods built for the former residents of the Las Yaguas slum. Their relationship is fraught with the difficulties that arise from the contradictions between standards of sexual relationships and behavior (like machismo) that are the legacy of marginalization, 417 Ana M. Lopez Mario (Mario Balmaseda) and Yolanda (Yolanda Cuellar) seldom see eye to eye in De cierta manera (Sara Gomez, 1974-77). Credit: ICAIC and the material changes brought about by the revolution. Whereas the fictive discourse explores the domestic or interpersonal effects of these changes, the documentary is primarily used to provide a record of changes in the public/social sphere. The purely documentary segments often rudely interrupt the pro- gression of the classical narrative. Although the voice-over is gener- ally sympathetic, its official and academic tone stands in sharp con- trast to the colloquialism and vivacity of the characters' dialogue and their often troubled emotions. After the precredit (a highly charged workers' meeting) and credit sequences, a documentary segment offers concrete information about the elimination of slum areas and their re- construction into model communities, while the voice-over discusses how defensive cultural patterns born of marginality persist even after the material conditions of marginalization have been attenuated. This factual segment solidly positions the narrative romance (which will begin in the next sequence) in the context of a specific social contradiction rather than in a fictive imaginary one, thus disrupting the traditional pleasure that narrative affords us. 418 At the Limits of Documentary Unscripted contention: factory workers debate the ethics of Mario's actions in the con- clusion of De cierta manera. Credit: ICAIC Similarly, while Mario and Yolanda exchange life stories early in their relationship, their conversation is interrupted by a minidocumentary - complete with titles and voice-over narration -on the Abacua secret society.'3 Initiated by Mario's declaration that he once wanted to join the Abacua, this marked documentary interruption of the diegesis again distances us from the fiction and prevents our simple identification with its characters even though the narrative thread is later resumed.14 In total, the film has five explicit documentary narrative interruptions of this kind that serve essentially as distancing devices and as tools for contextualizing markers of social contradiction. The documentary potential of the cinematic image is also clearly invoked as a parodic intertext for the space where narrative actions are developed. Unlike the standard fiction film, where locations are sub- ordinated to narrative drives, in One Way orAnother the narrative space becomes a social space where the fictional drives are challenged by so- cial forces. Mario's factory, Yolanda's school, the streets, homes, and other settings for the action of the film are used to develop the fictional romance, but they also exert very specific pressures on the fictional 419 Ana M. Lopez structures. As Michael Chanan points out in his perceptive analysis, each "real" location inhabited by "real" people corresponds to a specific aspect of each of the two principal characters' social existence and de- termines specific forms of behavior. These physical/social spaces, al- most "characters" in their own right, impinge forcefully on the develop- ment of the fictional romance.'5 Documentary discourses are also used in a less explicit fashion to provide evidence and to support specific narrative dilemmas. In these segments, the documentary and the fictional become almost indistin- guishable because the characters of the narrative are given roles in the documentary (or vice versa). This fictional/documentary mixed mode is most often used in relation to Yolanda, while the "full" documentary treatment is invoked primarily in relation to Mario.16 Thus Yolanda's problems at her school- adjusting to the conditions and needs of less privileged families - are presented through images that are not clearly identified as either documentary or fictional. When she discusses her exasperation with a co-worker, for example, we also are shown images of the dire family environment of one of her students. But the status of these images is never clearly identified. Are they documentary or fictional? Later, after we meet the subject of these images, the mother of the delinquent Lazaro, we realize that they are actually both documentary -insofar as the character is real and not played by an actress - as well as an important part of the diegesis of the film. Yo- landa is also privileged as the only "character" who leaves the diegesis to address us directly. The first instance of Yolanda's direct address occurs during the first (postcredits) documentary sequence, before we know who she is. Later in the film, after an unpleasant double date, Yolanda is again presented in direct aural and visual address express- ing her concerns about the future of her female students. Although this identification of Yolanda with an undifferentiated documentary/fictional mode of discourse might seem to privilege her role as a social actor, in fact, it segregates Yolanda and her voice into a problematic undefined realm. Neither "real" like Lazaro's mother nor "fictionalized" like Mario, Yolanda is unanchored, both in terms of the public sphere represented through the documentary and in terms of the film's fictional operations. Her problems and her specificity as a middle-class woman are not privileged by documentary explorations, while her fictional role as the difficult, "upper-class," professional girl- friend is undercut by her ability to address us directly through the codes of the documentary. One Way or Another seems partly to assume the same patriarchal stance that it criticizes by approaching only the male characters of the film with a clearly established dialectical opposition between the docu- 420 At the Limits of Documentary mentary/real and the narrative/fictive. The pervasive patriarchal bias that the film analyzes also plays a part in the film's own complex hyper- textual documentary and fictional operations. At the Boundaries of Fiction and Documentary: Historical Reconstruction and the Ukamau Group More than any other invididual or collective within the New Latin American Cinema, Jorge Sanjines and the Ukamau collec- tive of Bolivia have exploited the margin between documentary and fictional discourses as the most productive way to establish a revolu- tionary popular cinema - in this instance, for the Andean people. Their films challenge the boundaries of the fictional and the documentary and function as "limit" cases in the search for an authentic, popular, and effective Latin American cinematic practice. In the dialectical evolution of the work of Sanjines and Ukamau we can trace the increasing hybridization of the fictional, the documentary, and the historical in their efforts to locate, define, and communicate with their films' target audience. The development of the Ukamau col- lective's work, from their first film Ukamau (1966) to Get Out of Here! (Llosky Kaymanta, 1977), demonstrates not only the theoretical and practical negotiations undertaken by the group, but also the depth and consistency of their efforts to develop a mode of cinematic discourse - a paradoxical synthesis of fiction and document - that would be true to their subjects, that would be poetic, communicative, critical, and, above all, revolutionary. This process of transformation began during the production of Uka- mau, a fictional story exploring the conflict between Indian and creole (Westernized) cultures in Bolivia. The film was originally conceived as a denunciation of the social and economic exploitation of the Indians by the (creole) mestizos. But Sanjines and his group realized that de- nunciation was not sufficient, and that it was naive to denounce to the people what they suffered daily. Besides, to whom was that denunciation directed? To those that exercised the op- pression? If the film was directed to the people we had to do more than denounce, we had to pressure the dynamic potential of the people, to begin a call to arms, to tempt the people to pick up the stone that Mayta wields in the last scene [of Ukamau].17 This realization led the collective to seek out ways to make their cin- ema an agent of change without resorting to the explicitly propagan- distic techniques of agitprop documentary. 421 Ana M. Lopez Ukamau (Jorge Sanjines and the Ukamau collective, 1966). Credit: Unifilm; courtesy Gary Crowdus Their next film, Yawar Malku (Blood of the Condor, 1969), also fiction based on historical fact, was purported to expose the "principal enemy" they had begun to denounce in Ukamau -that is, the penetration of foreign capitalism. Of all the New Latin American Cinema films, Blood of the Condor had the most concrete and verifiable sociopolitical im- pact. The film's denunciation of the population control activities of the U.S. "Progress Corps" (a thin disguise for the Peace Corps) gave rise to a popular campaign that eventually resulted in the Bolivian govern- ment's expulsion of the Peace Corps.'s But their experiences making Blood of the Condor in an Indian com- munity and the results of their distribution experiments among the In- dians convinced the Ukamau group that they had to go further in their efforts to make a popular yet analytical Bolivian cinema that did not fall into either the conventions of fictional or documentary filmmak- ing.19 Both Ukamau and Blood of the Condor were structured to follow the traditional dramatic patterns of fictional narratives. In Blood of the Condor, for example, a flashback-within-flashback structure de- picts the struggle of a citified Indian to buy blood for his dying brother from the Altiplano while simultaneously revealing why the brother was wounded in the first place. He was shot by the police and left to die 422 At the Limits of Documentary Yawar Mallku (Jorge Sanjines and the Ukamau collective, 1969). Credit: Unifilm; cour- tesy Gary Crowdus because he had participated in the castration of the local "Progress Corps" representatives who had sterilized his wife and many other village women without their knowledge. The flashbacks provide greater conventional dramatic suspense, but they also render the film's orga- nization almost unintelligible to Andean villagers whose culture does not make use of them. Similarly, the film's use of close-ups and psycho- logical motivation distanced it from the perceptual, narrative, and so- cial traditions of the Indian population, reducing its local verisimili- tude.20 As Sanjines has explained, It was not enough that the film was spoken in Quechua, that all the actors were peasants, and that it took their side.... It was not that they could not understand what was being said, it was rather a formal conflict at the level of the medium itself which did not correspond to the internal rhythms of our people or their profound conception of reality.21 After these experiences, Ukamau resolved to reject the conventions of fiction filmmaking: Since ours was a cinema which wanted to develop parallel to historical evolution, but which also sought to influence the historical process and to extract its constitutive elements, it could no longer be limited to conven- 423 Ana M. Lopez In contrast to the isolating ethno-poeticism of their 1960s efforts (see preceding shots from Ukamau and Yawar Mallku), Sanjines's and Ukamau's later films reasserted the social integration of indigenous Andean communities. Fuera de aqui (Jorge Sanjines, 1976). Credit: Unifilm; courtesy Gary Crowdus tional forms and structures. Its very contents demanded a formal corre- spondence that would break with molds and traditions because it aspired to results far beyond applause and satisfaction. ... If it was essential to work with reality and the truth, manipulating live history, everyday his- tory, it was for the same reason indispensable to find forms which would not detract or ideologically betray the contents, as had occurred with Blood of the Condor, which used fictional forms to portray historical facts and was unable to document its own truth because of its formal limitations.22 Their search for a different cinematic language led the Ukamau col- lective to develop a form of filmmaking as self-conscious historiogra- phy, as the inscription of a history in the present. The method of his- torical reconstruction they developed in films like Los caminos de la muerte (The Roads ofDeath, never completed) and El coraje del pueblo (The Courage of the People, 1971) focuses on past events as remem- bered and witnessed by those who actually lived them.23 These histori- cal witnesses themselves become protagonists of and active contributors to the films, thus eliminating professional actors, approximating a more 424 At the Limits of Documentary collective popular participation, and giving the film "an irrefutable docu- mentary touch."24 In The Courage of the People, that documentary "touch" is vividly apparent as a process of self-conscious history-in-the-making. It serves as a constant reminder that we are watching a historical reconstruc- tion that is also an instance of a writing/filming of history itself. The film never completely eschews the fictional; rather, it reinscribes the fictional in terms of the historical and changes the terms of its opera- tion accordingly. Intermingling fictional and documentary modes, The Courage of the People redistributes the tyrannical weight of respective conventions and attempts a dialogical reappropriation of a specific mo- ment in the history of the Bolivian class struggle. The Courage of the People is a reconstruction of the massacre of miners that took place at the Siglo XX (Twentieth Century) mine on June 24, 1967, the night of the feast of Saint John. Claiming that the miners were directly supporting the guerrilla activities of Che Guevara in the south, the government sent its troops, with orders to kill on sight, into the mining towns while the celebrations were in full swing. Before dawn, hundreds of men, women, and children lay dead in the streets of Siglo XX. Rather than produce a fictional recreation of this event (in the style of Blood of the Condor), Ukamau obtained the active co- operation of miners and families who had survived the attack and of soldiers who had participated to reconstruct the events of that night as they were remembered. Thus Courage functions both as a historical reconstruction of a cru- cial event in the history of the Bolivian class struggle and as a docu- mentary of one community's collective remembering and recreation of that event. In Sanjines's assessment, the film is an example of horizon- tal rather than vertical cinematic practice, of filmmaking with the prac- tical and creative collaboration of the people, rather than a cinema for the people coming, a priori, from outside. In a paradoxical sense, the filmmakers became a part of this collective phenomenon of the Siglo XX community as its instrument of expression, "allowing the commu- nity to talk about itself" through them.25 The Courage of the People combines documentary and fictional modes in its search for a collective voice. The careful orchestration and sequencing of the material belies a creative intentionality that tries to efface itself in favor of the collectivity. However, the film's double voice constantly calls attention to both "speaking" and "viewing" subject po- sitions within the text. From its very beginning, the film's status as a document and as a recreation is clarified not only through titles that explain its relationship to history, but also through an epic preamble to the events of Saint John's Night that eventually locates the narra- 425 Julianne Burton 6. For one visiting Latin American actor and director, the Toronto Film Festival's 1986 "Winds of Change" retrospective (ninety-six films from Latin America made over the preceding twenty-five years) was memorable above all for one particular screening. After almost two decades, he was finally able to view La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces), the most important Latin American documentary of the 1960s. He had waited twenty years and traveled thousands of miles to view a film made by his contemporaries only a few hundred miles south of his native Brazil. Such instances are distress- ingly common. 7. Albert E. Smith, Two Reels and a Crank (Garden City, N.Y.: Double- day, 1952), p. 66n. 8. Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel: 1911-1967 (Norman: Uni- versity of Oklahoma, 1972), p. 19. 9. Fielding provides lists of genuine and fake footage from the Spanish American War (ibid., p. 31). 10. Paranagua, Cinema na America Latina, pp. 20-21 (my translation). In his fifty-year history of the American newsreel, Raymond Fielding devotes sev- eral pages to the Mexican Revolution, "one of the few military conflicts before World War II which received moderately good motion picture coverage." He notes, "All the major American newsreel companies sent correspondents south of the border, as did a number of smaller firms," giving particular attention to the unprecedented contract between Mutual Film Corporation and General Pancho Villa for "exclusive" film rights to battle scenes (The American News- reel, pp. 110-15). 11. Barnouw, Documentary, p. 81. 12. Ibid., p. 161. 13. Ibid., pp. 191, 194. 14. Bolivia had made an early start in this direction with the collaboration, from the late 1940s, between Jorge Ruiz, Augusto Roca, and Alberto Perrin Pando. In a uniquely prolonged trajectory that spanned three decades, their production company, Bolivia Films, would move from independent social docu- mentary to fictional features and finally to contract documentary work for U.S. agencies and corporations. 15. Barnouw, Documentary, p. 202. 30 tive retelling in the present and marks the story itself as past and as an integral part of an even longer historical process. The film begins with a long prelude in which we see "the people"- identified by a title as the citizens of the town of Catavi in 1942- marching, banners waving, across barren hills and then massacred in cold blood by a troop of soldiers. This sequence is carefully edited, mak- ing much use of dynamic graphic principles reminiscent of Eisenstein's montage of attractions. The long cross-cutting between the people walk- ing down a hill and across a plain while the soldiers on a hilltop wait for them to get within firing range builds suspense to an emotional crescendo that finally climaxes, after the shooting is over, in slow pano- ramic shots of both the despair of the survivors and that of the soldiers - largely of the same poor, indigenous stock as their victims-who had to obey orders. The faces and expressions of the real enemy - heads of government and others allied with the forces of imperialism in Bolivia - are exposed in the next sequence. After an explanatory title that de- scribes what happened at Catavi (400 dead, over 1,000 wounded), a series of titles and photographs identify those responsible: mine owners, Bo- livia's president and prime minister, and the head of the army. The Catavi sequence is followed by a classic documentary montage of still images and titles that trace the history of governmental brutality against the Bolivian miners by detailing other massacres (Potosi in 1947, Siglo XX in 1949, Villa Victoria in 1950, Sora-Sora in 1964, the general military occupation of the mining zones in 1965, the Llallagua massacre in 1965) and by identifying those responsible for the multitude of dead and wounded. Having outlined a history of brutality against miners up to 1965, the film abruptly changes register. The throbbing percussion music of the montage-documentary-history sequence stops and we are given a long shot of a silent man who sits immobile in a wheelchair by a poor rancho, a dog barking somewhere in the distance. This is the present time of the filming, of the act of inscription of this history, and the only place where the omniscient voice of an unidentified narrator can exer- cise its authority. As the camera slowly tracks in, breaking down the distance between the cold facts of history and the physical presence of the historical actor captured by its lens, the voice-over identifies him as Saturnino Condori, a crippled survivor of "the last massacre, the massacre of the night of Saint John, June 24, 1967." On a close-up of Saturnino in direct address, the voice-over takes us inside Siglo XX itself, identifying it as the escenario (the setting, the stage) of the worst labor massacre of Bolivia's history. Siglo XX is thus identified both as a historical site and as the site of the fiction (that is, the mise-en- scene of the reconstruction itself). The voice-over continues, first briefly Ana M. Lopez 426 At the Limits of Documentary summarizing the importance of mining for the Bolivian economy and of the conditions of life of the Bolivian miner, then identifying several individuals, whom we see briefly on the screen in medium or long shots, as the survivors of the Saint John's Night massacre. Over an extreme long shot of the town, the voice-over assumes its greatest distance: "This is the chronicle of the days before the massacre. We have chosen these men and women for their human value and courage. They weren't he- roes, but we believe that their experiences will permit a greater under- standing of the people they represent who were mercilessly fired upon." The narrator then cedes the narration to five historical witnesses who identify themselves (or are named through a title) and address us directly from the same present as the narrator in order to tell us about themselves. The accompanying images detail the individuals' activities in the political actions that led to the massacre: a hunger strike by the women of Siglo XX, the workers' protest against the terrorism of the police and the company guards and the subsequent beatings and tor- ture inflicted upon their leader, the slowly growing affiliation between the miners and the guerrilla movement led by Che Guevara, the mili- tary conscription of miners, the role of university students in setting up an alliance with the guerrillas and the miners. After displacing an individual focus through these multiple narra- tors, the film decenters its narration even further by abandoning the perspective of any one individual and attempting to assume the stance of the community itself. The events of Saint John's Night, beginning with the daylight festivities that extended long after dark with tradi- tional bonfires, music, drinking, and dancing, are reconstructed from an omniscient perspective. But because there is no omniscient narrator to direct the discourse, the images serve to collectivize the endeavor, to force the spectator to construct the story as it is being reconstructed from the perspective of the individuals and events featured in the vari- ous shots. In the darkness, mysterious shapes begin to move. Even- tually, as the images become clearer, we see that it is the army, stealthily approaching and preparing to attack. The suspense created by this slow movement, echoing that produced in the first sequence of the encounter between the people of Catavi and the army, is paradoxical. The audi- ence knows that there will be an attack - we have been told so several times by the voice-over narrators. Nevertheless, waiting for the attack becomes suspenseful because of the ambiguity of the images themselves. After a long day of festivities and much drinking, the town is dark and sleepy, and the images, as if from the residents' perspective, are un- clear, confusing, dislocated. When the attack begins, events become more and more confused as men and women are dragged from their beds to face firing squads and as isolated pockets of resistance (the emer- 427 Ana M. Lopez gency siren, the miners' radio station, some armed struggle) emerge throughout the town, only to be quickly vanquished by the ever grow- ing number of soldiers. Finally it is dawn; the massacre is over and all that is left are the dead, the transport by ambulance of the wounded, the crying of the mourners, and the rounding up of prisoners. Four miners who managed to elude the soldiers make their way to a hill and, in a final act of de- fiance, throw a stick of dynamite into a group of soldiers and prisoners. An air patrol shoots one of them, but the other three manage to escape with their lives. Over shots of the miners' cemetery, the omniscient voice returns the reconstruction to the present by reading a list of some of the names of the dead and by reminding us of the fate of the many or- phans and survivors who were "relocated" by the government in an ef- fort to erase the history of the massacre. The film itself, a collective negation of that official erasure and a reinscription of the massacre in a historical context, reminds the spectator of the names of those who ordered the massacre by a quick reiterative montage and ends with a triumphant image of "the people" marching down a hill and across a mesa. Those same images led the people into the range of the army's rifles in the first sequence of the film, but now, the film, by its own ar- ticulation, proclaims a critical difference and ends in a dramatic freeze frame of the people, together, in long shot against the plain. Although Ukamau's next film, El enemigo principal (The Principal Enemy, 1973) incorporates another level of mediation in its historical recreation and representation through the physical presence of an in- digenous narrator (amauta), The Courage of the People remains their most succesful attempt to transform the conventions and effects of the cinema through the formal contrast and synthesis of "opposite" modes of cinematic representation.26 Conclusion The rewriting of people's history through historical fic- tions, as we have seen in the development of the collective practices of Ukamau and in the work of other filmmakers, has been a central con- cern of the New Latin American Cinema. Besides adopting and trans- forming documentary filmmaking strategies, the filmmakers of the New Latin American Cinema have also sought to transform the forms and strategies of fictional filmmaking itself in their efforts to use history and historical fictions to expose and materialize the often repressed stories of the continent's struggle for liberation. Their search for a popular yet materialist cinematic discourse has led to the extension of the options available for historical narrative in film. By accepting the 428 At the Limits of Documentary historical - self-consciously identified as what has been or could be documented - as determining the basic conventions beside and against which to deploy the fictional, the New Latin American Cinema has at- tempted to establish its own specificity as a transformative practice. Taking on the most central representational given of the cinema-its relationship to the "real" as encoded by documentary and fictional modes - the New Latin American Cinema uses parody to activate view- ers and to challenge, transform, and renew with critical distance the social function of the cinema in Latin America. In fact, one may even argue that the New Latin American Cinema is essentially parodic, a cinema that consciously sets itself beside and against the dominant cinema, in counterpoint: a countercinema of underdevelopment. NOTES This essay is an expanded version of "Parody, Underdevelopment, and the New Latin American Cinema," Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 1989. Reprinted by permission. 1. Although the discursive claims and effects of the fictional cinema have been theorized at great length, the documentary has so far escaped this kind of detailed analysis. The most suggestive work on the documentary as a sig- nifying practice appears in Bill Nichols's Ideology and the Image (Blooming- ton: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 170-284. In "Re-Thinking Documen- tary: Toward a Taxonomy of Mediation," Wide Angle 8, nos. 3/4 (1986), 71-77, Michael Renov points out this lack and begins an analysis of the metaphysics of the nonfiction film. 2. Gerard Genette, Palimpsestes: La litterature au second degrd (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1982); Margaret A. Rose, Parody/Meta-Fiction: An Analysis of Parody as a Critical Mirror to the Writing and Reception of Fiction (London: Croom Helm, 1979); and Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth Century Art Forms (New York: Methuen, 1985). 3. The other four categories of transtextual relations identified by Genette do not have this transformative character. Citation or simple intertextuality, for example, is characterized by the copresence of two or more texts. Para- textuality refers to the relations between a text and all those ancillary textual fragments that name or place it: titles, subtitles, intertitles, prefaces, adver- tisements, etc. Metatextuality refers to a commentative relation, whatever links a text that speaks of another without necessarily citing it. In Genette's terms, this is "a critical relation par excellence" (Palimpsestes, p. 10). Finally, archi- textuality refers to a silent relation between a text and generic and/or taxo- nomic categories. Genette has dedicated a separate volume to the analysis of this kind of transtextual relation; see Introduction a l'architexte (Paris: Edi- tions de Seuil, 1979). 4. Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, pp. 15, 26. 429 Ana M. Lopez 5. Ibid., pp. 74-75. 6. Ibid., p. 23. 7. Given the diversity of the New Latin American Cinema, it is useless to attempt to encase the movement within the structures of traditional aes- thetic typologies. Even the most modern and ostensibly politicized of these typologies - for example, Comolli's and Narboni's hierarchy of progressiveness in the cinema - fail to account for the necessarily contextual effects and trans- formations of any one tradition or practice within the New Latin American Cinema. I cite Comolli and Narboni here, because it is their typology of pro- gressive texts that seems to have inspired Teshome Gabriel's similar typology of the Third Cinema. Gabriel proposes a three-step genealogy of the Third Cinema that progresses from (1) dependence on Hollywood and (2) national cinemas that decolonize content without altering form, to (3) guerrilla cinema that radically alters all the structures of the cinematic apparatus. Problematic because of its exclusive emphasis on textual systems (especially in stages 1 and 2), this ge- nealogy also insists on a seriality that is difficult to sustain given the unequal development of film practices in the different nations that participate in the New Latin American Cinema project. See Teshome Gabriel, Third Cinema in the Third World (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1982). 8. Linda Hutcheon, "The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History," Cultural Critique, no. 5 (1986-87), 206. 9. Ibid. 10. That this documentary material is often invisible to North American audiences and critics, who insist on viewing this film as the anguished cry of an intellectual alienated and oppressed by the revolution, is significant in the context of contemporary theoretical arguments regarding the importance of specific reading formations for cinematic reception and meaning-production. The contradictory positions of North American critics vis-A-vis this film have been explored by Julianne Burton in "Memories of Underdevelopment in the Land of Overdevelopment," Cineaste 8, no. 1 (1977), 16-21; by Daniel Diaz Torres in "Cine Cubano en EE.UU.," Cine Cubano, nos. 86-87 (1976), 65-71; and by Tombs Gutierrez Alea himself in "Memorias de Memorias," Casa de las Americas 21, no. 122 (1980), 67-76, reprinted in his Dialectica del espectador (Havana: Cuadernos de la Revista Uni6n, 1982), pp. 59-72. 11. Enrique Fernandez, "Witnesses Always Everywhere: The Rhetorical Strategies of Memories of Underdevelopment," Wide Angle 4, no. 2 (1980), 52-55. 12. This is a distinction ultimately based on a Platonic conception of art as imitation. For an analysis of the problems of this distinction for theories of filmic narration, see Edward Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema (New York: Mouton, 1984), pp. 190-96. 13. The Abacua is a secret religious society based on the practices, legends, rites, languages, and symbols of some of the African slaves imported into Cuba. It developed in the marginal sectors of Havana and Matanzas provinces as an all-male sect that promoted certain religious beliefs and also functioned to pro- tect the interests of its (black and white) members. 14. Similar points are made by E. Ann Kaplan in her discussion of the film 430 At the Limits of Documentary in Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983), pp. 189-94, and by Annette Kuhn in her Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 162-67. 15. Michael Chanan, The Cuban Image: Cinema and Cultural Politics in Cuba (London and Bloomington: BFI and Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 284-93. 16. Besides the documentary sequence that begins the film proper, the other four sequences are motivated by Mario: a sequence on the 1960s census and literacy campaign that was crucial for his development, the "essay" on the Abacua sect, a biographical sketch of one of Mario's friends (singer and ex-boxer Guillermo Diaz, "another real person in this film"), and the demolition and re- habilitation of a slum like the one where he grew up. 17. Jorge Sanjines, "Sobre Ukumau," Cine Cubano, no. 48 (1968), 29-30. 18. For details of this sociopolitical process, see Jorge Sanjines, "Cine revo- lucionario: La experiencia boliviana," Cine Cubano, nos. 76-77 (1972), 1-15, reprinted in Jorge Sanjines and Grupo Ukamau, Teoria y practica de un cine junto al pueblo (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1979), pp. 13-33, and, in trans- lation, in Latin American Filmmakers and the Third Cinema, ed. Zuzana Pick (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1978), pp. 78-87, and excerpted in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers, ed. Ju- lianne Burton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 35-48. 19. For details of their experiences with the community of Kaata while making the film, see Sanjines, "Cine Revolucionario," p. 15; and Jean-Rene Huleu, Ignacio Ramonet, and Serge Toubiana, "Entretien avec Jorge Sanjines," Cahiers du Cinema, no. 253 (1974), 6-21. After an incredibly difficult journey carrying equipment to this distant village, Ukamau members sought out the assistance and cooperation of the villagers through their chief rather than from the community itself. They were unsuccessful until many days later when they agreed to participate in a community religious ceremony where they received a favorable prophecy from a reading of coca leaves. From this experience, the Ukamau group learned that it could not impose its own organizational or social standards upon the deeply communal and collective social organization of the Indian population. 20. It is interesting to note that these are the same techniques of the tradi- tional cinema that in Robert Kolker's analysis save the film from excessive simplicity. Dismissing the film as "crude" for its refusal to use a more modern and sophisticated cinematic language, Kolker fails to take into account the cul- tural traditions of the audience to whom the film was directed. See Kolker, The Altering Eye (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 298-300. 21. Jorge Sanjines, "We Invent a New Language Through Popular Culture," trans. John King, Framework, no. 20 (1979), 31. 22. Sanjine's, "Cine Revolucionario," p. 7. 23. When Los caminos de la muerte was almost 70 percent complete, the original negative was destroyed through a developing error in a German labora- tory. Sanjines and others believe that this was a deliberate act of sabotage. The Courage of the People was originally produced for Italian television in 1969, during the temporary period of democracy that followed the death of Bolivian 431 Ana M. Lopez president Ren' Barrientos. By the time the film was finished in 1971, however, the political climate had changed and the film could not be exhibited in Bolivia. Its release elsewhere was delayed by RAI, which initially deleted the sequences that identified those responsible for the massacre. In fact, in 1975 Antonio Eguino (the film's director of photography) was arrested by the Bolivian mili- tary when his participation in the film was exposed through a confiscated con- traband copy of the film. 24. Sanjines, "Cine revolucionario," p. 7. 25. Sanjines, "We Invent a New Language Through Popular Culture," p. 31. 26. Based on the events in the guerrilla movement narrated in Peri 1965: Una Experiencia Liberatadora by Hector Bijar (a militant member of the ELN [National Liberation Army]), The Principal Enemy was shot in 1974 (in Peru) by a new Ukamau collective organized after Sanjines was forced into exile by the 1971 political crisis. Although the film was generally well received, its political analysis of guerrilla interactions with Indian populations has been questioned as excessively foco-oriented. (This strategy derives from tactics de- veloped during the Cuban revolution as theorized by Regis Debray in The Revolution in the Revolution (New York: Monthly Review, 1967). For a dis- cussion of foquismo and the political interpretation of this film, see Alfonso Gumucio Dagr6n, Historia del cine en Bolivia (La Paz: Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, 1982), pp. 295-300. 432 Guide to Distributors Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Notes on Contributors GUIDE TO DISTRIBUTORS California Newsreel, 630 Natoma St., San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 621-6196. Includes Cuban documentaries from the 1960s: Story of a Battle, Now, Seventy-nine Springtimes. Cinema Guild, 1697 Broadway, New York, NY 10019 (212) 246-5522. Offers a rich collection of documentaries from and about Latin America, includ- ing a large portion of the former Tricontinental/Unifilm collections. Spanish- language archive of Cuban shorts includes: For the First Time, Hablando del punto cubano. Bay of Pigs, Hanoi, Tuesday the 13th, De America soy hijo y a ella me debo, Hombres de Mal Tiempo, Now, Seventy-nine Spring- times, Simparele. (Several of the above films are also available with English subtitles.) Documentaries from elsewhere in Latin America include: El Salvador: The People Will Win, The Road to Liberty, The Land Burns, The Sugar Mill, Mexico, The Frozen Revolution, It Happened in Hualfin, Listen Cara- cas, Brickmakers, Man of Leather, The Courage of the People, Iracema. DEC Films, 229 College St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T-1R4 (416) 597-0524, 597-2287. Special emphases on Central America: Americas in Transition, Time of Daring, Decision to Win, When the Mountains Tremble, Los hijos de Sandino, and Chile: Sweet Country, Chile, I Don't Take Your Name in Vain, Message from Chile, I Remember Too. General titles include: Brick- makers, Listen Caracas, Double Day. Democracy in Communication - Popular Video and Film in Latin America, 656 Carroll St., Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718) 499-9524. Arranges for sale or ren- tal of its 8-hour collection of independent films and (primarily) videos from Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Panama, Bolivia, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. El Salvador Media Project, 799 Broadway, Suite 325, New York, NY 10003 (212) 989-0541, 947-9277, (415) 826-5691. Distributes films and videotapes from Sistema Radio Venceremos and the Film Institute of El Salvador. The Empowerment Project, 13107 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066 (213) 390-9858. More than 30 film and videomakers have placed their works with this group which, acting as their agent, negotiates nonexclusive distribu- tion rights with a number of distributors. The group distributes several American-made documentaries on Central America. 435 2 REDISCOVERING DOCUMENTARY: CULTURAL CONTEXT AND INTENTIONALITY Michael Chanan Michael Chanan considers documentary typologies as they have de- veloped in Latin America in response to concrete practices - individual, national and regional. Though Chanan concentrates on two categories - cine didactico and cine testimonio- he draws his arguments and in- sights from a broad range of filmmakers: Argentines Fernando Birri, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, the Mexican Eduardo Maldo- nado, Colombians Jorge Silva and Marta Rodn'guez, and Cubans Julio Garcia Espinosa, Jorge Fraga, Pastor Vega, and Victor Casaus, as well as the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire. Chanan's Cuban em- phasis responds to his belief that, because of the way postrevolution- ary film culture has privileged documentary modes, Cuba has served as a kind of "testing laboratory" for Latin American documentary in general. He begins his essay setting documentary into a world- historical framework, and concludes by differentiating among the conflicting viewpoints on the relationship of film to reality that char- acterize the developed and the underdeveloped regions. The question of intentionality forms the core of his essay, but in his conclusion he notes the need for inquiry into the modes of documentary address - the "radically different ways that oppositional cinema positions both the viewer and the filmmaker." FOR MORE than twenty-five years a new cinema has been developing in Latin America, carving out spaces for itself even under the most inimical circumstances, a cinema devoted to the denunciation of misery and the celebration of protest. When these diverse films first began to arrive in Europe and North America in the 1960s, they chal- lenged many of the norms of established film narrative, unequivocally announcing the existence of a new avant-garde in world cinema: Nel- son Pereira dos Santos and Glauber Rocha in Brazil, Tombs Gutierrez 31 Guide to Distributors Filmmakers Library, Inc., 133 East 58th St., New York, NY 10022 (212) 355-6545. Offers a growing collection of documentaries about Latin America. First Run/Icarus Films, 200 Park Avenue S., Suite 1319, New York, NY 10003 (212) 674-3375. The combined nontheatrical catalogues of these two dis- tributors offers a collection of some fifty films from and about Latin Amer- ica, including Witness to War, Roses in December, Americas in Transition, Banana Company (Bananeras), Chile, I Don't Take Your Name in Vain, A Time of Daring, Decision to Win, Letter from Morazdn, Memoirs of an Every- day War. Flower Films, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito, CA 94530 (415) 525-0942. Les Blank distributes his own documentaries, including Chulas Fronteras and Burden of Dreams. Ideara Films, 2524 Cypress St., Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6J-3N2 (604) 738-8815. Distributes largest Canadian collection of Latin American features along with several important documentaries from/about the re- gion, including Bay of Pigs, Las madres de la Plaza de Mayo, Nicaragua: No Pasardn, Living at Risk, Witness to War, A Time of Daring, Decision to Win, Chile, I Don't Take Your Name in Vain, Americas in Transition, When the Mountains Tremble. Institute for Policy Studies, 1901 "Q" St. NE, Washington, DC 20009 (202) 234-9382. Maintains film rental library with numerous Latin American titles. Madera Cinevideo Education Division, 620 E. Yosemite, Madera, CA 93638 (800) 828-8118 in California; (800) 624-2204 elsewhere. Distributes Memorias de un mexicano on videotape. Be sure to request the original, uncut version. National Film Board of Canada, 3155 C6te de Liesse, Montreal, Canada H4N-2N4 (514) 283-9000. Films of interest include Journal inachev/Unfinished Diary, Dream of a Free Country: A Message from Nicaraguan Women. For rental or preview in U.S.: National Film Board of Canada, Karol Media, 22 River- view Dr., Wayne, NJ 07470-3191 (201) 628-9111. For sales or other infor- mation in U.S.: National Film Board of Canada, 1251 Ave. of the Americas, 16th fl., New York, NY 10020 (212) 586-5131. New Yorker Films, 16 W. 61st St., New York, NY 10023 (212) 247-6110. This primarily feature film collection includes several important documentaries from and about Latin America: The Hour of the Furnaces, The Battle of Chile, Guatemala: When the Mountains Tremble, Nicaragua: No Pasardn, Fidel, Memorias do canga(o. New Yorker also distributes the following features mentioned in this volume: Blood of the Condor, The Jackal of Na- hueltoro, Memories of Underdevelopment, One Way or Another. Public Broadcasting Service/Public TV Library, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Wash- ington, DC 20024 (202) 488-5000. South American Resources, 40 East 62nd St., New York, NY 10021 (212) 838-1732. Third World Newsreel, 335 West 38th St., New York, NY 10018 (212) 947- 9277. Specializes in films and videotapes made by and about people of color living in the United States. Women Make Movies, 225 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 (212) 925-0606. Distributes an important collection of works by Latin American women 436 Guide to Distributors 437 in their Punto de Vista Latina series, including A Man When He Is a Man, Carmen Carrascal, and Journal inachev&/Unfinished Diary. Women's Film Project, P.O. Box 315, Franklin Lakes, NY 07417 (201) 891-8240. Founded by U.S.-based Brazilian documentarist Helena Solberg-Ladd. Xchange TV, Alternative Media Information Center, 208 West 13th St., New York, NY 10011; P.O. Box 586, New York, NY 10009 (212) 713-5544. Xchange TV Film and Tape Library, 445 West Main St., Wyckoff, NJ 07481 (201) 891-8240. Facilitates the exhibition and direct exchange of video- tapes between Central and North America. Offers Nicaraguan tapes pro- duced by the Ministry of Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA) and the Taller Popular de Video "Timoteo Velasquez" (Timoteo Velasquez Popular Video Workshop). Zafra, A.C. Cine Difusi6n, Leonardo da Vinci 82, Mexico 19, D.F., Mexico (905) 598-7215. Largest independent distributor in Mexico. Collection includes features and documentaries from throughout Latin America. INDEX TO FILMS, VIDEOS, FILMMAKERS, AND VIDEO PRODUCERS Abitia, Jesus, 214 Absolute Majority (Maioria Abso- luta), 22, 24 Acta general de Chile (General Re- port from Chile), 109, 128 Act Now, Pay Now (Interprete mais, pague mais), 95-96 Adventures of Juan Quin Quin, 354, 360n A escola de 40.000 ruas (The School of 40,000 Streets), 100-01 A falecida (The Deceased Woman), 92 Against Reason and by Force (Con- tra la razon y por la fuerza), 118 Aguero, Ignacio, 130n Air Force, 351 Algo de ti (Something About You), 200, 202 Alicia, 5 Alpert, Jon, 157 Alsino y el cdndor (Alsino and the Condor), 166 Alvarez, Carlos, 113 Alvarez, Santiago, 20, 23-25, 32, 36, 41, 56-57, 58, 64, 74, 131-49 (138, 139, 141, 143-47), 179 A Man When He Is a Man (El hom- bre cuando es hombre), 5, 28, 122, 315, 317, 318-28 (322), 342, 343, 345n, 346n Amas de casa, 196-97 Americas in Transition, 151, 157, 159-61 (161), 162, 165 Amulet of Ogum, The (0 amuleto de Ogum), 92-93 Ancelovici, Gast6n, 116, 117, 128 Andacollo, 111 Andrade, Ruda, 105 And the Heavens Were Taken by Force (Y el cielo fue tomado por asalto), 145 Answer to October, The (La res- puesta de octubre), 115, 273-74 Antonio das Mortes, 60 Aparicio, Carlos, 157 A pedra da riqueza (The Stone of Wealth), 102-04 Apocalypse Now, 136 Apuntes nicaragiienses (Nicaraguan Notes), 122 Araya, 21, 80n Aruanda, 21, 80n, 102 A Song, 176, 190n A Terra Trema, 381 A Time of Daring (Tiempo de auda- cia), 5, 13-14, 164-65, 177, 178, 183, 184-88 (186), 189, 190n, 203 Attack on the Americas, 151, 154- 57, 163, 170n Bad Thing About This Country, The (Le mal du pays), 319 Ballad for the Other Santiago (Romance para el otro Santiago), 126 Bananeras (Banana Company), 289- 314 (307, 309, 311) 439 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Barravento, 92 Barren Lives (Vidas Secas), 108n Battle of Algiers, 354 Battle of Chile, The (La batalla de Chile), 4, 7-8, 26-27, 115-16, 129n, 163, 267-87 (276, 277, 279, 283), 398n Battle of Santiago Bay, The, 10 Bay of Pigs (Girdn), 351-60 (353, 356, 358) Beijo ardente: Overdose (Passionate Kiss: Overdose), 202 Beloved Country (Patriamada), 6, 20, 21, 373-401 (376, 377) Benacerraf, Margot, 21, 80n Benavente, David, 126 Benz, Obie, 157, 159, 161 Berlin: Symphony of a City, 19 Bernaza, Luis Felipe, 5, 25 Birri, Fernando, 18, 20, 22, 26, 28, 31, 37-38, 46n, 49, 51-54 (53), 57, 58, 77, 78, 79, 80n, 82n, 84n, 113, 253, 257 Bitter Melons, 4 Blood of the Condor (Yawar Malku), 422-25 (423) Bloody Nitrate (Caliche sangriento), 129n Boa Productions (Panama), 202 Bodansky, Jorge, 361-71 (365, 367, 369), 396 Bondarchuk, 32 Borges Family, The (Los Borges), 121 Bradley, Sandra, 154-57 Bravo, Sergio, 21, 80n, 111-13 (112), 122, 126, 129n Braz, 177, 178-79 Brickmakers, The (Chircales), 5, 21, 32, 69-72 (71), 273 Brigada Ramona Parra (Ramona Parra Brigade), 271 Bright, Sara, 324, 328-35 Brooks, Mel, 266n Bufiuel, Luis, 8, 22, 253, 257, 396 Bye Bye Brazil, 21 Cabra marcado para morer: vinte arios depois (Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later), 5, 27, 373- 401 (379, 380) Cabrera Infante, Saba, 19-20 Cachureos, 126 Cahn, Guillermo, 126, 271 Caliche sangriento (Bloody Nitrate), 129n Cambefort, Sergio, 202 Cantegriles, 21, 80n Capovilla, Maurice, 57, 92, 237n Carlos: Cine-Portrait of a Walker (Carlos: Cine-retrato de un cami- nante), 4, 20, 60-63 (62), 82n, 84n Carlos: Cine-retrato de un caminante (Carlos: Cine-Portrait of a Walker), 4, 20, 60-63 (62), 82n, 84n Carmen Carrascal, 315, 317, (324), 329-35, 342, 343, 344, 345n, 347n Carrero, Miriam, 337 Carrete de verano (Carting into Summer), 126 Carrigan, Ana, 157, 159, 167 Carrisoza, Eulalia, 324, 328-35 Carta de Morazdn (Letter from Morazdn), 158, 164, 179 Carting into Summer (Carrete de verano), 126 Casa o mierda (House or Shit), 113, 271 Casaus, Victor, 31, 41-42, 47n Castillo, Sergio, 115, 120 Cavalcade of Half a Century, 20 Cavalcanti, Alberto, 7, 8, 19, 25 Central America: The Volcano (Cen- troamerica: el volcdn), 177, 179 Centroamerica: el volcdn (Central America: The Volcano), 177, 179 Cero a la Izquierda collective (El Salvador), 164, 173, 175, 177, 180-81, 183, 188, 190n Cerro pelado, 135, 137-38 Challenge, The (0 Desafio), 218 Chambi, Manuel, 27 440 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Chambi, Victor, 27 Chaplin, Charlie, 60 Charcoal Worker, The (El megano), 22 Chaskel, Pedro, 113, 114, 121, 271, 280 Che, Buenos Aires, 20 Chez Mascotte, 121 Chilean Charles Bronson, or Exactly Alike, The (El Charles Bronson chileno o exactamente iguales), 126, 127 Chilean September (Septembre chi- lien), 118 Chile, I Don't Take Your Name in Vain (Chile, no invoco tu nombre en vano), 127-28 Chile, no invoco tu nombre en vano (Chile, I Don't Take Your Name in Vain), 127-28 Chile's Forbidden Dreams, 205 Chircales (The Brickmakers), 5, 21, 32, 69-72 (71), 79, 273 Chronique d'une ete (Chronicle of a Summer), 5 Chuquiago, 20, 21 Cicl6n (Hurricane), 4, 56-57, 58, 82n, 131, 135-36 Cine-ojo collective, 127-28 City of Gold, 25 Classification des plantes (Classifica- tion of Plants), 124 Coal March, The (La marcha del carb6n), 21, 80n, 112 Cohen, Pamela, 167 Colectivo Cine Mujer (Colombia), 315, 317, (324), 329-35 Colectivo Cine Mujer (Mexico), 196- 97 Colectivo Memoria (Chile), 130n Colina, Enrique, 24 Como el Uruguay no hay (There's No Place Like Uruguay), 21, 80n Como era gostoso o meu frances (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman), 21 Condicido Brasileira, 27 Congo, 88-91 Conspirators, The (Os inconfidentes), 90 Contra la razdn y por la fuerza (Against Reason and by Force), 118 Cool and Tough (Descomedidos y chascones), 115 Cortazar, Octavio, 21, 25, 49, 64-68 (66, 67), 74-76 (75), 84n Costa-Gavras, Costi, 352 Country of Saint Sarue, The (0 pais de Sdo Sarue, 88 Courage of the People, The (El co- raje del pueblo), 21, 403, 424-28, 431-32n Coutinho, Eduardo, 27, 373-401 (379, 380) Crisis in Central America, 153 Crdnica del salitre (Nitrate Chron- icle), 115 Cross Section: One Afternoon of Mexican TV, 194 Cuba baila (Cuba Dances), 20, 22 Cuba: Bay of Pigs, 7 Cuba Dances (Cuba baila), 20 Cuba: The Missile Crisis, 7 Dateline: El Salvador, 167 Daughter Rite, 5 Day of the Organ Grinders (Dia de organilleros), 111 de Aguirre, Marcos, 126 De America soy hijo... y a ella me debo (I Am America's Son ... and Dedicated to Her), 145 de Andrade, Jodo Batista, 98-102 (99) de Andrade, Joaquim Pedro, 90 Dear Comrades (Queridos compaiZe- ros), 129n Death and Life in El Morillo (Muerte y vida en El Morillo), 6, 73-74, (73), 79-80 Death's Groom (0 noivo da morte), 94 441 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Death to the Invaders (Muerte al in- vasor), 136, 140 de Carvalho, Vladimir, 88, 102-04 Deceased Woman, The (A falecida), 92 De cierta manera (One Way or An- other), 21, 354, 387-88, 396, 403, 417-21 (418, 419), 430-31n Decision to Win, 158, 164, 175, 178, 179, 181, 182, 190n de la Barra, Leonardo, 121, 326 de la Barra, Pablo, 129n de la Texera, Diego, 154, 163-64, 175 del Carril, Hugo, 21 Dentro de cada sombra crece un vuelo (Within Every Shadow There Grows a Flight), 119 Desaparecidos (The Disappeared Ones), 201, 202, 206 Descomedidos y chascones (Cool and Tough), 115 Des grans evenements et des gens ordinaires: Les dlections (Of Great Events and Ordinary People: The Elections), 5, 28, 124 Desnutrici6n infantil (Infant Mal- nutrition), 271 Despegue a las 18:00 (Takeoff at Eighteen Hundred Hours), 24, 135, 142 Di, 93, 95 Dia de organilleros (Day of the Organ-Grinders), 111 Diaz, Rolando, 25 Di Lauro, Jorge, 111 Disappeared Ones, The (Desapareci- dos), 201, 202, 206 Divisions of Nature, The (Les divi- sions de la nature), 123-24 Dos aios en Finlandia (Two Years in Finland), 120 dos Santos, Juana Elbein, 91, 93, 97 dos Santos, Nelson Pereira, 20, 22, 31, 32, 92-93, 108n, 129n Edison, Thomas, 10 Eguino, Antonio, 20, 32 Eisenstein, Sergei, 7, 8, 16, 55-56, 133, 253, 259, 352 Ejercicio general de bombas (Gen- eral Firefighters' Exercise), 110 El Chacal de Nahueltoro (The Jackal of Nahueltoro), 21, 129n, 396, 403, 412-17 (414, 415) El Charles Bronson chileno o iden- ticamente iguales (The Chilean Charles Bronson, or Exactly Alike), 126, 127 El coraje del pueblo (The Courage of the People), 21, 403, 424-28, 431- 32n Elecciones (Elections), 60, 62-63 (63), 79, 82n Elections (Elecciones), 60, 62-63 (63), 79, 82n El enemigo principal (The Principal Enemy), 428 El Equipo Tercer Afio (Chile). See Guzmin, Patricio El evangelio en Solentiname (The Gospel in Solentiname), 122 El golpe blanco (The White Coup), 118 El hombre cuando es hombre (A Man When He Is a Man), 5, 28, 122, 315, 317, 318-28 (322), 342, 343, 345n, 346n El megano (The Charcoal Worker), 22, 23, 129n El otro Francisco (The Other Fran- cisco), 21 El primer aiio (The First Year), 115 El Salvador: Another Vietnam, 151, 157-58, (158), 159, 162, 163, 165 El Salvador: El pueblo vencerd (El Salvador: The People Will Win), 154, 158, 162, 163-64, 175, 190n El Salvador: The People Will Win (El Salvador: El pueblo vencerd, 154, 158, 162, 163-64, 175, 190n 442 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers El Salvador: Romance and Reality, 151, 156-57 El sol del juez (The Judge's Coin), 202 El Taller de los Vagos (El Salvador), 173, 175, 176 El triunfo (The Triumph), 200-01 El Willy y la Maria (Willy and Maria), 126 Eramos una vez (Once Upon a Time We Were), 121 Escal6n, Guillermo, 175 E.T., 136 Ever Forward Until Victory (Hasta la victoria siempre), 140-42 Experimental Film Group (Chile), 111, 129n Expropriation, The (La expropria- cidn), 129n Eyes Like My Father's (Los ojos como mi papa), 121 Eyzaguirre, Joaquin, 126 Faces of War, 165 Farkas, Thomaz, 27, 57, 58, 83n Ferreyra, Jos6 Augustin, 21 Fighting With Our Boys in Cuba, 10 First Charge of the Machete, The (La primera carga al machete), 21 First Year, The (El primer afio), 115 Fists Against Cannons (Los pufios frente al cafidn), 116, 117, 129n Flags of the People, The (Las ban- deras des pueblo), 112-13, 129n Flaherty, Robert, 17, 33 Flooded Out (Los inundados), 22, 396 Flores del Pino, Carlos, 115, 126, 127, 271 Forging Hope (Forjando la espe- ranza), 126 Forgotten Village, The, 7 Forjando la esperanza (Forging Hope), 126 For the First Time (Por primera vez), 5, 64-68 (66, 67), 69, 82n, 84n Fraga, Jorge, 31, 43, 47n, 239-50 Francia, Aldo, 20, 129n Franco, Luis, 202 Franju, Georges, 34 Freedom of the Press (Liberdade de imprensa), 98, 100, 105 iFuera de aqui! (Llosky Kaymanta) (Get Out of Here!), 421, 424 Garcia, Luis Oswaldo, 122 Garcia Espinosa, Julio, 22, 23, 31, 35, 43, 46n, 47n, 69, 80-81n, 84n, 132, 268, 275, 354, 357, 359n, 360n Gaviola, Tatiana, 126, 205 General Firefighters' Exercise (Ejercicio general de bombas), 110 General Report from Chile (Acta general de Chile), 109 Gente de todas partes, gente de nin- guna parte (People from Every- where, People from Nowhere), 121-22 Getino, Octavio, 20-21, 26, 31, 32, 37, 46n, 82n, 163, 191n, 251-66 (256, 260), 268 Get Out of Here! (Llosky Kaymanta) (iFuera de aqui!), 421, 424 Gimenez, Manuel Horacio, 57, 58, 237n Giovannetti, Len, 7 Giral, Sergio, 354 Girdn (Bay of Pigs), 351-60 (353, 356, 358) Gleyzer, Raymundo, 27 Godard, Jean Luc, 253, 261, 262, 352, 355, 361 Godmother's Gully (0 Buraco da Comadre), 101-02 Gomez, Don, 168 G6mez, Manuel Octavio, 54-55, 56, 57, 74, 82-83n, 132 443 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers G6mez, Sara, 354, 387-88, 396, 403, 417-21 (418, 419), 430-31n Gonzalez, Beatriz, 120 Gorin, Jean Pierre, 355 Gospel in Solentiname, The (El Evangelio en Solentiname), 122 Gregorio, 21, 206 Grierson, John, 7, 17, 18, 20, 25, 33, 34, 37, 111 Griffith, D. W., 356 Grupo Chaski (Peru), 205-06 Grupo Cine Liberaci6n (Argentina). See Getino, Octavio; Solanas, Fernando Grupo Tercer Afio (Chile). See Patricio Guzman Grupo Ukamau (Bolivia). See Jorge Sanjines Guatemala, 153 Guazapa, 168, 169 Guerra, Ruy, 22 Guerreros pacifistas (Pacifist War- riors), 126 Guns, The (Os fuzis), 21 Gutierrez, Leopoldo, 122 Guti6rrez Alea, TomBs, 22, 23, 31-32, 132, 354, 396, 403, 409-12, 430n Guzman, Patricio, 7, 26, 115-16, 129n, 163, 267-87 (276, 277, 279, 283), 398n Guzzetti, Alfred, 166 Habanera, 354 Hablando del punto cubano (Talking About "Punto Cubano"), 5, 25, 74-76 (75), 80, 82n Handler, Mario, 19, 20, 21, 32, 49, 60-64 (62, 63, 65), 84n, 113 Hanoi, martes 13 (Hanoi, Tuesday the Thirteenth), 24, 138-40 (139), 145, 147 Hanoi, Tuesday the Thirteenth (Hanoi, martes 13), 24, 138-40 (139), 145, 147 Happy Mother's Day, 133 Hasta cierto punto (Up to a Certain Point), 21 Hasta la victoria siempre (Ever For- ward to Victory), 140-42 Hasta vencer (Until Victory), 205 Hauser, Wynn, 167 Heartstrings: Peter, Paul and Mary in Central America, 167 Herminda de la Victoria (Herminda from La Victoria), 113, 271 Herrera, Manuel, 351-60 (353, 356, 358) Herzog, Vladimir, 57 Heynowski, Walter, 118 High School, 4, 133 Hirszman, Leon, 22, 24, 92 Historia de una batalla (Story of a Battle), 54-55, 56, 57, 63, 79, 82-83n History Is Ours and the People Make It (La historia es nuestra y la hacen los pueblos), 118 Hitchcock, Alfred, 356 Hombres de Mal Tiempo (Men of Mal Tiempo), 6, 27, 68-69, 70, 79 Hour of the Furnaces, The (La hora de los hornos), 5, 20, 21, 26, 30n, 32, 37, 82n, 163, 251-66 (256, 260), 268, 277 House or Shit (Casa o mierda), 113, 271 Housewife (La femme au foyer), 318 Housewives, 196-97 Housing Problems, 5, 25 How Tasty Was My Little French- man (Como era gostoso o meu frances), 21 Hoyt, Austin, 153 Hubner, Douglas, 113, 119, 271 Hurricane (Cicl6n), 4, 56-57, 58, 82n, 131, 135-36 I Am America's Son... and Dedi- cated to Her (De America soy hijo y a ella me debo), 145 Iao, 92, 93, 235 Ictus Theater Group (Chile), 205 I Dream in Color (Sueiio de colores), 318 444 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers If We Lived Together (Si viviera- mos juntos), 123 I Like Students (Me gustan los estu- diantes), 5, 21, 32, 63-64, 65, 79, 82n In the Name of Democracy, 163 Infant Malnutrition (Desnutricidn infantil), 271 Interprete mais, pague mais (Act Now, Pay Now), 95-96 Intertidal Zone, 175, 176, 190n Iracema, 21, 361-371 (365, 367, 369), 396 I Remember Too (Yo tambien re- cuerdo), 120 It Happened in Hualfin (Ocurri6 en Hualfin), 27 Ivens, Joris, 8, 17, 18, 19, 26, 113, 253, 285n Jabor, Arnoldo, 22, 92, 363 Jackal of Nahueltoro, The (El Chacal de Nahueltoro), 21, 129n, 396, 403, 412-17 (414, 415) Jardim Nova Bahia (New Bahia Garden), 96-97 Jennings, Humphrey, 25, 34 Journal inacheve (Unfinished Diary), 5, 28, 122-23 Judge's Coin, The (El sol del juez), 202 Justiniano, Gonzalo, 126 Kaulen, Patricio, 129n Klein, Herbert, 7 La Batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile), 4, 7-8, 26-27, 115-16, 129n, 163, 267-87 (276, 277, 279, 283), 398n La cancidn no muere, Generales (The Song Doesn't Die, Generals), 118-19 Lacayo, Ramiro, 289-314 (307, 309, 311) La chinoise, 261 La Dalia 315, 317, 338-42, 343, 344, 347n La expropriaci6n (The Expropria- tion), 129n La femme au foyer (Housewife), 318 L'age d'or, 257 La historia es nuestra y la hacen los pueblos (History Is Ours and the People Make It), 118 La historia oficial (The Official Story), 395 La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces), 5, 20, 21, 26, 30n, 32, 37, 82n, 163, 251-66 (256, 260), 277 La marcha del carbdn (The Coal March), 21, 80n, 112 La Pastoral Obrera collective, 126 La primera carga al machete (The First Charge of the Machete), 21 La respuesta de octubre (The An- swer to October), 115, 273-74 Larrain, Arturo, 110 Las banderas del pueblo (The Flags of the People), 112-13, 129n Las mujeres (The Women), 204, 336 Las nicas, 336 La spirale (The Spiral), 118 La tierra prometida (The Promised Land), 129n Latin American Weekly Newsreel (Noticiero Latinoamericano), 23, 132, 239-50 (245-50) Lavra-dor (Peasant), 104, 105, 237n LBJ, 24, 32, 133, 135, 139 Leacock, Richard, 60, 133 Le mal du pays (The Bad Thing About This Country), 319 Les divisions de la nature (Divi- sions of Nature), 123-24 Letter from Morazdn (Carta de Mo- razdn), 158, 164, 177, 178, 179, 181-83, 190n Letter from Nicaragua (Remite: Nicaragua, Carta al mundo), 5, 28 Libertade de imprensa (Freedom of the Press), 98, 100, 105 445 Michael Chanan Alea and Humberto Solas in Cuba, Miguel Littin in Chile, Jorge San- jines in Bolivia, and many others. Among these films were several eye-opening documentaries. From Cuba, a number of explosive short films by Santiago Alvarez - among them Now (1965) and LBJ (1968), with their biting satire and sense of urgency - seemed to reinvent the concept of agit-prop. From Uruguay Mario Handler's Me gustan los estudiantes (I Like Students, 1967), another modest masterpiece of agit-prop, captured the explosive energy of the national student movement. From Argentina, a mammoth four- hour film in three parts, La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Fur- naces, 1968), made by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, described by its makers as "an act of liberation," caused a sensation at its Euro- pean premiere in Pesaro, Italy. From Colombia, Chircales (Brickmakers) by Jorge Silva and Marta Rodriguez, extended ethnography into sys- tematic political analysis. These were only isolated examples of a growing mass of films and filmmakers throughout Latin America. In this burgeoning movement that would become known as the New Latin American Cinema, docu- mentary held a central position. Part of the originality of numerous fiction films derived from their incorporation of documentary techniques and styles. The question has been asked whether all this activity really amounts to an artistic movement, whether these characteristics are concrete and specific enough to give a sense of unity to the extremely diverse ways in which they are employed. This is a question, however, as much about the forms of cultural development in Latin America as about cinema per se. First of all, not all artistic movements have the same kind of logic. There are significant differences among, for example, impression- ism, fauvism, futurism, surrealism, and so forth. Second, we should not assume that artistic movements work the same way in Latin America, Africa, or Asia. Is it not possible that the basic concepts of cultural history enlisted to identify broad cultural movements like Renaissance humanism, classicism, or modernism are quintessentially European? The New Latin American Cinema, whether or not it is thought of as a movement, certainly possesses a bewildering diversity of styles and forms. Cuban filmmakers are given to observe that the idea of so- cialist realism is an empty one if it can be taken to include both a Bondarchuk and a Tarkovsky. What should we say of the contrast be- tween Rocha and dos Santos, or Sanjin6s and Antonio Equino, his former cameraman? Or between the vastly different works of other di- rectors? What do Latin American filmmakers mean by the New Latin American Cinema, a term they themselves often greet with suspicion? Is it, perhaps a piece of bravura? 32 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Lima, Walter, Jr., 393-94, 399n, 401n Littin, Miguel, 32, 109, 114, 128, 129n, 166, 269, 396, 403, 412-17 (414, 415) Living at Risk, 166, 171n, 272 Llosky Kaymanta (iFuera de aqui!) (Get Out of Here!), 421, 424 Locura e cultura (Madness and Cul- ture), 93-95 Long Live Cariri (Viva Cariri), 237n Los Borges (The Borges Family), 121 Los caminos de la muerte (The Roads to Death), 424, 431-32n Los funerales del Presidente Montt (President Montt's Funeral), 110 Los inundados (Flooded Out), 22, 396 Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned), 17 Los pufios frente al caidn (Fists Against Cannons), 116, 117, 129n Lota, 73 Lubbert, Orlando, 116, 117 Lucia, 20 Lumiere, Louis, 10, 179 Luna, Amina, 337 Madness and Culture (Loucura e cultura), 93-95 Maioria Absoluta (Absolute Major- ity), 22, 24 Making the News Fit, 167 Maldonado, Eduardo, 31, 40-41, 47n Mallet, Marili, 28, 121, 122-23 Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later (Cabra marcado para morer: vinte anos depois), 5, 27, 373-401 (379, 380) Man of Iron, 374 Man of Leather (0 homen de couro), 5, 27, 83n Man of Marble, 375 Manuel, Antonio, 93-95, 96 Manuel Rodriguez, 129n, 271 Man With a Movie Camera, 5, 258 Manzi, Homero, 21 Marker, Chris, 60, 274 Marley Normal, 199, 201 Massip, Jose', 132 Mattelart, Armand, 118 Mattelart, Michele, 118 Mayoux, Valerie, 118 Maysles Brothers, 133, 148 Me gustan los estudiantes (I Like Students), 5, 21, 32, 79, 82n Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memo- ries of Underdevelopment), 21, 354, 396, 403, 409-12, 430n Memorias de una guerra cotidiana (Memories of an Everyday War), 128 Memorias de un mexicano (Memo- ries of a Mexican), 6, 13, 14, 20, 211-15 Memorias do cangaVo (Memories of the CangaVo), 57-60, 82n, 237n Memories of a Mexican (Memorias de un Mexicano), 6, 13, 14, 20 Memories of an Everyday War (Memorias de una guerra coti- diana), 128 Memories of the Cangapo (Memorias do Cangago), 57-60, 82n Memories of Underdevelopment (Memorias del subdesarrollo), 21, 396, 403, 409-12, 430n Men of Mal Tiempo (Hombres de Mal Tiempo), 6, 27, 68-69, 70, 79, 82n Meppiel, Jacqueline, 118 Message from Chile (Recado de Chile), 127 MIDINRA (Ministry of Agrarian Reform, Nicaragua), 204 Midnight Express, 354 Mieselas, Susan, 166 Migrantes (Migrants), 98, 99, 100 Migrants (Migrantes), 98, 99, 100 Miguel Angel Aguilera, 271 Mi hermano Fidel (My Brother Fidel), 131, 145-47 (146-47) 446 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Mijita, 115 Miller, Alberto, 21, 80n Mimbre (Wicker), 111 Minter, Sara, 199 Missing, 159 Modern Times, 66 Mora, Patricia, 126 Morazdn: Steps on the Road to Lib- eration, 176, 177-78, 179, 180-81, 182 Muel, Bruno, 118 Muerte al invasor (Death to the In- vaders), 136, 140 Muerte y vida en El Morillo (Death and Life in El Morillo), 6, 73-74 (73), 79-80, 82n Mujer delante del espejo (Woman in Front of the Mirror), 27 Miller, Jorge, 26, 273, 278, 286n My Brother Fidel (Mi hermano Fidel), 131, 145-47 (146-47) New Bahia Garden (Jardim Nova Bahia), 96-97 Nicaragua: El suero de Sandino (Nicaragua: The Dream of San- dino), 122 Nicaragua... From the Ashes, 165 Nicaraguan Notes (Apuntes nicara- guenses), 122 Nicaragua: The Dream of Sandino (Nicaragua: El sue io de Sandino), 122 Nicaragua Was Our Home, 165 Nitrate Chronicle (Cr6nica del salitre), 115 No apagardn mi sonrisa (They Won't Wipe the Smile off My Face), 175 Nombre de guerra: Miguel Enriquez (Nom de guerre: Miguel Enriquez), 119 Nom de guerre: Miguel Enriquez (Nombre de guerra: Miguel En- riquez), 119 No olvidar (Not to Forget), 126, 130n Noronha, Linduarte, 21, 80n North, Don, 167-68 Nossa escola do samba (Our Samba School), 58, 237n Noticiero Latinoamericano (Latin American Weekly Newsreel), 23, 132, 239-50 (245-50) Notre mariage (Our Marriage), 327 Not to Forget (No oluidar), 126, 130n Now, 6, 20, 23, 24, 32, 36, 64, 133, 135, 136-37, 138, 145, 149n Nowhere to Run, 157 Nuestro tequio (Our Tequio), 197-98 O amuleto de Ogum (The Amulet of Ogum), 92-93 Ocurrid en Hualfin (It Happened in Hualfin), 27 0 desafio (The Challenge), 218 Of Great Events and Ordinary People: The Elections (Des grans evenements et des gens ordi- naires: Les elections), 5, 28, 124 Official Story, The (La historia ofi- cial), 395 O homen de couro (Man of Leather), 5, 27, 83n 0 ingenio, 4, 27 Olhar Electr6nico (Brazil), 198, 199, 201 Olho M agico (Brazil), 202 Omar, Arthur, 88-91 Once Upon a Time We Were (Era- mos una vez), 121 One Way or Another (De cierta ma- nera), 21, 354, 387-88, 396, 403, 417-21 (418, 419), 430-31n O noivo da morte (Death's Groom), 94 O pais de Sdo Sarue (The Country of Saint Sarud), 88 Opinido Piblica (Public Opinion), 22, 92, 363 Oraci6n por Marilyn Monroe (Prayer for Marilyn Monroe), 6, 27-28 Ortiz, Fani, 337 447 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Ortiz Tejeda, Carlos, 118 Os fuzis (The Guns), 21 Os inconfidentes (The Conspirators), 90 Other Francisco, The (El otro Fran- cisco), 21, 354 Our Marriage (Notre mariage), 327 Our Samba School (Nossa escola do samba), 58, 237n Our Tequio (Nuestro Tequio), 197- 98 Pacifist Warriors (Guerreros paci- fistas), 126 Pallero, Edgardo, 57, 58 Passionate Kiss: Overdose (Beijo ar- dente: Overdose), 202 Patriamada (Beloved Country), 6, 20, 21, 373-401 (376, 377) Peasant (Lavra-dor), 104, 105, 237n Pennebaker, Don, 60 Peo, Sergio, 105 People from Everywhere, People from Nowhere, 121-22 Pepe Donoso, 126 Perdn: La revolucidn justicialista (Per6n: The Justicialist Revolu- tion), 266n Perrin Pando, Alberto, 30n Person, Luis Sergio, 218 Petri, Elio, 352 Piedra sobre piedra (Stone upon Stone), 147 Pixote, 21 Platoon, 167 PM, 20 Political Prisoners/Comandante Clelia, 188 Pontecorvo, Gillo, 352 Pope, Pilgrim of Peace? The, 337 Por primera vez (For the First Time), 5, 21, 25, 64-68 (66, 67), 69, 82n, 84n Portrait of Teresa, 354 Potemkin, 55 Prayer for Marilyn Monroe (Oracidn por Marilyn Monroe), 6, 27-28 Preloran, Jorge, 27 President Montt's Funeral (Los funerales del Presidente Montt), 110 Principal Enemy, The (El enemigo principal), 428 Producers, The, 266n Promised Land, The (La tierra pro- metida), 129n Public Opinion (Opinido P~iblica), 22, 92, 363 Puenz6, Luis, 395 Pussi, Dolly, 57 Que pasa con el papel higidnico? (What's Going on with Toilet Paper?), 204 Querelle des jardins (War of the Gardens), 124 Queridos comparteros (Dear Com- rades), 129n Que viva Mexico! 7, 8 Radio Venceremos (El Salvador), 13-14, 173-91, 203 Raising Old Glory Over Moro Castle, 10 Ramirez, Alvaro, 118, 120, 271 Ramona Parra Brigade (Brigada Ramona Parra), 271 Ranucci, Karen, 157, 193-208 Raulino, Alusio, 96-97 Ravaioli, Juan Jose, 202 Reassemblage, 5 Recado de Chile (Message from Chile), 127 Redes (The Wave), 7, 8 Red Like Camila (Roja como Camila), 120 Reed: Insurgent Mexico (Reed: Md- xico Insurgente), 21 Reed: Mxico Insurgente (Reed: In- surgent Mexico), 21 Remite: Nicaragua, Carta al mundo (Letter from Nicaragua), 5, 28 Renais, Alain, 34, 253 448 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Reportaje a Lota (Report to Lota), 113 Report to Lota (Reportaje a Lota), 113 Revoluci6n, 20, 55-56, 79, 82n, 83n Revolutionary Round (Ronda Revo- lucionaria), 212 Riefenstahl, Leni, 8, 362 Rien que les heures, 19 Rio, Forty Degrees (Rio, quarenta graus), 20, 22 Rio, Northern Zone (Rio, zona norte), 20 Rio, quarenta graus (Rio, Forty Degrees), 20, 22 Rio, zona norte (Rio, Northern Zone), 20 Rios, Hector, 114, 271 Rito e metamorfose das mdes Nag6 (Rituals and Metamorphoses of the Nag6 Mothers), 91, 97 Rituals and Metamorphoses of the Nag6 Mothers (Rito e metamor- fose das mdes Nag6), 91, 97 Roads to Death, The (Los caminos de la muerte), 424, 431-32n Road to Liberty, 175, 190n Robichet, Theo, 118 Roca, Augusto, 30n Rocha, Glauber, 22, 31, 32, 60, 92, 93, 95, 96, 253 Rodas and Other Stories (Rodas e outras hist6rias), 105 Rodas e outras histdrias (Rodas and Other Stories), 105 Rodriguez, Marta, 21, 27, 31, 32, 46n, 47n, 49, 69-72 (71), 84n, 273 Rogerio, Walter, 94 Rogers, Richard, 166 Roja como Camila (Red Like Camila), 120 Rojas, Leuten, 120, 122 Romance para el otro Santiago (Bal- lad for the Other Santiago), 126 Ronda revolucionaria (Revolutionary Round), 212 Rosas, Enrique, 214 Roses in December, 151, 157, 159, 162, 165 Rosi, Francesco, 352 Rouch, Jean, 60 Rufino, Paulo, 104, 105, 237n Ruiz, Jorge, 30n Ruiz, Rail, 28, 123-24, 129n, 270, 319 Ruttman, Walter, 19 Sad Song of Yellow Skin, 5 Saderman, Alejandro, 27, 68-69, 70 Salesman, 133 SALT Syndrome, 154, 155, 156 Salvador, 167, 169 Samper, Gabriela, 27 Samuel Romdn, escultor y hombre (Samuel Romdn, the Sculptor and the Man), 126 Sanchez, Rafael, 111 Sanctuary: A Question of Conscience, 167 Sanders, Beth, 167 Sanjines, Jorge, 20, 32, 55-56, 84n, 113, 403, 421-28, (422, 423, 424), 431n, 432n Santa Maria de Iquique, 114 Sdo Paulo Sociedade An6nima (Sdo Paulo Inc.), 218 Sapiain, Claudio, 115, 118-19, 120 Saraceni, Paulo Cesar, 217-18 Sarmiento, Valeria, 28, 121-22, 315, 317, 318-28 (322), 342, 343, 345n, 346n Sarno, Geraldo, 20, 49, 57-59, 92, 93, 217-37 (219, 220), 363 School of 40,000 Streets, The (A escola de 40.000 ruas), 100-01 Schumann, Gerhard, 118 Sefial de ajuste (Test Pattern/Signal to Adjust), 202 Senna, Orlando, 361-71 (365, 367, 369) September chilien (Chilean Septem- ber), 118 449 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Seventeen, 4 79 primaveras (Seventy-nine Spring- times), 6, 25, 133, 142-44 (143- 45), 145, 147 Seventy-nine Springtimes (79 prima- veras), 6, 25, 133, 142-44 (143-45), 145, 147 Shaeffer, Deborah, 166 Silber, Glenn, 157, 158 Silva, Jorge, 21, 27, 31, 32, 37, 46n, 47n, 49, 69-72 (71), 84n, 273 Simparele, 6, 27 Situation, The, 168-69 Si vivieramos juntos (If We Lived Together), 123 Skarmeta, Antonio, 123 Smith, Albert E., 10 Soares, Paulo Gil, 58-60, 237n Soccer Underground (Subterraneos do futebol), 58, 92, 237n Soffici, Mario, 21 Solanas, Fernando, 20-21, 22, 26, 31, 32, 37, 46n, 82n, 163, 190n, 251-66 (256, 260), 268 Solas, Humberto, 20, 27, 32 Solberg Ladd, Helena, 165 Solis, Daniel, 175, 188, 190n, 191n So Many Lives, One Story (Tantas vidas, una historia), 126, 205 Song Doesn't Die, Generals, The (La cancidn no muere, Generales), 118-19 Son o no son, 21 Sotelo, 124 Soto, Helvio, 129 Sowing Hope, 177, 178, 183-84, 190n Spiral, The (La spirale), 118 Stone, Oliver, 167 Stone of Wealth, The (A pedra da riqueza), 102-04 Stone upon Stone (Piedra sobre piedra), 147 Story of a Battle (Historia de una batalla), 54-55, 56, 57, 82-83n Strand, Paul, 7, 8 Strike, 259 Subterraneos do futebol (Soccer Un- derground), 58, 92, 237n Sueio de colores (I Dream in Color), 318 Sugar Mill, The (0 ingenio), 4, 27 Takeoff at Eighteen Hundred Hours (Despegue a las 18:00), 24, 135, 142 Talking about "Punto Cubano" (Ha- blando del punto cubano), 5, 25, 74-76 (75), 80, 82n Taller Popular de Video Timoteo Velazquez (Nicaragua), 315, 317- 18, 335-44 Tantas vidas, una historia (So Many Lives, One Story), 126, 205 Tarahumara, 21 Tarkovsky, 32 Tavares, Otavio, 105 Teixeira Suares, Ana Carolina, 104- 05 Teleanalysis (Chile), 205 Testimonios, 203 Testimonio (Testimony), 113 Testimony (Testimonio), 113 Test Pattern (Seial de ajuste), 202 There's No Place Like Uruguay (Como el Uruguay no hay), 21, 80n They Won't Wipe the Smile off My Face (No apagardn mi sonrisa), 175 Third World, Third World War, 354 Three Sad Tigers (Tres tristes tigres), 21, 129n Thresher (Trilla), 111 Throw Me a Dime (Tire Dig), 5, 18, 20, 51-54 (53), 79, 80n, 84n, 257 Tiempo de audacia (A Time of Dar- ing), 5, 13-14, 164-65, 177, 178, 183, 184-88 (186), 189, 190n, 203 Timoteo Velazquez Popular Video Workshop (Nicaragua), 203 Tire di6 (Throw Me a Dime), 5, 18, 20, 51-54 (53), 79, 80n, 84n, 257 450 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Tonacci, Andrea, 95-96, 97 Torres Rios, Leopoldo, 21 Toscano, Carmen Moreno, 13, 211-15 Toscano, Salvador, 214 To the Peoples of the World (A los pueblos del mundo), 119 Tras la grieta en la guerra (Through a Hole in the War), 179 Tres tristes tigres (Three Sad Tigers), 21, 129n Trilla (Thresher), 111 Triumph, The (El Triunfo), 200 Triumph of the Will, 362 Truffaut, Francois, 356 Trujillo, Marisol, 27-28 28 Up, 4 Two Years in Finland (Dos aios en Finlandia), 120 Ukamau, 421-22, 422, 424 Ulive, Ugo, 21, 62 (63), 80n Under Fire, 189 Under the Table, 122 Unfinished Diary (Journal inachev), 5, 28, 122-23 Until Victory (Hasta vencer), 205 Up to a Certain Point (Hasta cierto punto), 21 Valdes, Oscar, 73-74 (73) Vallejo, Gerardo, 26 Valparaiso, 285n Valparaiso, mi amor (Valparaiso, My Love), 20, 21, 129n Valparaiso, My Love (Valparaiso, mi amor), 20, 21, 129n Varela in Xingu, 198, 201 Vasconcelos, Tete, 157, 158, 159 VSazquez, Angelina, 115, 120, 122 Vega, Pastor, 31, 42, 43-44, 47n, 354 Venceremos (We Shall Overcome), 114, 271 Vertov, Dziga, 16, 23, 33, 177, 257- 58 Victor Jara vive (Victor Jara Lives), 120 Vidas Secas (Barren Lives), 108n Video Alternativo (Nicaragua), 336 Video Road, 199 Video Servicios (Mexico), 199-200 Violent Eviction (Violento desalojo), 176, 190n Viramundo, 20, 57-59, 79, 92, 217- 37 (219, 220), 363 Viva Cariri, 237n Wajda, Andrzej, 375 War of the Gardens (Querelle des jardins), 124 Wave, The (Redes), 7, 8 We Shall Overcome (Venceremos), 114, 271 Whatever Happened in El Salva- dor?, 153 What's Going on with Toilet Paper? ( Que pasa con el, papel higienico ?), 204 White Coup, The (El golpe blanco), 118 Who's Winning the War? 161 Why We Fight, 4 Wicker (Mimbre), 111 Willy and Maria (El Willy y la Maria), 126 Wiseman, Frederick, 133, 147 Within Every Shadow There Grows a Flight (Dentro de cada sombra crece un vuelo), 119 Witness to War, 166 Woman in Front of the Mirror (Mujer delante del espejo), 27 Women, The (Las mujeres), 204 Workers Leaving the Lumire Fac- tory, 4 Yamasaki, Tizuka, 20, 373-401 (376, 377) Yankovic, Nieves, 111 Yawar Malku (Blood of the Condor), 422-25 (423) Y el cielo fue tomado por asalto (And the Heavens Were Taken by Force), 145 451 452 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers Yo tambidn recuerdo (I Remember Zapotec video group (Mexico), 198 Too), 120 Zavattini, Cesare, 22 Young and the Damned, The (Los Zinneman, Fred, 7, 8 Olvidados), 8, 21, 22, 396 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Pat Aufderheide, who has held positions as cultural editor of In These Times, senior editor of American Film Magazine, and visiting professor at Duke Uni- versity, teaches communications at American University in Washington, D.C. An earlier version of "El Salvador: Packaging the War" appeared in the June 1983 issue of American Film Magazine under the title "El Salvador: Bringing the War Home." Aufderheide initially reviewed a number of the films she dis- cusses in this chapter for In These Times. Jean-Claude Bernardet, born in Belgium, has lived for many years in Brazil where he teaches Communications at the University of Sao Paulo. He is one of Brazil's leading film critics. Among his books are Brasil em tempo de cinema (Paz e Terra, 1976), Prianha no mar de rosas (Nobel, 1982) and most recently Cineastas e imagens do povo (Brasiliense, 1987). Julianne Burton translated "The Sociological Model or His Master's Voice: Ideological Form in Viramundo" from the original, French version of the latter book, Cineastes et images du peuple (doctoral diss., Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1984). "The Voice of the Other: Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s" appeared in Por- tuguese in volume 4 (Cinema) of a collaborative series entitled Anos 70 (Eu- ropa, 1979-80). It was translated by Julianne Burton in collaboration with Dafna Wu. Julianne Burton, who teaches Latin American literature and film at the Univer- sity of California, Santa Cruz, is the editor of Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers (University of Texas Press, 1986). "Democratizing Documentary: Modes of Address in the New Latin Ameri- can Cinema, 1958-1972" is reprinted from Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary, ed. Thomas Waugh (Scarecrow, 1984). An excerpted version of "Transitional States: Creative Complicities with the Real in Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later and Patriamada" appeared in Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 7 (1988). "Toward a History of Social Documentary in Latin America" was written expressly for this volume. Michael Chanan, a British writer and filmmaker, edited Chilean Cinema and Twenty-five Years of the New Latin American Cinema (British Film Institute, 1976 and 1983, respectively) and authored The Dream That Kicks: The Pre- 453 Notes on Contributors history and Early Years of Cinema in Britain (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) and The Cuban Image (British Film Institute and Indiana University Press, 1985). "Rediscovering Documentary: Cultural Context and Intentionality" is adapted from the latter. Jorge Fraga was the Chief of Artistic Production at the Cuban Film Institute for a many years and is now affiliated with the Escuela Internacional de Cine, Televisi6n y Video at San Antonio de los Bafios, Cuba. "Cuba's Latin American Weekly Newsreel: Cinematic Language and Political Effectiveness" appeared in Cine cubano, nos. 71/72 (1971). The magazine kindly provided the original photographs for reproduction here. The essay was translated by Julianne Burton. John Hess, a founding editor of Jump/Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, teaches film at San Francisco State University. "Bay of Pigs: Bertolt Brecht Meets John Wayne" is expanded from "Bay of Pigs: Event into Concept" Jump/Cut 4 (November-December 1974). "Collective Experience, Synthetic Forms: El Salvador's Radio Venceremos" was written expressly for this volume. Julia Lesage, founding editor of Jump/Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, is a feminist video maker who teaches at the University of Oregon at Eugene. She has written widely on Godard, Latin American cinema, feminist film and video practice, and other topics. "Women Make Media" was written expressly for this volume. Ana M. Lopez teaches Communications at Tulane University in New Orleans. "The Battle of Chile: Documentary, Political Process, and Representation," and "At the Limits of Documentary: Hypertextual Transformation and the New Latin American Cinema," both prepared expressly for this volume, draw heav- ily on material developed for her doctoral dissertation (University of Iowa, 1986), a history of the theory and practice of the New Latin American Cinema to be published by the University of Illinois Press in 1991. John Mraz is a tenured researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones Hist6ricas del Movimiento Obrero (Center for Research on the History of the Workers' Movement) at the University of Puebla, Mexico. He has written a dissertation on history in Cuban cinema (University of California, Santa Cruz, 1986). "San- tiago Alvarez: From Dramatic Form to Direct Cinema," was written expressly for this volume. Zuzana M. Pick, who teaches Film Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, was born in Czechoslovakia, raised in Colombia, and educated in France. She is the editor of Latin American Film Makers and the Third Cinema (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1975). An earlier version of "Chilean Documentary: Continuity and Disjunction" appeared in Literatura chilena: Creacidn y crntica 8, no. 7 (January-March 1984). The version published here was translated by Christina Shantz. 454 Notes on Contributors Margarita de Orellana received her Ph.D. from the University of Paris, Vin- cennes. Back in her native Mexico, she has worked as a research assistant to the film historian Emilio Garcia Riera. "The Voice of the Present Over Images of the Past: Historical Narration in Memories of a Mexican" originally appeared in her collection Imdcgenes del pasado: Cine y la historia, una antologia, Au- tonomous University of Mexico, Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinemato- graficos [CUEC], no. 7 (May 1983). Julianne Burton, translator of the essay, restructured it slightly for this volume. John Ramirez, who teaches in the Ethnic Studies Department of California State University at Los Angeles, is completing a dissertation on representations of Nicaragua. His essay, "The Sandinista Documentary: A Historical Contextual- ization," appeared in Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary, ed. Thomas Waugh (Scarecrow, 1984). "Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary: Toward a Theory and Practice of Participatory Cinema" was written expressly for this volume. Karen Ranucci is a videomaker who has worked extensively with New York- based network and community broadcasting organizations. She traveled throughout Latin America during 1985, assembling the first collection of in- dependent Latin American videoworks - eight hours of tapes from nine coun- tries distributed in the U.S. under the title "Democracy in Communication." "On the Trail of Independent Video" is the result of conversations between her and the editor. The chapter was first published in Global Television, ed. Cyn- thia Schneider and Brian Wallis (MIT Press, 1988). Robert Stam, who teaches Cinema Studies at New York University, coedited Brazilian Cinema with Randal Johnson (Associated University Presses, 1982: reissued by University of Texas Press, 1988) and authored The Interrupted Spec- tacle (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1985). "The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes" appeared in Millennium Film Jour- nal, nos. 7/8/9 (Fall-Winter 1980-81). Ismail Xavier, who teaches Communications at the University of Sao Paulo, received his Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University in 1982. His dissertation, "Allegories of Underdevelopment: From the 'Aesthetics of Hunger' to the 'Aesthetics of Garbage"' is available through University Microfilms In- ternational, Ann Arbor. "Iracema: Transcending Cinema Verite" was written expressly for this volume and translated from the Portuguese by Julianne Burton. 455 Rediscovering Documentary The paradigmatic role of documentary cinema can shed light on these complex questions. Nowhere can documentary's importance be observed more vividly than in Cuba. As a kind of testing laboratory for the New Latin American Cinema, Cuba has produced the most fascinating and contradictory findings. Before the 1959 revolution, Cuba had been a leading Latin American producer of commercial radio and television and a leading consumer of Hollywood movies. The chronic absence or distortion of images of national life in films before 1959 helps explain why documentary would carry such weight in Cuba's postrevolution- ary film production. The historical moment of the Cuban revolution was also, by coinci- dence, a period of aesthetic revolution in documentary cinema. Within the space of a few years, 16mm, previously regarded as a substandard format like 8mm or half-inch video today, became viable. Technical de- velopments, inspired by the needs of space technology as well as tele- vision, stimulated the production of high-quality 16mm cameras light enough to be raised on the shoulder and equipped with fast lenses and film stocks that reduced or even eliminated the need for artificial light- ing. Portable tape recorders and improved microphones provided syn- chronous sound, allowing the sound technician a mobility commensurate to that of the camera operator. No longer forced to shoot with bulky 35mm equipment that restricted them to studios or prepared locations, documentarists felt as if reborn. New-style documentary filmmakers sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe the style became known as cinema verite, in the United States as direct cinema. The concepts and practices of documentary film go back to the 1920s and three developments in particular: the appearance of a small avant- garde movement in European cinema; the work of a maverick filmmaker of Irish descent in North America, Robert Flaherty; and the creation of a revolutionary film industry in Soviet Russia which included the agit-prop of Dziga Vertov and the comrades of the Kino-Train. These developments were consolidated in Britain during the 1930s at the GPO Film Unit under the leadership of John Grierson. With the coming of sound, documentarists had responded at first with more imagination than was characteristic of other branches of cinema. The rich principles of montage developed in the 1920s were ap- plied, within the technological limitations of early sound systems, to the construction of the sound track. But the cumbersome equipment and the narrative and ideological requirements of the commercial film industry constrained and even straitjacketed the development of the form. The message of the sponsor was required to dominate, directly or indirectly, the prerogatives of imagination. Only the special condi- 33 PITT LATIN AMERICAN SERIES Cole Blasier, Editor ARGENTINA Argentina in the Twentieth Century David Rock, Editor Argentina: Political Culture and Instability Susan Calvert and Peter Calvert Discreet Partners: Argentina and the USSR Since 1917 Aldo C6sar Vacs Juan Per6n and the Reshaping of Argentina Frederick C. Turner and Jose Enrique Miguens, Editors The Life, Music, and Times of Carlos Gardel Simon Collier The Political Economy of Argentina, 1946-1983 Guido di Tella and Rudiger Dornbusch, Editors BRAZIL External Constraints on Economic Policy in Brazil, 1899-1930 Winston Fritsch The Film Industry in Brazil: Culture and the State Randal Johnson The Manipulation of Consent: The State and Working-Class Consciousness in Brazil Youssef Cohen The Politics of Social Security in Brazil James M. Malloy Urban Politics in Brazil: The Rise of Populism, 1925-1945 Michael L. Conniff COLOMBIA Gaitan of Colombia: A Political Biography Richard E. Sharpless Roads to Reason: Transportation, Administration, and Rationality in Colombia Richard E. Hartwig CUBA Cuba Between Empires, 1978-1902 Louis A. P6rez, Jr. Cuba, Castro, and the United States Philip W. Bonsal Cuba in the World Cole Blasier and Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Editors Cuba Under the Platt Amendment Louis A. P6rez, Jr. Cuban Studies, Vols. 16-19 Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Editor Intervention, Revolution, and Politics in Cuba, 1913-1921 Louis A. P6rez, Jr. Lords of the Mountain: Social Banditry and Peasant Protest in Cuba, 1878-1918 Louis A. Pgrez, Jr. Revolutionary Change in Cuba Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Editor The United States and Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development, 1880-1934 Jules Robert Benjamin MEXICO The Mexican Republic: The First Decade, 1823-1832 Stanley C. Green Mexico Through Russian Eyes, 1806-1940 William Harrison Richardson Oil and Mexican Foreign Policy George W. Grayson The Politics of Mexican Oil George W. Grayson Voices, Visions, and a New Reality: Mexican Fiction Since 1970 J. Ann Duncan US POLICIES Cuba, Castro, and the United States Philip W. Bonsal The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America Cole Blasier Illusions of Conflict: Anglo-American Diplomacy Toward Latin America Joseph Smith The United States and Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development, 1880-1934 Jules Robert Benjamin The United States and Latin America in the 1980s: Contending Perspectives on a Decade of Crisis Kevin J. Middlebrook and Carlos Rico, Editors USSR POLICIES Discreet Partners: Argentina and the USSR Since 1917 Aldo Csar Vacs The Giant's Rival: The USSR and Latin America Cole Blasier Mexico Through Russian Eyes, 1806-1940 William Harrison Richardson OTHER NATIONAL STUDIES Beyond the Revolution: Bolivia Since 1952 James M. Malloy and Richard S. Thorn, Editors Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981 Michael L. Conniff The Catholic Church and Politics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica Philip J. Williams The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement, 1883-1919 Peter Blanchard The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976 Paul E. Sigmund Panajachel: A Guatemalan Town in Thirty-Year Perspective Robert E. Hinshaw Peru and the International Monetary Fund Thomas Scheetz Primary Medical Care in Chile: Accessibility Under Military Rule Joseph L. Scarpaci Rebirth of the Paraguayan Republic: The First Colorado Era, 1878-1904 Harris G. Warren Restructuring Domination: Industrialists and the State in Ecuador Catherine M. Conaghan SOCIAL SECURITY Ascent to Bankruptcy: Financing Social Security in Latin America Carmelo Mesa-Lago The Politics of Social Security in Brazil James M. Malloy Social Security in Latin America: Pressure Groups, Stratification, and Inequality Carmelo Mesa-Lago OTHER STUDIES Adventurers and Proletarians: The Story of Migrants in Latin America Magnus Morner, with the collaboration of Harold Sims Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America James M. Malloy, Editor Authoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America James M. Malloy and Mitchell A. Seligson, Editors The Catholic Church and Politics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica Philip J. Williams Female and Male in Latin America: Essays Ann Pescatello, Editor Latin American Debt and the Adjustment Crisis Rosemary Thorp and Laurence Whitehead, Editors Public Policy in Latin America: A Comparative Survey John W. Sloan Selected Latin American One-Act Plays Francesca Collecchia and Julio Matas, Editors and Translators The Social Documentary in Latin America Julianne Burton, Editor The State and Capital Accumulation in Latin America: Brazil, Chile, Mexico Christian Anglade and Carlos Fortin, Editors Transnational Corporations and the Latin American Automobile Industry Rhys Jenkins The Social Documentary in Latin America JULIANNE BURTON, Editor Pitt Latin American Series "A valuable and intriguing book . .. indispensable." - MICHAEL RENOV, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California Documentary film has provided a major forum for political and cultural debate in Latin America since the 1950s. Documentary not only regis- ters specific historical events and social phenomena - the fall of Allende, the war in Central America, urban migration, deforestation, endangered folk traditions - but it also shapes and challenges percep- tions of individual, group, and national identity and purpose, hovering on that fine line between what happens and how it is presented and interpreted. Despite its impressive scope, variety, and importance, very little has been published about the Latin American documentary tradition. This copiously illustrated book of twenty essays by major filmmakers and critics, some written for this volume, others translated from the Spanish, Portuguese, and French, is the first survey of its evolution. While acknowledging the political and historical weight of the documen- tary, contributors to this collection are also concerned with the aesthetic dimensions of the medium and how Latin American practi- tioners have defied the boundaries of the form. Reflecting a wide variety of scholarly perspectives, The Social Documentary in Latin America will be an invaluable resource for spe- cialists in film studies and all concerned with Latin American culture and politics. Julianne Burton is Professor of Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz. UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260 Cover design by Bruce Gore ISBN 0-8229-5419-2 Michael Chanan tions of the Second World War kept a small space open for aesthetic exploration by a few gifted propagandists like Britain's Humphrey Jennings. For the most part, however, the documentary was free to develop only within the bounds of a conventional sense of realism that had become pretty well established by the end of the 1930s. Ideologically consolidated in the postwar period, this is the basis of the aesthetic which was then inherited by television, a style many filmmakers felt excessively confining. Grierson had argued for a concept of documentary as a didactic and social rather than a poetic and individual form, within which the image was to be employed for its status as a plain, authentic record of the actual. This aesthetic was based on a thoroughly empiricist philoso- phy that closely corresponded to certain practices in journalism. Though Grierson didn't put it this way himself, he wanted the docu- mentarist to regard the nonfictional image as an authentic document of social reality (to be filmed as artistically as one likes but with ap- propriate discretion) in rather the same way that journalists take docu- ments like parliamentary reports or the sworn statements of witnesses as authoritative and unimpeachable versions of events. For the jour- nalist actually to believe the authority of such documents, however, is plainly naive, and tends to cause problems. On similar grounds, the aesthetic that treats the authenticity of the film image uncritically can be called naive realism. There is an antagonistic tension, a contradic- tion, between the material capacity of the camera to make a record of a segment of the real world, and the way in which this capacity comes to be treated, which the documentary revolution at the end of the 1950s both exposed and intensified. The constraints of 35mm encouraged documentarists to resort to filming reenactments according to the rules that had been developed in commercial cinema for the fictional narrative, adding an explanatory commentary. The rise of commentary reduced large chunks of the im- age to the status of mere illustration, and in the face of the demands of the sponsor, the ideals that inspired the first flowering of the social documentary now dissolved. The best documentaries in the postwar years mostly took the shape of individual poetic essays by directors like Georges Franju and Alain Resnais. It would be natural to suppose that the Cubans eagerly took up the revolution in documentary occurring at the same moment as their own political and social revolution. Watching the documentaries of the revolution's early years, however, one rapidly discovers that this was not the case. Sometimes, indeed, the styles and forms of cinema verit6 are most noticeable by virtue of their absence. One reason is that the 34 Rediscovering Documentary first task of the new film institute, ICAIC, was to set up operations in 35mm. By the time this was accomplished, the U.S. blockade had been imposed and there were no longer funds available for developing 16mm. One is tempted to ask, would it have been any different if there had been? Examination of the evidence both on and off screen leads to the conclusion that it would not.' The rapid expansion of ICAIC's documentary output, from four films in 1959 to twenty-one the following year and forty in 1965, makes it a hopeless task to attempt to survey these films individually without looking for a way to categorize them. This exercise is fraught with the most thorny problems. Any system of classification is liable to back- fire, through imposing a conceptual scheme foreign to the material it is trying to classify. Caution therefore urges that we look first at sys- tems of classification the Cubans themselves have employed. In an interview published in 1971, Julio Garcia Espinosa was asked how nonfiction output was classified.2 He cited four categories: popu- larizing documentaries (documentales de divulgacidn), scientific sub- jects for popular consumption, newsreels, and cartoons. These divisions correspond to the way production in ICAIC was organized. The first is a general category; the second refers to specifically didactic films. (A department for didactic documentaries was set up in 1960, and though the catalogue classification under this heading came to an end in 1970, the types of films it included continued to be made. There was also a series entitled Popular Encyclopedia for which thirty-one films were produced during 1961-1962.)3 The last two categories refer to the departments of newsreel and animation headed by Santiago Alvarez and Juan Padr6n, respectively, which continued to function as sepa- rate units within ICAIC through the 1980s because their specific or- ganizational requirements remained distinct. Clearly these categories do not have any great aesthetic relevance. It would be more useful to look for a system of classification according to subject or theme, which might at least tell us something about the relative weight the Cubans have given to different fields of interest and could also serve as a starting point for more detailed analysis. A group of students under Mario Piedra, using ICAIC's own Cuban-assembled computer, have analyzed the institute's documentary output over the years 1959-1982.4 Using thirty-three categories, they made a simple count of the numbers in nine broad thematic groups, and arrived at the following percentages: working-class themes (tematica social-obrera): 24.27 artistic or cultural topics: 20.38 35 The SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY in LATIN AMERICA JULIANNE BURTON Editor University of Pittsburgh Press Michael Chanan international topics: 15.25 didactic topics: 13.45 educational topics: 7.35 historical topics: 6.38 sports: 5.68 problems in the construction of socialist society: 4.02 other: 3.19 This kind of typology, though it seems to offer a fair guide to the range of subjects treated by Cuban documentary, is not a satisfactory classification system because it gives no idea of stylistic variety. Cer- tain films elude confinement to a single category; many films fall under one heading or another only ambiguously or incompletely. Themes that are less often treated are not necessarily less important. Finally, some films reveal the extent of their importance only over time, like the mod- est six-minute montage experiment made by Santiago Alvarez in 1976 called Now, widely regarded as a classic of social protest. Another question raised by this classification system involves de- fining exactly what a didactic film is. Within a set of terms referring to subject areas, the category seems anomalous, for it delimits not so much subject as treatment. It really belongs to a different set of terms altogether, the set which rather than dealing with subject matter, iden- tifies the intention with which the film is made. Though it does not con- stitute a systematic classification scheme, the categorization of docu- mentary according to intention represents the way documentary is thought of in Latin America, because it arises directly from the condi- tions under which filmmakers at the receiving end of imperialism have to operate. These terms are far more aesthetically compelling than the previous schema. In addition to cine diddctico, they include: cine celebrativo - celebrational cinema cine de combate - the combat film cine denuncia - the protest film cine encuesta - investigative documentary cine ensayo - the film essay cine reportaje -reportage (overlaps with cine encuesta) cine rescate- films that "rescue" aspects of national or regional history or culture cine testimonio - the testimonial film This list is neither exhaustive nor definitive. There is no single source from which it is drawn. These are only the most frequently used of a series of terms that occur across the whole range of literature about Cuban and radical Latin American film, writings that express the pre- occupations and objectives of the New Latin American Cinema move- 36 Rediscovering Documentary ment. They can be found in film journals from several countries, in- cluding Peru (Hablemos de Cine), Venezuela (Cine alDia), Chile (Primer Plano), Mexico (Octubre), and Cuba (Cine Cubano), to cite only the most important. The distinctive feature of all the terms listed is precisely their inten- tional character. They indicate a variety of purposes: to teach, to offer testimony, to denounce, to investigate, to bring history alive, to cele- brate revolutionary achievement, to provide space for reflection, to re- port, to express solidarity, to militate for a cause. These are all needs of revolutionary struggle, both before and after the conquest of power, when they become part of the process of consolidating, deepening, and extending the revolution. An unsympathetic critic from the metropolis would quite likely dis- miss the entire list with a single term: propaganda. Bourgeois ideolo- gies have always equated propaganda with mere rhetoric, the selec- tive use of evidence to persuade. (Or, as a Cambridge professor once put it, "a branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly de- ceiving your friends while not quite deceiving your enemies.") Propa- ganda and didacticism are usually considered incompatible. Every revolutionary aesthetic finds this a false and mendacious antinomy. Revolutionary propaganda is the creative use of demonstration and ex- ample to teach revolutionary principles, and of dialectical argument to mobilize intelligence toward self-liberation. It seeks - and when it hits its target it gets - an active not a passive response from the spectator. As the Argentinian filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino put it, "Revolutionary cinema does not illustrate, document or estab- lish a situation passively; it attempts instead to intervene in that situa- tion as a way of providing impetus towards its correction."5 There is obviously a didactic element in this, but there's a difference: the aim of teaching is not immediately to inspire action, but to impart the means for the acquisition of more and better knowledge upon which action may be premised. Accordingly, there's a practical difference in revolutionary aesthetics, too, between the propaganda film and the di- dactic film. Ten years before Solanas and Getino made The Hour of the Fur- naces, another Argentinian, Fernando Birri, set up the film school at the Universidad del Litoral in his native Santa Fe. He based the idea of the kind of cinema he was aiming for on two main sources: Italian neorealism, and the idea of the social documentary associated with John Grierson. Both precedents are conventionally dominated by a naive realist aesthetic, so it is not surprising to find Colombian filmmaker Jorge Silva saying in an interview a few years later, "At the inception of the militant film movement, it was said that the essential thing was 37 Michael Chanan simply to capture reality and nothing more, and to make reality mani- fest. Afterwards this formulation began to seem insufficient."6 However, it was not as if Birri or anyone else involved meant these paradigms to be accepted uncritically. The way Birri saw it, to apply the humanistic ideas behind neorealism and the social documentary to the context of underdevelopment immediately gave them a dialectical edge. In an interview in Cine Cubano in 1963, he explained the function of the documentary in Latin America by means of a play on the word underdevelopment-in Spanish, subdesarrollo. In opposition to the false images of Latin American commercial cinema, documentary was called to present an image of authentic reality as it was and could not in all conscience otherwise be shown. It would thus bear critical witness by showing itself to be a subreality (subrealidad), that is to say, a reality suppressed and full of misfortune. In doing this, says Birri, "it denies it [reality as conventionally depicted]. It disowns it, judges it, criticises it, dissects it: because it shows things as they irrefutably are, not as we would like them to be (or how they would have us, in good or bad faith, believe that they are)." At the same time, "as a balance to this function of negation, realist cinema fulfills another, one of affirming the positive values in the society: the values of the people, their reserves of strength, their labours, their joys, their struggles, their dreams." Hence the motivation and the consequence of the social documentary, says Birri, is knowledge of reality and the grasp of awareness of it - toma de conciencia in Spanish, prise de conscience in French. (What Brecht wanted his theater to be.) Birri summarizes: "Problematic: The change from sub-life to life." In practical terms: "To place oneself in front of the reality with a camera and film this reality, film it critically, film underdevelopment with a popular optic." Otherwise, you get a cinema that becomes the accomplice of underdevelopment, which is to say, a subcinema (subcine, like subdesarrollo).7 This is not just a play upon words. Implicit in Birri's approach is an idea that has come to be associated with one of the leading thinkers of the philosophy of liberation in Latin America and the Third World generally, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, namely, the idea of con- cientizacidn (conscientization). Freire's philosophical arguments draw on Hegelian philosophy and existentialism as well as radical Christi- anity, but he's thoroughly materialist in his understanding of social reality; what he proposes is a philosophy of praxis. He argues that self- knowledge is possible only because human beings are able to gain ob- jective distance from the world in which they live, and "only beings who can reflect upon the fact that they are determined are capable of free- ing themselves."s In consequence, they become capable of acting upon the world to transform it, and through understanding the significance 38 Rediscovering Documentary of human action upon objective reality, consciousness takes on a criti- cal and dialectical form. It is never, says Freire, "a mere reflection of, but reflection upon, material reality."' In the same way, Birri wants to say that the documentary film is the production of images that are not a simple reflection of reality, but become in the film-act a reflection upon it - first by the filmmakers and then for the audience. This is clearly not the position of a naive realist. But it's not the position of an idealist either. It can best be called critical realism. A film may thus break through the culture of silence - Freire's term for the condition of ignorance, political powerlessness, lack of means of expression, backwardness, misery -in short, dehumanization of the popular masses. It can promote the recognition of the conditions in which the people live and how they are conditioned, and can sometimes even seem to give them their voice. In this way it succours concientiza- cidn, which is viable, says Freire, only "because human consciousness, although conditioned, can recognise that it is conditioned."10 Hence the possibility of popular consciousness whose emergence is, if not an over- coming of the culture of silence, at least the entry of the masses into the historical process. The power elite of the ruling classes are extremely sensitive to this process. Their own form of consciousness develops as an attempt to keep pace with it. There is always an intimate relationship between the ruler and the ruled (as in Hegel between master and slave). "In a struc- ture of domination, the silence of the popular masses would not exist but for the power elites who silence them; nor would there be a power elite without the masses," says Freire. "Just as there is a moment of surprise among the masses when they begin to see what they did not see before, there is a corresponding surprise among the elites in power when they find themselves unmasked by the masses."1 The conscientious documentarist is bound to serve as a witness in this process of twofold unveiling, as Freire calls it, which provokes anxieties in both the masses and the power elite; in doing so the very idea of the social documentary is transformed. For in this transitional process, says Freire, contradictions come to the surface and increas- ingly provoke conflict. The masses become anxious to overcome the silence in which they seem always to have existed; the elite becomes more and more anxious to maintain the status quo. As the lines of con- flict become more sharply etched, the contradictions of dependency come into focus, and "groups of intellectuals and students, who themselves belong to the privileged elite, seek to become engaged in social reality," critically rejecting imported schema and prefabricated solutions. "The arts gradually cease to be the mere expression of the easy life of the affluent bourgeoisie and begin to find their inspiration in the hard life 39 Michael Chanan of the people. Poets begin to write about more than their lost loves, and even the theme of lost love becomes less maudlin, more objective and lyrical. They speak now of the field hand and the worker not as abstract and metaphysical concepts, but as concrete people with con- crete lives."'2 Since the middle fifties, filmmakers have been in the forefront of this process in Latin America, beginning with the social documentary and moving on to explore a whole range of militant modes of filmmaking. Cine testimonio, or testimonial cinema, is another central category, one with two distinct strands. One of them is well represented by the Mexican documentarist Eduardo Maldonado, founder in 1969 of a group which took the term itself as its name: Grupo Cine Testimonio. Accord- ing to Maldonado, cine testimonio is concerned to put cinema at the service of social groups which lack access to the means of mass com- munication, in order to make their point of view public. In the process, he says, the film collaborates in the concientizaci6n of the group con- cerned. At the same time, the filmmaker's awareness is directed towards the process of the film. The process of shooting becomes one of inves- tigation and discovery which reaches, he believes, its final and highest stage in the editing. The film thus embodies "the aesthetic approach to concientizacidn."'3 The style which attracted Maldonado as most appropriate to these purposes was that of direct cinema. "We're not interested in propagan- distic documentary work," he said, "because we find it very boring. Nor are we interested in fictional filmmaking with big stars and big screens. Instead, what we're after is a kind of direct cinema, a way of making films quickly like cinema verite, which seeks to film events in the flesh, with the people who are the protagonists of real occurrences. This type of cinema tries to penetrate reality, to find the internal and external contradictions in order finally to discover the meaning behind things." He continues: Observation and analysis are the basis for this kind of film making, both as the means of capturing reality and of finding the particular dialectical interpretation in each instance. We do not wish to impose our blueprints or mental categories on real- ity. To do this would only mean that our films would become tracts. And that would be meaningless when compared to the standards of truth and interpretation to which the people being filmed are exposed. The basis of our films is our personal testimony, so we have to respect what people think about their own circumstances. Do we want to know how the subjects of the film live and how they think? Then we have to let the facts speak for themselves.'4 40 Rediscovering Documentary Although Maldonado falls back into the language of empirical subjec- tivism, it's not as if these ideas are those of naive realism any more than Birri's, only that the formulation is careless. At the same time, it may appear that in distancing the aims of the group from propaganda and in disparaging the film-tract, Maldonado is explaining the position of filmmakers who were not party militants. There are, however, a good many filmmakers in Latin America who, though they are indeed party militants, would substantially agree with Maldonado. They would agree with the search for a dialectical interpretation of reality, with the re- luctance to impose alien blueprints and mental categories on the popu- lar classes, and with the need to respect what people think about their own circumstances. Above all, Latin American filmmakers from across a broad spectrum of political affiliations would agree that in confront- ing the ruling elite, a film has to struggle against standards of truth that are no truth at all. The other strand of cine testimonio is literary in origin and particu- larly strong in Cuba. The earliest paradigms are found in the literatura de camparta ("campaign literature") of the nineteenth-century Cuban wars of independence: the memoirs, chronicles, and diaries of MAximo G6mez, Manuel de C6spedes, Jos6 Marti, and others. These are the ac- counts of participants writing in the heat and haste of events, aware of their necessarily partial but privileged perspective. Che Guevara fol- lowed the same imperatives in his accounts of the Cuban revolutionary war in the 1950s and the Bolivian campaign of the 1960s. Cuban docu- mentarist Victor Casaus has traced this testimonial genre through Cuban journalists of the 1930s, particularly Pablo de la Torriente Brau.15 Numerous writers of the 1970s and 1980s - the Argentinian Rodolfo Walsh, the Salvadorean Roque Dalton, the Uruguayan Eduardo Ga- leano, the Nicaraguan Omar Cabezas - continue to cultivate the genre. Filmmakers have also developed their own testimonial subgenres, according to Casaus. The ICAIC newsreel was the first of these because its character as a week-by-week chronicle is not a simple piecemeal record of the events but, under the guidance of Santiago Alvarez, be- came their interpretative analysis. It is obviously essential to the idea of the testimonial that it convey a sense of lived history. This means, in cinema, that the camera is not to be a passive witness. The newsreel learned how to insert itself into the events it recorded by breaking the conventional structure of the newsreel form and converting itself into a laboratory for the development of filmic language. This influenced the whole field of documentary, with its already obvious affinities to testimonial literature. Casaus specifies four characteristics of cine testimonio: first, rapid and flexible filming of unfolding reality without subjecting it to a pre- 41 Michael Chanan planned narrative mise-en-scene; second, choosing themes of broad na- tional importance; third, employing an audacious and intuitive style of montage, of which the outstanding exponent is Santiago Alvarez; and last, using directly filmed interviews both for the narrative func- tions they are able to fulfill and because they provide the means of bring- ing popular speech to the screen. (This was the last of Casaus's four principles actually to be incorporated into the Cuban documentary, since the Cubans initially lacked the technical capacity for direct sound filming.) What Casaus seems to be arguing is that the vocation of documen- tary is testimonial, though in a sense this is an a priori argument that cannot explain the different kinds of film which have appeared. At the same time, the Cubans have given a great deal of thought to the ques- tion of cine diddctico, a form that becomes particularly important after a revolution reaches power. What changes in cinema with the acces- sion to power is not just that militant filmmakers are no longer forced to work clandestinely or semiclandestinely, but that the whole empha- sis of their art is altered. The tasks for which films are intended quali- tatively shift, and nowhere is this more marked than in the scope that opens up for didactic cinema. As Pastor Vega explained in an article dating from 1970 entitled "Didactic Cinema and Tactics," when ICAIC set up a didactic films department in 1960, dealing with a whole range of scientific and technical subjects, not all the necessary conditions for such a project existed, "but it wasn't possible to wait for them; . . the demands of a revolution which alters the dynamic of history in all its dimensions leave no alternative."16 ICAIC recognized that it was nec- essary to create a whole new batch of filmmakers without having the time to give them proper training. They would have to learn on the job, jumping in at the deep end. The didactic film has to become di- dactic in more ways than one; the films would educate their makers in the process of attempting to educate their audiences. What the film- maker has to learn takes on a double aspect-there is the subject on which the film is to be made, and at the same time, learning how to make this kind of film. Formally speaking, these are two separate func- tions, but in the circumstances they get completely intertwined. Cine diddctico thus becomes a paradigm for new ways of thinking about film. The new documentary becomes the essential training ground in Cuban cinema because the filmmaker has to learn to treat reality by engaging with the people the film is for. Cine didictico teaches that the value of communication is of paramount concern because the film would achieve nothing if it didn't succeed in its primary function, which is instruction (in the broadest sense). This theme was taken up in a paper presented jointly to the National Congress of Culture and Education 42 Rediscovering Documentary in 1971 by Jorge Fraga, Estrella Pantin, and Julio Garcia Espinosa, "Toward a Definition of the Didactic Documentary."17 The authors discuss the idea of the didactic documentary in light of the preoccupations that had been animating their work over the previous decade. Their line of argument is itself eminently didactic. Much of what they say is philosophically grounded in the analysis of commodity fetishism and alienation, but they appeal in equal measure to more accessible concepts and ideas. They argue that a cultural heri- tage distorted by imperialism produces a way of thinking that perceives things in a dissociated way, that sees things only as results, without grasping the processes that create them. Underdeveloped thinking comes to be ruled by a sense of contingency and fatalism, which harkens back to the magical (but the magical now shorn of most of its previous cultural legitimacy). They observe, "After twelve years of revolution, we still find examples of this way of thinking even in our own commu- nications media, mostly modelled after the tendency to exalt results and omit the process which led up to those results."18 But, they continue, cinema possesses the very qualities needed not only to communicate knowledge and skills effectively, but also to edu- cate for a rational, concrete, and dialectical way of thinking - because it is capable of reproducing reality in motion and therefore of demon- strating processes and, further, because it's capable of revealing rela- tionships between elements that come from the most dissimilar con- ditions of time and place. Utilitarian conceptions of the didactic documentary limit its potential: the result is sterile and ahistorical. Capitalist cinema conventionally deals with the problem of the genre's dryness by adding enticements to the treatment of the film, sugar- coating the pill- a technique known from advertising as "the snare." Advertising "appeals to stimuli which have nothing to do with the na- ture of the product in order to create more demand for it or stimulate the consumer's interest: sex, desire for recognition and prestige, fear of feelings of inferiority - anything apart from concrete demonstration of the actual properties of the object." This mentality that thinks only in terms of selling becomes all-pervasive, and everything, including ideas and feelings, is reduced to bundles of exchange values. To fall in with all this was obviously hardly acceptable. The didactic documen- tary, they argue, must break once and for all with this retrogressive tradition; it must link itself with the urgency of its subjects and themes. The formal techniques employed "must be derived from the theme and put at its service. It's the old moral demand for unity between form and content."'" Pastor Vega's account of the didactic film has the same moral em- phasis, and his arguments are similarly built on an historical material- 43 Michael Chanan ist analysis. The socioeconomic transformation created by the revolu- tion, he explains, has propelled the newly literate peasant from the Middle Ages into the second half of the twentieth century where he becomes an operator of tractors and agricultural machinery. This ac- celerated passage through multiple stages of development involved in the sudden acquisition of the products of modern science and tech- nology, requires a qualitative leap in the process of mass education. The didactic film must be transformed accordingly, throwing off the molds of the form as it originated in the developed countries and going in search of the originality that arises from very different socialist pat- terns of development. The filmmaker must acquire new perspectives and seek a different filmic language than the archetypes of the docu- mentary tradition. The didactic film must be seen as a new aesthetic category in which the artist and the pedagogue meet. Many of the principles evolved in the course of development of the social documentary in the new Latin American cinema, particularly in Cuba, have strong parallels with positions that have been taken up within radical film practices in Europe and North America over the same period. The Venezuelan critic Rail Beceyro is effectively speak- ing for both when he writes that "one of the initial tasks of 'new cine- mas' all over the world has been to destroy certain norms of grammati- cal construction. ... A cinema which aspires to establish new ties with the spectators or which intends to modify the role which spectators assign themselves, could not continue to use the formal structures [of what preceded it]."20 But in certain respects the radical film cultures of the metropolis and of Latin America think rather differently. Both would agree about naive realism. As the French art critic Pierre Francastel wrote in 1951: What appears on the screen, which our sensibility works on, is not reality but a sign. The great error which has regularly been committed is to em- bark upon the study of film as if the spectacle of cinema placed us in the presence of a double of reality. It should never be forgotten that film is constituted by images, that is to say, objects which are fragmentary, lim- ited and fleeting, like all objects. What materialises on the screen is neither reality, nor the image conceived in the brain of the film maker, nor the image which forms itself in our own brain, but a sign in the proper sense of the term.21 But what is a sign in the proper sense of the term? This is where the trouble begins. Following Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics, as interpreted by structuralists of various disciplines, a strong current within the new radical film theory in the metropolis has come to regard 44 Rediscovering Documentary the sign as a very peculiar kind of symbol. As Fredric Jameson has written: The philosophical suggestion behind all this is that it is not so much the individual word or sentence [or image in the case of film] that "stands for" or "reflects" the individual object or event in the real world, but rather that the entire system of signs . .. lies parallel to reality itself; that it is the totality of systematic language, in other words, which is analogous to whatever organised structures exist in the world of reality, and that our understanding proceeds from one whole or Gestalt to the other, rather than on a one-to-one basis. But, of course, it is enough to present the problem in these terms, for the whole notion of reality itself to become suddenly problematical.22 The notion of reality itself becomes problematical, however, in quite a different way in cultures that bear the imprint of underdevelopment because the whole concept of truth is different. Truth, in the structural- ist system, says Jameson, becomes a somewhat redundant idea, as it must when there is nothing to which it can be unproblematically re- ferred. An image in a film, therefore, is not to be thought of as truthful because it pictures something real, even though the automatic mecha- nism of the camera would lead us to believe that there must indeed be some element of truth in this. Instead, it is said to yield meaning only because it stands in a certain relationship to the other images through which it is-so to speak-refracted. The trouble is that the result of this way of thinking in aesthetic practice is often a superficial and rigid formalism. In any radical film practice in the underdeveloped world, truth is far more immediate and material. It is not simply a question of the accuracy or fullness of fit of the image to what it pictures, since every- one knows that this can never be complete. Rather, truth lies in the relationship with the audience, in the film's mode of address, because the meaning of what is shown depends on the viewer's position. This recognition has also been of great concern to radical film theorists in the metropolis. The new Latin American filmmakers, however, have been worried less about the way the filmic discourse positions the spectator, and rather more about whether it adequately recognizes where the spec- tator is already. This emphasis requires a more conscious political posi- tion on the part of the filmmaker. The biggest difference is in the practice of cultural politics - or, more precisely, the cultural-political field within which the filmmaker inter- venes. In the metropolis, there is little to stop the film "texts," the "dis- courses" of cinema, from becoming dissociated objects in themselves. For the new cinema in Latin America, in contrast, "the filmmaker be- 45 Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260 Copyright @ 1990, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Baker & Taylor International, London Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The social documentary in Latin America / edited by Julianne Burton. p. cm. - (Pitt Latin American series) Includes index. ISBN 0-8229-3621-6.- ISBN 0-8229-5419-2 (pbk.) 1. Documentary films - Latin America. 2. Motion pictures - Social aspects - Latin America. I. Burton, Julianne. II. Series. PN1995.9.D6S57 1989 070.1'8 - dc20 89-4831 CIP Michael Chanan comes more and more involved in the process of the masses" and "the film must become an auxiliary part of this whole formative process."23 This dialectic promotes a very different attitude toward both the idea and the criteria of truth, not because the masses are seen as repositories of truth in the mechanistic manner of lazy Marxism, to borrow Sartre's phrase, but because the filmmaker is involved in a process of concien- tizaci6n in which truth undergoes redefinition. The philosophy of lib- eration holds this to be an inherent potential of underdevelopment. That is why the new cinema in Latin America, and particularly in Cuba, cannot be properly understood without grasping, across the divide of cultural imperialism, the radically different ways in which oppositional cinema positions both the viewer and the filmmaker. NOTES This chapter is excerpted and revised from Michael Chanan, The Cuban Im- age: Cinema, Cultural Politics and the Process of the Cuban Revolution (Bloom- ington: BFI/Indiana University Press, 1986). Reprinted by permission. 1. The reasons for this are examined at length in the book from which these paragraphs are taken. In the paragraphs that follow, I present some of the findings. 2. Julio Garcia Espinosa, "El cine documental cubano," Pensamiento critico, no. 40 (July 1970), 81-87. 3. Today films for strictly educational use are made primarily by the film section of the Ministry of Education, while a range of military instructional films and television programs are made by the film section of the armed forces. 4. Mario Piedra, "El documental cubano a mil carActeres por minuto," Cine cubano, no. 108 (1984), 43-49. 5. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, "Hacia un tercer cine," Tricon- tinental, no. 13 (October 1969); rpt. in Solanas and Getino, Cine, cultura y descolonizaci6n (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1973). An English translation by Michael Chanan and Julianne Burton, "Towards a Third Cinema," appears in Twenty-Five Years of the New Latin American Cinema, ed. Chanan (London: British Film Institute and Channel Four Television, 1983), pp. 17-27. 6. Interview with Jorge Silva and Marta Rodriguez by Andres Caicedo and Luis Ospina, Ojo al cine, no. 1 (1974), 35-43. An excerpted translation ap- pears in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Film- makers, ed. Julianne Burton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986). 7. "Cinema and Underdevelopment, An Interview with Fernando Birri," Cine cubano, nos. 42-44 (1963), 13-21; translated in Twenty-Five Years of the New Latin American Cinema, ed. Chanan, pp. 9-12. 8. Paulo Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom (Harmondsworth, Middle- sex: Penguin, 1972), p. 52. 9. Ibid., p. 53. 46 Rediscovering Documentary 10. Ibid., p. 54. 11. Ibid., p. 65. 12. Ibid., p. 66. 13. Interview with Eduardo Maldonado by Andres de Luna and Susana Chaurand, Otro cine, no. 6 (April-June 1976); unpublished translation by Julianne Burton. 14. Ibid. 15. Victor Casaus, "El g6nero testimonio en el cine cubano," Cine cubano, no. 101 (1982), 116-25. 16. Pastor Vega, "El documental didActico y la tActica," Pensamiento critico, no. 42 (July 1970), 99-103. 17. Fraga, Pantin, Garcia Espinosa, "El cine didActico," Cine cubano, nos. 69-70, translated as "'Toward a Definition of the Didactic Documentary," in Latin American Film Makers and the Third Cinema, ed. Zuzana Pick (Ottawa: Carle- ton University Film Studies Program, 1978), p. 200. 18. Ibid., p. 206. 19. Ibid. 20. Raill Beceyro, Cine y politica (Caracas: Direcci6n General de Cultura, 1976), p. 27. 21. Pierre Francastel, "Espace et Illusion," Revue Internationale de Filmolo- gie 2, no. 5 (1951). 22. Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 32-33. 23. Interview with Jorge Silva and Marta Rodriguez. 47 3 DEMOCRATIZING DOCUMENTARY: MODES OF ADDRESS IN THE NEW LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA, 1958-1972 Julianne Burton Modes of visual and especially aural address here provide a vantage point for the comparative interrogation of representational strategies in fifteen landmark documentaries produced throughout the region between 1958 and 1972-among them works by Fernando Birri, Mario Handler, Octavio Cortdzar, Geraldo Sarno, Jorge Silva, and Marta Rodriguez. During this period, the previously dominant convention of omniscient voice-over narration gives way to a multitude of alter- natives, extending the privilege of oral address in the cinema across a wide range of social sectors even before the (delayed) introduction of synchronous recording technology, and offering a critical commen- tary on issues of authority, power, and empowerment in cinema and in society. FROM THE inception of the social documentary movement in the mid- to-late fifties,' Latin American filmmakers began experimenting with a broad range of strategies designed to eliminate, supplant, or subvert the standard documentary mode of address: the anonymous, omniscient, ahistorical "voice of God." These social issue filmmakers were deter- mined to challenge what they perceived as the authoritarian character- istics of this particular mode of address, since they equated it with an unjust, hierarchical, closed sociopolitical order which they were equally determined to expose and transform. Long before the technological in- novations in sound recording associated with "direct cinema" and "cinema verite" were widely available in the region, Latin American filmmakers explored indirect and observational modes in an attempt to pluralize and democratize modes of documentary address. In their drive to subvert or eliminate the authoritarian narrator, 49 Julianne Burton some filmmakers substituted intertitles; others went so far as to com- pletely extirpate the logos - aural and graphic -in films whose "van- guard" practice resuscitated formal strategies of the silent era. When not totally eliminated, voice-of-God narration often had to cede aural space to folk lyrics, the on-camera and/or on-microphone presence of the filmmakers or their surrogates, and the self-presentation of social actors. Other films utilized a participant or social actor as a kind of "metanarrator" who appears on camera to perform and explicate simul- taneously. Two Uruguayan filmmakers imitated the more "detached" approach of North American cinema verite, though not without ele- ments of irony and parody. As the following chronological survey will reveal, Latin America's militant filmmakers retained the authoritarian narrative voice only with reluctance, deferring it beyond the point of unselfconscious expectation, diluting or relativizing it in a composite of other modes of address, devalidating it through the manipulation of the image track. In this process, both simultaneous and concerted, Latin American filmmakers constantly forced the expansion of the concept of documen- tary by favoring investigation over exposition, hypothesis over pre- scription, "process" over "analysis,"2 poeticized over "purely" factual discourse. They produced films that were not only "imperfect" but also "impure" or hybridized in their mixture of modes of address and in their recourse to narrativity and other devices conventionally associated with fictional or experimental modalities. The drive to democratize modes of address, which foregrounded issues of organization and access to power in the larger society as a political-economic system, was often accompanied by a parallel impulse to foreground issues of formal or- ganization within the film itself as a signifying system (a conjunction to be discussed in more detail in the conclusion to this chapter). The films that demonstrate this dual impulse utilize self-reflexivity to ac- knowledge the interrelationship between politics in the society and poli- tics in the text. In addition to an early draft of Michael Chanan's chapter (see chap- ter 2), three other recent essays on documentary helped to constitute the theoretical and methodological point of departure for this inquiry. They are: Bill Nichols's "The Documentary Film and Principles of Ex- position," Annette Kuhn's "The Camera I: Observations on Documen- tary," and Jeffrey Yodelman's "Narration, Invention and History: A Documentary Dilemma."3 From the first I have taken - and in collabo- ration with its author, expanded - the paradigm of direct and indirect modes of verbal address.4 In response to Annette Kuhn's article, I have also tried to take into consideration modes of visual address, though here the question of systematicity is much more problematic. Before 50 Democratizing Documentary veering off into a discussion of historical accuracy and political affilia- tion, Yodelman offers an (incomplete) survey of nonauthoritarian forms of direct verbal address in the "older tradition" of (Euro-American) docu- mentary filmmaking, thus providing a partial model for the kind of analysis I attempt here. I propose to trace variations in modes of verbal and visual address through fifteen years of Latin American social documentary produc- tion in hopes of adding to the current historical and theoretical work on documentary a whole new range of (substantiating or contradic- tory) "evidence" from an extensive and important film tradition that is insufficiently recognized outside its own geolinguistic parameters and inadequately studied within them. In addition to examining modes of verbal address-synchronous or nonsynchronous, direct or indirect, expository or observational- and modes of visual address, I will also consider issues of formal structuration, narrative and experimental mo- dalities, self-reflexive devices, and in several cases, genesis and modes of filmic production. The fifteen films analyzed here represent six coun- tries: Argentina, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Colombia. They exemplify the most significant and influential documentary shorts pro- duced in Latin America in the period under study.5 Tire die: The "First Latin American Social Survey Film" Fernando Birri's Tire did (Throw Me a Dime, 1958) be- gins with an aerial shot of the provincial city of Santa Fe, Argentina. The association of voice-of-God narration with perspective-of-God im- ages only reveals the full extent of its parodic intent as the narration progresses and conventional descriptive data (such as geographical lo- cation, founding dates, population) give way to less conventional sta- tistics (the number of streetlamps and hairdressers, loaves of bread consumed monthly, cows slaughtered daily, and erasers purchased yearly for government offices). As the houses give way to shanties, the narrator declares, "Upon reaching the edge of the city proper (la ciudad organizada) statistics become uncertain.... This is where, between four and five in the afternoon ... during 1956, 1957 and 1958, the fol- lowing social survey film was shot."6 The railroad bridge surveyed by the aerial camera just prior to the credits is the site of the first postcredit sequence. From God's vantage point, the camera has descended to the eye level of the children who congregate there every afternoon. In the first postcredit shot, a little boy in close-up stares directly at the camera, then turns and runs out of frame. Other children appear in close-up, looking and speaking in 51 Julianne Burton direct address. Their barely audible voices are overlaid with the studied dramatic diction of two unseen adult narrators, male and female, who repeat what the children are saying, adding identifying tags like ". .. one of the boys told us," or ". . . said another." This initial sequence ends as the camera follows one of the boys home and "introduces" his mother in direct visual and verbal address, followed by her voice-over (soon compounded by the overlay of the mediating narrators) and images of observation and illustration. This "chain" sequence, whereby one social actor (usually a child) provides a visual link with another (usually an adult) continues throughout the film. The primary expectation deferred and eventually fulfilled by the film's intricate structuration is the appearance of the long and anxiously awaited train to Buenos Aires. The interviews in which local residents discuss their economic plight are repeatedly intercut with shots back to the tracks and the growing number of children keeping their rest- less vigil there. The eventual climax of expectation (the subjects' and the viewers') has the bravest and fleetest of the children running alongside the passing train. As they balance precariously on the nar- row, elevated bridge, their hands straining upward to catch any coin the passengers might toss in their direction, childrens' voices on the sound track chant hoarsely, "Tire diW! Tire di6!" ("Throw me a dime!").7 The first product of the first Latin American documentary film school (the Escuela Documental de Santa Fe, founded by Birri in 1956 upon his return from Rome's Centro Sperimentale), Tire die was a col- laborative effort whose evolution and ethos suggest a more observa- tional than expository motivation. After selecting this particular theme and locale from preliminary photo-reportages, Birri divided his fifty- nine students into various groups, each of which was to concentrate on a particular personage from the community under study: "We went there every afternoon for two years, to get to know these people, to exchange ideas, to spend time with them; but we ended up sharing their lives. We never concealed the fact that we were making a film, but neither did we emphasize it. The film was clearly secondary to the hu- man relationships which we established."8 Despite severe financial and technical limitations, the group sought the synchronous self-presentation of social actors. Interventions by the authoritarian narrator cease after the initial precredit sequence. The filmmakers deleted their own presence from the interviews with river- bed residents, neither appearing on screen nor retaining their questions on the sound track. Generally, though not always, the film introduces social actors in direct visual and verbal address, followed by a mon- tage of images of illustration and observation that are unified by the social actors' voiceover commentary. 52 Fleeting chances to reach out for a better life. 'Tire die (Fernando Birri, 1960). Credit: Fernando Birri Julianne Burton Given this apparent commitment to direct verbal address, the per- sistent intervention of the anonymous male and female mediator- narrators, speaking over the voice of the social actors, is unexpected and disconcerting. Investigation into the film's mode of production re- veals that this expedient derives not from prior design but from de- ficiencies in the original sound recording. Faced with the inadequate technical quality of the recordings made during the filming, Birri and his students had to compromise their original conception: "We ap- proached two well-known actors.., .and asked them to re-record the original soundtrack, not dubbing the film but rather serving as inter- mediaries between the protagonists and the public. This re-recording is what appears in the 'foreground' of the soundtrack, but beneath it we retained the original track.... Even though at first glance this voiced-over 'professional' sound track seems contradictory to our ap- proach, it was an unavoidable necessity." This overdubbing technique is quite common today in foreign-language documentaries when the filmmakers wish to retain the "flavor" of the actual social actor's speech, but here it plays quite an opposite role, signaling the locus of contra- diction and branding this early and influential attempt to democratize documentary discourse with the unwanted stamp of residual authori- tarian anonymity. Story of a Battle: Voice-of-God as Voice-of-the-People Manuel Octavio G6mez structured Historia de una batalla (Story of a Battle, 1962) by intercutting two separate sequences of events, a device that other filmmakers would later adopt to somewhat different effect. In G6mez's case, though both "lines" are factual, only one is expository in the conventional sense; the other shades off into a more personalized narrative mode. The expository line uses primar- ily archival images of illustration to chronicle the major events in and concerning Cuba in the year 1961. These include the nationalization of U.S.-owned firms, acts of terrorism and sabotage by those opposed to the new regime, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Castro's speech de- claring the Marxist-Leninist orientation of the revolution. The second line chronicles the national literacy campaign, electing to do so by means of more observational, subjectivizing techniques. The precredit sequence belongs to the latter category: shots of an expectant crowd are intercut with shots of a train overflowing with animated young people singing, clapping, craning to see their destina- tion approach. As the train arrives, parents anxiously scan the disem- barking crowds for a glimpse of their offspring. The film ends with a 54 Democratizing Documentary montage of home-site reunions whose intense emotional impact derives from the observational style in which they were filmed.9 This second sequence of events functions not as information but as evocation, trans- porting the film beyond the conventionally detached confines of com- pilation documentary. Its multiple and anonymous protagonists con- stitute the locus of a generalized, symbolic diegesis that frames the year's public events and anchors them in subjective human experience. These two foci - the literacy campaign, and the other events of na- tional importance whose presentation is subordinated to the former - are united by a single narrative voice: omniscient, anonymous, male. Yet G6mez's voice-of-God narrator deviates in significant ways from the authoritarian model. His diction is poetic and evocative rather than dryly "objective." He uses first and second person forms of address - the familiar, singular tdi and the first-person plural nosotros -rather than the more detached third person, shifting between the personae of the literacy teachers, their peasant pupils, and the national collectivity. These variations, coupled with the simulation of synchronous sound (singing and chanting among the returning literacy workers, Castro's speeches and the crowds' response to them) indicate an attempt to de- mocratize an authoritarian mode of address by converting the voice of God into a surrogate for the demos. Such a strategy assumes an ex- perience universally and monolithically shared within the nation. Revoluci6n: Atavism or Vanguard Practice? Jorge Sanjin6s's Revoluci6n (Revolution, 1963) suggests a reversion to the silent era: an intricate montage of images of under- development and of massive popular opposition to the dominant powers - a kind of Bolivian Potemkin in which music and sound effects constitute the only commentary.'0 Sanjines made the film without ac- cess to the kind of equipment that would allow for sound recording. In this case the technological rear guard coincided with the artistic van- guard. This ten-minute film begins with a visual distillation of the ac- cumulated daily violence of underdevelopment (children sleeping on the streets with only discarded newspapers to cover them, people foraging for food in garbage dumps). The second section intercuts scenes from a workers' demonstration with scenes of the "forces of law and order" as- sembling. Part III evokes the effects of military repression - imprison- ment, execution - through spare, Eisenstein-like montages, while the fourth evokes the outbreak of revolution. Sounds of battle on the sound track are not accompanied by images of the same, but rather by pans of children's faces, completing the cycle. The historicizing effect of con- crete references to the generalized uprising of April 9, 1952, coexists 55 CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xi PART I ESTABLISHING SHOTS 1. Toward a History of Social Documentary in Latin America 3 Julianne Burton 2. Rediscovering Documentary: Cultural Context and Intentionality 31 Michael Chanan 3. Democratizing Documentary: Modes of Address in the New Latin American Cinema, 1958-1972 49 Julianne Burton PART II WIDE ANGLES 4. The Voice of the Other: Brazilian Documentary in the 1970s 87 Jean-Claude Bernardet 5. Chilean Documentary: Continuity and Disjunction 109 Zuzana M. Pick 6. Santiago Alvarez: From Dramatic Form to Direct Cinema 131 John Mraz Julianne Burton From seiorita to compahera: once sheltered daughters of the Cuban middle class return from teaching literacy in the far corners of the island. Historia de una batalla (Manuel Octavio G6mez, 1962). Credit: ICAIC with the film's poetic, almost mythical dimension. If the techniques em- ployed by Sanjines in Revolucidn refer backward in time to Eisenstein, they also point forward to the most formally innovative of the Latin American documentarists, Santiago Alvarez. Cicl6n and Now: Banishing the Logos That same year (1963), Alvarez, a musical archivist who had been put in charge of the weekly Cuban newsreel, would make the first of a number of autonomous shorts destined to bring him inter- national acclaim. Cicldn (Hurricane, 1963) surveys Hurricane Flora's damage to the island and the inhabitants' response to the devastation without either narration or the graphically innovative intertitles that would soon characterize his style. Aside from an animated map that illustrates how the hurricane swept over the island and repeatedly circled back to cut a new swath of destruction, the film contains no graphic display. It is as if the logos has been excised as superfluous to the momentous eloquence of the images. To ensure that the absence of the word does not escape the viewer's notice, however, the film in- 56 Democratizing Documentary cludes one brief shot of a newspaper headline ("Storm Now Lashes Camagiey Province") superimposed over a shot of the storm's devas- tating force, as well as an occasional destination written above the wind- shield of a bus. The very rarity of these designations intensifies one's awareness of the absence of the written and spoken word. The images are primarily observational. Except for Fidel and his brother Ral, the social actors in the film are anonymous. None is iden- tified in any way; their eye movements do not acknowledge the camera (again, Fidel himself is the only exception); and though we occasionally watch them talk, we never hear what they say either first- or second- hand. Words are superfluous here. Alvarez, though proceeding quite differently from G6mez in Story of a Battle, communicates a similar conviction: the essential universality of national experience. If the films by Birri and Manuel Octavio G6mez shade from the ex- pository into the narrative realm, Alvarez's work veers toward the ex- perimental while still continuing to function as reportage. Now (1965) is constructed from "found" footage around a kind of "found narration": Lena Horne singing the homonymous black liberation song to the music of the Hebrew folksong "Hava Nagila." No attempt is made to "trans- late" the lyrics of the song for Alvarez's Spanish-speaking audience. This visual collage of news photos and secondary footage of racial tension, violence, and abuse in the United States functions on the more visceral plane of agit-prop, with the rhythms of the song reinforcing the rhythms of the editing and the camera's dynamization of the still images. Lena Horne supplants the narratorial function, serving instead as a kind of enlisted evoker/invoker. Again, graphic language appears only inciden- tally, as, for example, the word "Police" on the side of a squad car. Only at the end does the (written) word replace the image as simulated bullet marks spell out the word NOW! Viramundo and Memorias do Cangapo: Multiple Modes of Address In 1963, due to political pressure from a newly installed military government, Fernando Birri, his wife Carmen, and three associates -producer Edgardo Pallero and filmmakers Dolly Pussi and Manuel Horacio Gimenez, all former students at the Escuela Documental-left Argentina semiclandestinely, taking prints of their films with them. Seeing themselves as a kind of "scouting expedition," the group went to Slo Paulo where former students Vladimir Herzog and Maurice Capovilla arranged a retrospective of their work at the Museum of Modern Art and put them in contact with producer Thomaz Farkas and a group of aspiring documentarists. Though the Cinema Novo movement had begun with the decade, 57 Julianne Burton Powerful images of unity amid adversity: Cicl6n (Santiago Alvarez, 1963). Credit: ICAIC it was concentrated around Rio, with some early activity in Bahia and elsewhere. The presence of the Escuela Documental group catalyzed the first important documentary production in Sao Paulo, a series of four simultaneously and cooperatively produced films: Geraldo Sarno's Viramundo, Paulo Gil Soares's Memorias do CangaCo (Memories of the CangaCo), Manuel Horacio Gimenez's Nossa escola do samba (Our Samba School), and Maurice Capovilla's Subterraneos do futebol (Soc- cer Underground). Though Birri moved on to Rio and, after the coup d'6tat of April 1964 to Mexico, later Cuba, and finally to Italy where he remained until 1979, the rest of the group stayed in Sio Paulo for several years. The dozens of documentaries financed by Thomaz Farkas, many made with Pallero as executive producer, attempt a systematic survey of Brazilian society and culture, particularly in the disadvantaged Northeast. As an integrated body of work, they are unique in Brazilian and in Latin American film history. Both Viramundo and Memorias do Cangago use synchronous sound recorded with synchronous equipment, though neither uses this ap- proach exclusively, preferring instead a kind of composite address that 58 Democratizing Documentary charts the gamut of narratorial possibilities.11" Viramundo explores the experience of peasants from the drought-stricken Northeast who mi- grate to Sao Paulo in search of work, juxtaposing their voiced expecta- tions to the actual prospects awaiting them in the metropolis. Memorias do Cangago's subject is more historical: the legendary bandits of the Northeast, the cangageiros. Both documentaries present themselves as a kind of investigation- in-progress. Each begins with a voice-of-God narrator who quickly cedes his privilege to more democratized modes of address. Viramundo uses the onscreen (integral) interview, where both interviewer and interviewee appear in the frame and both question and answer are heard on the syn- chronous sound track. It also gives us a kind of "pseudo-monologue" where the visual and aural presence of the interlocutor has been de- leted in favor of the "pure" response of the social actor, who either pre- sents himself to the camera (sync) or comments over images of illus- tration. Finally, Sarno uses a kind of montage interview, intercutting fragments of responses by various interviewees as if to suggest a con- versation between them. Viramundo is a prototype of an "intervention- ist" documentary style characteristic of Brazilian documentary in the sixties, in contrast to a more "detached" or "minimalist" approach com- mon to the seventies.12 Brazilian critic Jose Carlos Avellar notes that, from the inception of the interviews that make up the bulk of the film's narration, "Viramundo is organized like a dialogue."13 His observations on the lyrics and music which composer Caetano Veloso wrote for the film are particularly suggestive: The music enters with evident sonority at the beginning, the end, and in the middle of the narrative to separate two blocks of interviews. This sung poetry ... functions as a text for the analysis of the situation, for despite its being written in the third person (as if it were another immi- grant being interviewed) it provides a general vision of the problem of northeastern migration to Sao Paulo, presenting a global understanding that transcends many of the partial depositions. The music acts, qualifies, completes, dialogues and interferes in the spoken text.14 This strategy constitutes a fifth mode of address, a kind of anonymous metavoice, surrogate both for the filmmaker and for the social actors and a bridge between the two. Soares's Memorias do CangaVo proceeds in similar fashion, begin- ning with an omniscient voice that inquires, "Who were the cangageiros?" and continuing, "We pose the question to a professor of the Depart- ment of Legal Medicine." An on-camera authority proceeds to offer a technical discourse on the morphology of physical types, insisting that cangageiros are exclusively ectomorphic types because "only thin men 59 Julianne Burton hold a grudge." Such preposterous testimony from an "expert witness" sets the viewer up for a more credible answer to the question origi- nally posed by the anonymous narrator. The subsequent onscreen in- terview with a cangageiro, in medium long shot, is framed to include the interviewer holding a microphone, his back to the camera. The au- thoritarian narrator returns again to offer an account of the "real" causes behind this semiorganized banditry. His explanation is followed by an- other synchronous interview with a matador de cangageiros (cangapeiro killer-for-hire, prototype of the protagonist of Glauber Rocha's Antonio das Mortes, 1968) whose voice then continues over images of illustra- tion: archival footage of Lampiao, the most famous of the cangaveiros, who died in 1938. The sound track retains the interviewer's questions, though he does not appear on camera during this sequence. The mata- dor's voice-over "introduces" the next interviewee, a former canga!eiro who has gone straight. Period footage of Lampiao's woman is accom- panied on the sound track by spoken lyrics of folk songs about her, the anonymous narrator here functioning not as the voice of God but as the "voice of the people," a folk surrogate. The final shot in a mon- tage of freeze frames resumes movement as Lampido's woman refuses to be interviewed, "Don't come to me with tape recorders! I was his woman." Her refusal adds another dimension to the pluralization of modes of documentary address: the right of the social actors to refuse the platform the filmmakers offer them. Carlos and Elecciones: Cinema Veritd in Uruguay The work of the two foremost Uruguayan filmmakers was inspired in the changing international film scene -in new experimental forms and particularly the direct cinema and cinema verit6 techniques pioneered in France by Chris Marker and Jean Rouch and in the United States by Richard Leacock and Don Pennebaker. Mario Handler re- turned from film study in Germany, Holland, and Czechoslovakia to assume the directorship of the Film Institute at Uruguay's University of the Republic, ready to assemble the infrastructure that would finally make national film production feasible. He had to reconcile himself not only to a chronic lack of equipment and resources, but also to lack of interest, if not outright opposition, on the part of his superiors. The discovery of some unused film stock donated by UNESCO years before launched him on a film project that he conceived as a reaction against all his advanced technical training- simultaneously a protest against and a reckoning with the artisanal conditions under which he was con- demned to work if he was to make films at all. The resulting thirty-minute film, Carlos: Cine-retrato de un caminante 60 Democratizing Documentary (Carlos: Cine-Portrait of a Walker, 1965) is the closest approximation to observational cinema to come out of the New Latin American Cinema movement in the period under study. Clearly, neither the filming nor the subsequent taping that would be edited to form the sound track were incidental to Carlos's life, but both were done in such a way as to minimize the intervention of the technical apparatus and the fact of being the object of an inquiry that would eventually be converted into a cultural artifact. Handler maintains that instrumentality was subordinated to human interaction, to the process of inquiry into the life of the other which constitutes a simultaneous inquiry into the self and the larger society. He recalls, Carlos and I spent a great deal of time together, just getting to know each other. We would drink beer and talk, or we would walk for hours on end without saying a word. Gradually I got him accustomed to the camera. The shooting was slow, exhausting work. I didn't tape the audio part until after the shooting was complete. In a session which lasted three hours, I asked him questions about life, edu- cation, society, himself -sometimes cajoling him and other times treating him quite forcefully. There was no moviola in Uruguay at the time; I did the editing with a viewfinder and a projector, making all the cuts on the original negative because I had no money to pay for a workprint. The approach I used in this film meant that the research and the creative process were one and the same. It was a painstaking method, a brutal apprenticeship. I would never lavish so much time on a film again.15 The vagabond's voice-over commentary, accompanied at times by instrumental music, is the only aural accompaniment to the images of observation and occasionally illustration that reproduce his environ- ment and activities.16 No other narrative voice intervenes. The film- maker does not acknowledge his own presence either visually or aurally. Throughout the film, there is an impulse toward poeticization of the material followed by the refusal of that impulse. Certain visual themes emerge: the dichotomy of indoor/outdoor, particularly marked for a homeless wanderer who generally sleeps in the open air; the "voyeurs" who gaze outward from the security of a private interior space; the re- peated compositional device of close-ups of Carlos with another figure remote upon the horizon line, an individual isolated but never totally removed from a larger social context; the motif of the cosas tiradas (discarded objects) intercut toward the end like ironic still lifes sug- gesting Carlos's comparable status as a persona tirada. These cluster- ings testify to the interventionist stance of the filmmaker, for whom exposition merges with narrative and observation inevitably entails interpretation. Despite the relative "purity" of its observational form, Carlos shades 61 Julianne Burton Cultures and subcultures of homelessness: Carlos (Mario Handler, 1965). Credit: Mario Handler back into direct address for another reason as well: the particular style of speech which the protagonist spontaneously employs. He constantly interjects confirmational queries - "Isn't that so?" "Don't you agree?" "Do you understand?"- and almost as frequently confronts his inter- locutor with an even more direct question, such as, "What would you have done if your woman deceived you?" As a social actor in a docu- mentary film, Carlos is the most consistently self-representational per- sonage among all the Latin American documentaries surveyed here. The film thus stands as the foremost example of one means of democ- ratizing the documentary modes of address, by giving voice to one in- dividual whom society had condemned to be voiceless, by giving visi- bility to someone whom society prefers should remain invisible. Later that same year, Handler collaborated with Ugo Ulive on a film called Elecciones (Elections, 1965), which combines an essentially observational approach with a very fluid, modernist shooting style that hones in on the telling detail of gesture or expression by means of "choker" close-ups, rack focus, extreme angles, and the fragmenta- tion of the image. The editing style is equally aggressive. Through its treatment of two candidates for minor political office, Elecciones satiri- cally calls into question the then much-vaunted tradicidn democraitica uruguaya. 62 Democratizing Documentary Democracy as demagogery, political process as grotesque: Elecciones (Ugo Ulive and Mario Handler, 1965). Credit: Mario Handler No authoritarian narrator intervenes to impose an analysis on the assembled visual evidence. Instead, social actors stand condemned by their own self-serving bombast, in "postsynched" or contrapuntal se- quences. In one of the latter, the female candidate, flanked by photogra- phers and admirers, is shown distributing gifts in a hospital maternity ward while she expounds in voice-over upon the anonymity and spon- taneity of her gesture. Though the candidates never acknowledge the camera, some members of the crowds do look directly at it, raising the issue of viewer complicity by this form of direct- if "incidental" - visual address. Me gustan los estudiantes: Selective Denial Me gustan los estudiantes (I Like Students, 1968), also by Handler, represents a reversion to even more primitive, artisanal conditions than those surrounding his earlier film, Carlos. Its agita- tional, experimental style is more evocative than expository. Like His- toria de una batalla, the film is structured by intercutting two inde- pendent sequential lines. Unlike the Cuban film, there is no voice-over narration, and none of the people photographed - Latin American heads of state conferring at Punta del Este and Uruguayan students battling 63 Julianne Burton police as they take to the streets to protest Lyndon Johnson's atten- dance at that meeting-is granted the opportunity to speak either on or off the screen. The conference sequences, somewhat hazy from in- tentional overexposure, are denied any sound whatever, while the stu- dents sequences, in normal exposure, carry the voiced-over musical ac- companiment of popular Uruguayan singer Daniel Viglietti singing a march that he composed for the film and a Violetta Parra song, "Me gustan los estudiantes," that gave title to what Handler had intended to call "Violence in Montevideo." The impact of this ten-minute film, like that of Santiago Alvarez's Now, comes from the careful synchro- nization of musical and imagistic rhythms and is intensified in this case by the additional strategy of alternating denial and conferral of musical accompaniment.17 Like Alvarez's Now, Me gustan los estudi- antes illustrates a strategy that might be called surrogate narration. In this case, a popular performing artist "stands in" for the omniscient narrator. Por primera vez: The Interview and the Last Word Octavio Cortizar, whose national reputation as a docu- mentarist was for years secondary only to that of Santiago Alvarez, was the first Cuban filmmaker to construct his films around synchro- nous interview footage. Porprimera vez (For the First Time, 1967) be- gins by posing a question through graphic rather than aural means. Word by word, in telegraphic style, the following query appears on the screen: " Que labor realiza un cine mdvil?" (What does a mobile cinema do?) Two uniformed men appear, lounging on the fender of a truck while another man, in shadow, makes some adjustments under the hood. (The casualness suggested by the posture of the social actors and the gen- eral composition of the shot is belied by the precise way in which the letters ICAIC [acronym for the Cuban Film Institute] are framed be- tween the bodies of the two men facing the camera.) In direct verbal and visual address, one begins to explain that the mobile cinema units bring films and projection facilities to remote areas. His voice contin- ues to describe the electrical equipment and interior furnishings of the truck over images of illustration in which another technician handles the equipment referred to. A cut back to the original shot has the sec- ond technician talking in sync about the work schedule. Over a close- up of the first technician, with a microphone visible in the extreme left of the frame, an offscreen voice (Cortazar's own) inquires, "Do you know some place around here where people still have not seen movies?" The 64 Democratizing Documentary Audiovisual anthem for an international student uprising: Me gustan los estudiantes (Mario Handler, 1968). Credit: Mario Handler technician faces leftward at a three-quarters angle as he answers in the affirmative, ending the precredit sequence. The initial use of a graphic rather than an aural question allows Cor- tazar to circumvent the need for an anonymous voice-of-God narrator whose relationship to the film and its characters is never defined. When his own voice intervenes, it is that of a participant-investigator. This pair of sequential precredit questions lead to a third that determines the structure of the body of the film: "What is a movie like?" This inter- rogatory series leads the viewer from the realm of factual information to the experiential, phenomenological realm of first discovery. Viewer identification shifts from the outsider (first question and response) to the participant-agent (second question and response) to the participant- subject (third question and multiple responses) - of which, on a meta- level, the film itself is one. Porprimera vez unfolds through the telling of a simple story in which the resolution of the enigma equals the (happy) end of innocence cum ignorance. With the exception of a few cutaways, generally to other members of the speaker's family, the responses to Cortizar's questions about expectations involve the coincidence of voice and image of the social actors. His own questions are often though not always heard from 65 7. Left, Right, and Center: El Salvador on Film 151 Pat Aufderheide 8. Collective Experience, Synthetic Forms: El Salvador's Radio Venceremos 173 John Hess 9. On the Trail of Independent Video 193 Karen Ranucci, with Julianne Burton PART III TEXTS IN CLOSE-UP 10. The Voice of the Present over Images of the Past: Historical Narration in Memories of a Mexican 211 Margarita de Orellana 11. The Sociological Model or His Master's Voice: Ideological Form in Viramundo 217 Jean-Claude Bernardet 12. Cuba's Latin American Weekly Newsreel: Cinematic Language and Political Effectiveness 239 Jorge Fraga 13. The Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant-Gardes 251 Robert Stam 14. The Battle of Chile: Documentary, Political Process, and Representation 267 Ana M. Lopez 15. Nicaraguan Reconstruction Documentary: Toward a Theory and Praxis of Participa- tory Cinema and Dialogic Address 289 John Ramirez 16. Women Make Media: Three Modes of Production 315 Julia Lesage vi Contents Julianne Burton The context of cultural isolation: the remote Cuban hamlet of Los Mulos. Por primera vez (Octavio Cortazar, 1967). Credit: ICAIC offscreen, and respondents generally face the direction from which the question comes instead of directly facing the camera. With the preparations for the open-air evening screening, the film moves from the realm of conjectural concepts ("A movie must be like a party, .... a dance, ... a large town, .... something with lots of pretty girls, weddings, cavalry and war, and everything") to the realm of sub- jective experience as reflected in body postures and facial expressions. In these montages of spectator response to the mechanical feeder se- quence from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, Cortizar constructs a microcosm of life stages - childhood, adolescent romance, nursing motherhood, old age - while capturing all the rapt and radiant expres- siveness of a highly animated people. Porprimera vez sounds a deep chord because it so compellingly re- creates the subjective discovery of the magic of the movies. Watching it, each viewer recapitulates her/his own initiation into that realm of the marvelous by looking into the "mirror" from which Cortazar's cap- tivated and captivating faces shine. Great reward for a simple quest. The gratification Cortazar provides is all the more genuine because he does not end his film at the emotional summit of discovery, but instead continues to monitor the audience's mounting fatigue and waning at- tention. Like a classic bedtime story, not only is the ending happily 66 Democratizing Documentary Charlie Chaplin's screen image elicits expressions of wonder and delight. Por primera vez. Credit: ICAIC predictable and predictably happy, but the inducement to surrender to satisfied sleep is inscribed within the tale itself. (One need only fol- low the example of a character like Dervis who inserts her fingers in her mouth and curls up on her girlfriend's lap.) Cortizar here democratizes the documentary voice through his con- centration on the most marginalized within the marginalized. (His in- terviews are with women and children; the only man interviewed ap- pears only to rectify his young daughter's confusion.) Cortizar also democratizes the documentary gaze, not only through presenting the range of people he interviews in direct visual address, but also, and much more intricately, in the film-viewing sequence where the shot-reverse shots set up a complex "mirroring" dynamic. The ultimate democratiza- tion lies of course on the film's metacinematic level: the people of Los Mulos are now incorporated into and represented by a medium to which they formerly had no access. In symmetrical relationship to the film's opening, its final statement is (tele)graphically rendered on the screen: "Thus / on April 12, 1967 / in los Mulos / in the mountains of Baracoa / more than one hundred people / saw a movie / for the first time." The screen behind the initial motivating question was blank. The final "answer" is superimposed on a long shot of the darkened village, identifiable only by a concentration 67 Julianne Burton of lights. A coda gives one of the social actors the last word as a frag- ment of her interview is heard again in voice-over: "A movie is ... some- thing very beautiful and of importance." Hombres de Mal Tiempo: Handicapping the Voice of God Hombres de Mal Tiempo (Men of Mal Tiempo, 1968), filmed in Cuba by Argentine filmmaker Alejandro Saderman, is a meditation on the representation of history. Five veterans of the Battle of Mal Tiempo, fought during Cuba's war for independence from Spain, are assembled to share their memories and instruct actors and technicians in recreating that experience on film. The precredit sequence begins as if in medias res, cutting repeat- edly between shots of on-site preparation and the assembling, transport, and reception of the five centenarians. These shots are fragmentary, snatches of a larger picture fleetingly captured by a camera as restive as it is inquisitive. Period engravings of battle scenes, animated by puffs of smoke, provide a background for the credits. The "film proper" be- gins with a montage of still photos, a kind of reprise in a different key, since these "snapshots" recount the same process of preparation, tran- sit, and assembly from different angles than the original moving footage, and with a very different "feel." An anonymous narrator offers a dis- quisition on time, heroism, and history that culminates in a bald declara- tion of (poetic) intent: The life of the hero, according to what we are told, is simple: it moves in a straight line, like an arrow, toward its end. But heroes themselves seldom have the right to recount it, and when they do, that line begins to weave, to tremble, to disperse on a hazy horizon because it is contaminated by dreams, by truth, by lived experience. We are going to play with time. They will retell in the present what for history is part of the past, because memory is beyond time, beyond history: memory is a reason for being. This is not a historical documentary; it is a fiesta of memory. The association of anonymous voice-over narration with still photo- graphs and freeze-frames - arrested motion, congealed time - is not in- cidental; it is marked by its systematic persistence. Five times the film cuts to still photographs of the assembled group, tracking in and then holding on a particular veteran as the narrator provides his name and background. Each time, the voice of the social actor, supplanting the narrator's, sets the film in motion again. Through the repeated as- sociation of the authoritarian narrative voice with stasis, and the com- 68 Democratizing Documentary plementary association of the voices of the social actors with the re- sumption of movement, Hombres de Mal Tiempo alludes to some of the ideological and artistic limitations of the former mode of address while continuing to utilize it. If Por primera vez was structured like a bedtime story, Hombres de Mal Tiempo has a symphonic structuration that is, predictably, much more complex. The piece begins slowly, sedately, with the intro- duction and assemblage of the various character-performers. It rises in intensity as, after recounting individual recollections, the centenari- ans begin to reenact their memories, and then to interact with one an- other and with the professional actors who are eager to simulate their retrieved experience. The use of the machete as a weapon, ritual dances, a military ambush, a mock execution are demonstrated by the original historical actors and then reenacted by the professionals. The culmi- nating movement consists of the fully orchestrated reconstruction of the battle, complemented by solarized, intermittent-motion sequences that represent the distance between reenactment and subjective mem- ory of the original event. Descending from this crescendo of movement and participation, the original combatants turn from the field in a series of still dissolves until their images fade away. In the case of Hombres de Mal Tiempo, the authoritarian narrative voice has been transformed into a self-limiting, self-referential authorial voice, one which, in attempting to conserve voices from the past, de- fers to them without abdicating its responsibility to insert them into a meaningful context. In addition, the film proposes the inadequacy of a purely aural representation of the voice of historical experience or memory, just as it declines a purely "realistic" mode of visual represen- tation of that experience. Saderman's film is one of the most sugges- tive and artistically satisfying results of the practice of generic self- reflexivity that characterized Cuban filmmaking from the late sixties through the mid-seventies, a compelling example of theorist and film- maker Julio Garcia Espinosa's contention that it is "impossible to ques- tion a given reality without questioning the particular genre you select or inherit to depict that reality."18 Saderman's "fiesta of memory" may not prove the "impossibility" of unreflexive uses of genre, but it cer- tainly exemplifies the artistic rewards of a more self-conscious approach. Chircales: Hierarchical Modes of Address Like several films already discussed, Chircales (The Brick- makers, 1968/1972) by the Colombian team Jorge Silva and Marta Rodriguez, also aspires to an observational mode. For over a year, be- fore bringing in even a light meter, Silva and Rodriguez virtually lived 69 Julianne Burton History as memory embodied: centenarian ex-slave Esteban Montejo recounts his expe- riences during the War for Independence to actors from ICAIC about to reenact them. Hombres de Mal Tiempo (Alejandro Saderman, 1968). Credit: ICAIC in the brickyards on the outskirts of Bogota, returning to the city only to sleep. Hundreds of hours of taped interviews constituted the first practical phase of their work; still photography the second. By the time a movie camera was finally introduced, the filmmakers claim that the community's familiarity and trust was such that no one was inordi- nately disconcerted by its presence.19 From the first sociology assign- ment that led Rodriguez to that community, to the final mixing, Chir- cales was six years in the making. This delay, caused by lack of funds and equipment, turned out to be boon as well as bane. The intricate structuration of the final film-the product of extended deliberation between filmmakers, social actors, and the community at large - might not have developed under a tighter production schedule. In its mode of aural address, Chircales offers a hierarchy of pre- dominantly nonsynchronous voices. There are only the most "inciden- tal" simulations of synchronous sound. The paterfamilias goads the mule with shouts of "E-va! Arre!" in a sequence shot from a distance and angle that make it difficult to discern any movement of his lips. A voice-over 70 Democratizing Documentary Unbearable measures of indentured childhood: the boy's age is marked by the number of bricks on his back. Chircales (Jorge Silva and Marta Rodriguez, 1972). Credit: Jorge Silva dialogue of initially mysterious provenance is "explained" when the camera pans briefly to a transistor radio. Overlaid "source noise" of shovels or falling water occasionally punctuates otherwise silent se- quences. A collage of anonymous voice-overs accompanies the precredit sequence, and continues briefly after the credits. Bombastic political speeches are contrasted to a more personal monologue that can only retroactively be attributed to one of the film's protagonists. Several members of the brickmaking family are visually introduced while en- gaged in the preliminary stages of their labor process in a sequence whose silence rings loud. Only then, six minutes and forty-five seconds into his forty-one- minute film, does a voice-of-God narration begin: "Colombia. The fam- ily of Alfredo and Maria Castafieda and their twelve children live this reality which is concealed, denied . . ." The deferral of this omniscient voice helps make the audience conscious of its intervention. Through- out approximately half of the film, the images "speak" for themselves, often in silence, occasionally with source noise and/or musical accom- paniment. The voices of the social actors - Alfredo, Maria, their eldest 71 Julianne Burton daughter and son - heard over images of observation and illustration, generously supplement but never altogether displace the voice of the anonymous narrator who frames their personal experience in a larger analytical context. Within the body of the film, this omniscient nar- rator has the first word and the last, relegating the voices of the family members to a secondary rung of importance. Other voices from the sociocultural context also "address" the viewer, often less directly: priests, politicians, radio announcers hawking prod- ucts, soap opera characters. The importance of these "tertiary" voices derives from the influence they have had in shaping the voices (con- sciousness, world view) of the protagonists. A fourth category consists of analogous voices visually linked to their sources very loosely if at all. These intervene only toward the end of the film, around a funeral sequence that reads as more metaphoric than "real"; they are the voices of a bereaved widow, her children, and her female neighbors who, hav- ing endured what the former now faces for the first time, comment upon her suffering, its causes, their shared predicament. Finally, Maria's dis- course often includes direct quotes from authority figures who have an (adverse) impact on the family's life: a doctor who, without offering any alternative, condemns her for "bringing more beggars into the world"; el compadre German, intermediary between the owner of the brickyards and the tenant brickmakers, who eventually evicts them. Ironically, these hostile voices have to be "heard" through Maria's soft, rancorless tones. If some more incidental "characters" in the film have voices without any physical presence, several of its visually predominant protagonists are conceded no voice at all. Each of the characters thus confined to modes of visual address is female; each is associated with a more meta- phoric or symbolic mode of representation that seems to be enhanced by their silence. Leonor, the Castafiedas' second daughter, dressed in her white first communion gown and veil, wanders from her present into her "future" in an atypical sequence that elides communion, mar- riage, and widowhood. An unidentified mother and daughter who work and live in the same brickyard constitute another axis of cumulative poignancy and pathos: the mother grave and gnarled from her unceas- ing labor; her three- or four-year-old daughter delicate and hauntingly lovely. It is this child who, in contrast to her mother and to all the other characters, engages in direct-visual address. Throughout the film, cut- aways to her in various postures and dress coalesce into a kind of com- pelling refrain that directly challenges the passive voyeurism of the viewer and transports the film from the sociological register to the symbolic. 72 Democratizing Documentary Fictionality in the service of documentary; the historical witness offers his testimony in the foreground while in the background actors in period costume dramatize the events described. Muerte y vida en el Morillo (Oscar Valds, 1971). Credit: ICAIC Muerte y vida en El Morillo: Historical Reenactment and Self-Reflexivity In Muerte y vida en El Morillo (Death and Life in El Mo- rillo, 1971), Cuban filmmaker Oscar Vald6s reconstructs an incident of intrigue and heroism from the days of underground opposition to dic- tator Fulgencio Batista. In the absence of archival footage, the direc- tor opts for on-site dramatic reenactment with professional actors in period costume, using third-person narration to comment upon the re- presentation of the incident. What is notable about this use of anony- mous narration is that it is doubly synchronous: not only do the voice and image of authority coincide, but also this onscreen narrator offers his account from the foreground of the frame, while behind him, on a second plane, we view the simultaneous reenactment of the events he describes. In his modes of representation, Vald6s has thus found an objective correlative for the fact of mediation. Like the play within a play, this device carries the potential for "infinite" regressions of aural 73 Julianne Burton and visual overlap (the filmmaker could conceivably appear in the fore- ground, pushing the narrator into the middle ground and the profes- sional actors onto a third plane of remoteness from the viewer), but the single metalevel is sufficient to acknowledge the relativity of questions of objectivity, facticity, and representation. Hablando del punto cubano: Toward the Unification of Substance and Form Hablando delpunto cubano (Talking about Punto Cubano, 1972), a tribute to a particular tradition of rural music, begins in char- acteristic Cortazar style with an informal group interview. (In contrast to the modes of verbal address used by G6mez and Alvarez earlier in the decade, predicated upon the experiential and ideological unity of their Cuban spectatorship, Cortazar's approach is built upon an acknowl- edgment of difference and disagreement.) Ignoring the filmmakers whose offcamera questions have sparked their debate, workers at a Havana bus factory argue heatedly about the nature and appeal of the punto cubano musical style. The spectrum of their opinions - from ignorance to enthusiasm to outspoken lack of interest and skepticism - anticipates the spectrum of audience attitudes to the film's subject, thus provid- ing a bridge between viewers and participant-actors. The preparatory testimony of these casual witnesses is supplemented by expert testi- mony (a female musicologist) and the comments of various performers. More than inform, however, the musicians demonstrate, illustrating varieties of the punto cubano through their performances. These threads are tied together by the multidimensional perfor- mance of another punto cubano singer, the most famous practitioner of the style, recruited to serve simultaneously as performer, narrator, social actor, and emblem of creole culture. Joseito Fernandez punctu- ates the film like a lyric refrain, singing his commentary in the improvi- sational, self-referential style typical of the punto cubano, to the tune of "Guantanamera." The exposition he provides is thus also, simulta- neously, exemplification. His appearances occur in different settings, but the mise-en-scene is always highly "creolized." This tall, lanky, heavily mustachioed mulatto-decked out in immaculate white cottons, topped by white straw hat, and puffing on a large cigar-leans against arched lattice- work amid lush tropical vegetation, or lounges on a lacy wrought-iron bench in front of a stuccoed wall, grilled windows, and an arching palm tree. His final appearance, which closes the film, involves the reversal of 74 Democratizing Documentary Joseito Fernandez, visual and aural icon of a mestizo Cuba, as narrator, performer, and social actor. Hablando del punto cubano (Octavio Cortazar, 1972). Credit: ICAIC the stylistic conventions used in his prior presentations, in which the camera would track in progressively closer from increasingly close-range establishing shots. The final sequence begins with him walking away from the camera, increasing rather than diminishing the distance be- tween camera and subject. Joseito's visual address here ceases to be direct. The stationary subject has resumed his mobility; the (social) actor who posed and composed himself for the camera now appears in- different to it. Previously photographed in relatively enclosed spaces (patios, archways, a textile factory), Fernandez now strolls down a city street filled with cars and pedestrians. Five jump cuts accelerate his passage. His concluding comments are not sung in sync (impossible from such a distance) but in voice-over. With the final syllable of the final word of the final refrain of "Guantanamera," the frame freezes, allowing the viewer to scan the descending street for a last glimpse of the performer who has immersed himself "in the sea of the people" from which, presumably, he originally emerged. The formal self-consciousness of this remarkable film extends to yet 75 PART IV BEYOND THE DOCUMENTARY/FICTION DICHOTOMY 17. Bay of Pigs: Bertolt Brecht Meets John Wayne 351 John Hess 18. Iracema: Transcending Cinema Verite 361 Ismail Xavier 19. Transitional States: Creative Complicities with the Real in Man Marked to Die: Twenty Years Later and Patriamada 373 Julianne Burton 20. At the Limits of Documentary: Hypertextual Transformation and the New Latin American Cinema 403 Ana M. Lopez Guide to Distributors 435 Index to Films, Videos, Filmmakers, and Video Producers 439 Notes on Contributors Contents vii 453 Julianne Burton another level. I have alluded to literary and musical structuration with reference to a number of the preceding documentaries; here the struc- ture of the film is poetic in a very literal sense. Hablando del punto cubano replicates the structure of the Spanish ddcima that provides the basis for the variants elaborated in the punto cubano tradition. A classic ddcima (a ten-line poem with eight syllables per line) might have the rhyme scheme abba ac cddc. The pie forzado is one of the variants demonstrated most self-reflexively in the film-in a synchronous, on- camera improvisation by one of the performers/informants in response to a question from the filmmakers: Nuestra decima cubana (a) con sus notas harmoniosas (b) ya difunde muchas cosas (b) de nuestra patria cubana. (a) Y es algo que nos engalana (a) en la tipica faceta (c) que en la obra y en la meta (c) levados de la misma af'n (d) hay muchos nifios que estan (d) aprendiendo a ser poeta. (c) Our Cuban ddcima with its harmonious notes conveys many facets of our Cuban homeland. And it adorns us with riches in the graceful cut of each gem because in the quality of their work and their designs motivated by the same desire there are many children who are learning to be poets. Cortazar structures his film like a ddcima, "rhyming" sequences of similar length in varying patterns and rhythms, playing with various combinations of six different types: (a) interviewee/casual witness (so- cial actor as audience surrogate), (b) (meta)participant-narrator (Joseito FernAndez), (c) expert witness, (d) performers performing, (e) perform- ers as informants, and (f) images of (supplementary) illustration: mon- tages of still photos. Following the same scanning procedure as above, the "rhyme structure" of the film begins abc ded abdd. The pattern be- comes less sharply defined in the remainder: dbc fcf dee fece ddf abb, but does return, as the classic ddcima and its variants often do, to a final repetition of the initial rhymes. In its use of content to explain form, and form to explain content, Hablando delpunto cubano achieves a rare harmony. 76 Democratizing Documentary Conclusion: The Social Documentary and the Quest for "National Reality" "The revolutionary function of the social documentary in Latin America," according to Fernando Birri's 1963 assessment, is to present "an image of the people" which rectifies "the false image pre- sented by traditional cinema." This documentary image "offers reality just as it is; it cannot do otherwise. ... Irrefutably, it shows things as they are - not as we might like them to be or as others ... would have us believe they are."20 Birri thus posits a double function for the docu- mentary: to negate false representations of reality, and to present real- ity as it "really" is. This formulation testifies to a naive faith in the direct and incorruptible communicability of a pure and passive truth that merely awaits capture by the right agency. There is a double essen- tialism at work here: an assumption that the essence of the nation can be apprehended with camera and tape recorder, and a related belief that what is seen (and heard) is the essence of what is, and of what is knowable about what is. Inspired by Birri's example and the Italian neorealist cinema that inspired him, or simply motivated by a similar political philosophy, Latin American social documentarists began as self-appointed ethnographers in search of the "true face" of their people, the true custodians of na- tional culture, the true exemplars of national identity. Because they are intimately tied to the conscious and systematic search for Brazilian- ness, Argentine-ness, Latin American-ness, the themes, forms, and tra- jectory of the Latin American social documentary movement cannot be understood independently of the history of the concept of nation- ality in Latin American societies. National boundaries in Latin America are recent and arbitrary, the result of prolonged and traumatic wars for independence from Euro- pean powers that, once won, often required equally brutal and prolonged civil wars to quell lingering internal opposition and to help legitimate the new regimes. The more tenuous the basis of national cohesion, the more urgent an ideological cement to hold together the fragments of the new nation-state. Throughout the nineteenth century, the formula- tion of the national project was the province of the creole oligarchs. This new leadership class, which had expelled the colonialists only to embrace the world's neocolonialists, zealously preserved a self-serving split between rhetorical representations of experience and actual prac- tices. Their ideologues molded their concept of national identity in the European image, viewing all non-European components of national life as unfortunate obstacles to civilization and progress. Such a monolithic class perspective could not survive the growing 77 Julianne Burton self-assertion of the working and peasant classes, or the crisis of eco- nomic and political systems inaugurated in the 1930s. The rise of Marxist-inflected ideologies in Latin America prescribed a dual quest: for a less stratified socioeconomic system, and for authentic, autono- mous, culturally specific forms of expression. The prevailing disparage- ment of non-Western elements as extraneous, impure, and generally detrimental to the national project produced, in reaction, a counter- tendency to hypostatize these same components as no longer the source of but rather the solution to all the problems facing the nation. Politically committed Latin American filmmakers who came of age in the 1950s participated in an essentially manichean view of society: the world at large, and specific countries and regions within it, were clearly divided into the haves and the have-nots. Purity and authen- ticity resided only in the latter. Those social strata and institutions that exhibited Western traits were inherently corrupted by them. Cultural colonization was just as pervasive as colonization of the political and economic varieties, but much more insidious. Therefore, the decoloniza- tion of national culture, the discovery of authentic rather than falsified national reality, required a rejection of the privileged and a concomi- tant privileging of the marginalized. In their search for subjects, these militant filmmakers opted for misery over opulence, rural over urban, primitive over modern, artisanal over industrial, indigenous and/or African-derived over European, pre- literate over literate, and folk over elite. The key to la realidad nacional was thought to reside in a simple inversion: turning the official version of nationhood and national culture on its head in order to reveal what had previously been unseen, unheard, regarded as unseemly. Before Brazilian Paulo Freire developed his "pedagogy of the oppressed" to combat the "culture of silence," social documentarists from through- out Latin America were using the film medium to expose and combat the culture of invisibility and inaudibility. Style became another arena for the expression of the filmmakers' anticolonialist stance. An imper- fect, artisanal, technically limited cinema defiantly turned scarcity it- self into a signifier. The manicheanism apparent in Birri's early formulation of the so- cial documentary project - the emphasis on presentation over represen- tation, as if the former could exist any more independently of the latter in oppositional over traditional filmmaking - was shared by a number of Latin American filmmakers, as was the belief that a camera and a tape recorder were sufficient tools for the apprehension of "national reality." Gradually, social documentarists - and fictional filmmakers as well - began to question these assumptions, demonstrating an increased awareness of the complexity of "national reality" and of the relation- 78 Democratizing Documentary ship between textual and civic politics which led them to a more self- conscious acknowledgment of their own processes of meaning produc- tion. What was originally the equivalent of an ethnographic project - with all the problems and limitations historically inherent in that kind of undertaking - was thus transformed into a kind of auto-ethnography. The ethnographic filmmaker is imperialism's heir, perpetuating a legacy of cultural chauvinism. The ethnographer's culture constitutes the unquestioned norm against which the culture under study is to be assessed. The authority of the ethnographic filmmaker is established by the mere fact of his or her presence within the domain of the Other; possession of the tools of recording is merely a further demonstration of an empowerment that was to begin with beyond question. Observer and observed exist in different worlds. The attempt to capture the world of the "primitive" Other and turn it into a product for consumption by the culturally "normative" assumes a transparency and a privileged ac- cess that are, ultimately, nonexistent. Unless the attempt at cross- cultural representation is reciprocal-unless there is an explicit acknowledgment of the investment of the self in the other and the other in the self, and of the degree to which the act of observation transforms both observer and observed - the result is condemned to being incom- plete, distorted, profoundly and self-defeatingly tendentious.21 Latin American filmmakers may have subscribed to an oversimpli- fied notion of reality, but never to a static one. Their mission to capture la realidad national was part of a larger mission: the transformation of that reality. They were simultaneously creators and transformers, artists and activists, observers and participants, aware of themselves as social actors on the same national-historical stage as their subjects. Their project necessarily exceeded the renovation of film content and film form. Beginning with Birri, they not only undertook to transform the existing structures and relations of film production, but also how films were used in society.22 The most significant, though the least criti- cally accessible, achievement of the New Latin American Cinema is this unremitting transformation of the modes of filmic production, dif- fusion, and reception.23 To trace the history of social documentary production over the fif- teen years surveyed in this chapter is to trace the problematization of a series of concepts that have undergone a metamorphosis from ob- viousness to complexity: realism, objectivity, history, culture, national reality, documentary itself as a form and as a practice. During this period, the re-vision of social stratification (Tire did, Viramundo, Chir- cales), racial and ethnic difference (Now), national institutions (Elec- ciones, Me gustan los estudiantes), past and present history (Historia de una batalla, Revoluci6n, Hombres de Mal Tiempo, Muerte y vida 79 Julianne Burton en El Morillo), and the endangered heterogeneity of folk culture (Ha- blando del punto cubano) has invoked a convergence within an essen- tially expository genre of ethnographic, experimental, and narrative ap- proaches and an increasing tendency toward a politicized self-reflexivity. The attempt to democratize documentary modes of address stands as a prime example of the simultaneous repositioning of the spectator, the social actor, and the filmmaker, while at the same time testifying to the exuberant proliferation of forms, styles, and approaches that char- acterized the entire New Latin American Cinema during those years. Without a more complete account of the way these films were reinserted into the reality they aspired to depict and transform, this survey re- mains fragmentary. Yet this does not diminish the eloquence of the fragments, singly and as a constellation. Such films are the product of a rare conjunction of energies and commitments in which the search for underrepresented aspects and underrealized potentials of national-cultural identity co- incides with the search for underrepresented aspects and underrealized potentials of the self; in which the production and circulation of images ceases to perpetuate expropriation and exploitation in order to func- tion instead as reciprocal revelation and emancipation, as a joint in- vestment in more enhancing forms of social organization and cultural expression. NOTES This article first appeared in "Show Us Life": History and Theory of the Radi- cal Documentary, ed. Thomas Waugh (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984). Reprinted by permission. 1. Fernando Birri's Tire did, begun in 1956 and completed in 1958 (final version, 1960), is generally considered to mark the inception of social documen- tary filmmaking in Latin America. Birri is credited with catalyzing a movement that achieved a certain coherence - often more circumstantial than deliberate - despite formidable geographical, political, and economic obstacles that impeded communication and contact between filmmakers. Other important films from the early period that will not be discussed in this chapter because I have not been able to see them are: Margot Benacerraf's Araya (Venezuela, 1958), Al- berto Miller's Cantegriles (Uruguay, 1958), Linduarte Noronha's Aruanda (Bra- zil, 1959), Ugo Ulive's Como el Uruguay no hay (There's No Place Like Uruguay, 1960), and Sergio Bravo's La marcha al carbdn (The Coal March, Chile, 1960). 2. In his influential essay, "For an Imperfect Cinema," Julio Garcia Es- pinosa distinguishes between "analysis" and "process." The former, he argues, is the result of prior operations that are not visible on the screen; the latter - more a joint exploration than a foregone conclusion - performs its operations 80 Democratizing Documentary in conjunction with the spectator. See my translation of this essay in Twenty Years of the New Latin American Cinema, ed. Michael Chanan (London: British Film Institute and Channel Four Television, 1983), pp. 28-33. 3. Bill Nichols, "The Documentary Film and Principles of Exposition," Ideology and the Image (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 170-207; Annette Kuhn, "The Camera I: Observations on Documentary," Screen 19 (1978-79), 71-83; Jeffrey Youdelman, "Narration, Invention, & History: A Documentary Dilemma," Cineaste 12, no. 2 (1982), 8-15. 4. The original paradigm, found in Nichols, "The Documentary Film," p. 183, is as follows: Sync Nonsync DIRECT ADDRESS (Expository cinema) Narrators Characters INDIRECT ADDRESS (Observational cinema) Narrators Characters EXPANDED PARADIGM DIRECT ADDRESS (Expository cinema) Narrators Filmmaker Character voice of authority interview cinema verite (voice and image of social actors) voice of authority voice of filmmaker image of filmmaker integral interview (filmmaker/narrator and character on screen) voice of God images of illustration voice of witness images of illustration voice of social actors images of illustration voice of God images of illustration voice of filmmaker images of illustration voice of conversant(s) images of illustration or observation off-screen interview (filmmaker/narrator off-screen; character on screen). Variations: filmmaker/ narrator occupies continuous space, or non- contiguous space of the same diagetic order; or is represented non-spatially, through graphics 81 Julianne Burton Sync Nonsync pseudo-monologue voice of character (image of character; images of illustration or visual and aural absence observation of filmmaker/narrator) INDIRECT ADDRESS (Observational cinema) Narrators Filmmaker participant-conversation voice of conversants (implicit or explicit images of conversants metacommunication) (observation) or illus- tration Characters cinema verite or direct voice of social actor cinema 5. Story of a Battle (40 minutes), Cicldn (25 minutes), and Now (5 minutes) are available from San Francisco Newsreel, 630 Natoma St., San Francisco, CA 94103. Memories of the CangaVo (25 minutes) is distributed by New Yorker Films, 16 West 61 St., New York, NY 10023. For the First Time (12 minutes) and Brickmakers (41 minutes) may be obtained from Cinema Guild, 1697 Broadway, Suite 802, New York, NY 10019. Finally, Tire did, Revolucidn, Viramundo, Carlos, Elecciones, and Me gustan los estudiantes, Hombres de Mal Tiempo, Muerte y vida en El Morillo, and Hablando del punto cubano are not currently in U.S. distribution. 6. See Fernando Birri, La Escuela Documental de Santa Fe (Santa Fe, Ar- gentina: Universidad Nacional de Litoral, Cuadernos de Cine, 1964), for a full ac- count of the film and the process of its production, including portions of the script. 7. Part I of Fernando Solanas's and Octavio Getino's three-part documen- tary The Hour of the Furnaces "quotes" one of these sequences from Tire die. 8. This and other direct quotes from my interview with the filmmaker are taken from Fernando Birri e la Escuela Documental de Santa Fe, ed. Lino Micchiche (Pesaro: XVII Mostra, June 1981). A somewhat abbreviated ver- sion appears in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 1-12. 9. Disappointed by the dearth of archival footage on the literacy campaign, which he considered the most significant event of 1961, G6mez decided to take advantage of the imminent return of the literacy brigades from their months in the countryside: I decided that this homecoming would provide the overriding structure of the film, the framing for the archival footage. The day arrived and I went with my crew to the train station to begin 82 Democratizing Documentary shooting. Thousands of parents and children were being reunited. ... It was incredibly moving. There was such a wealth of material that we couldn't possibly record it all, and many good scenes were being lost. I decided that it was necessary to lend a guiding hand to all this spontaneity. I begin following those arriving volunteers whose families were unable to meet them at the station. We would offer them a ride home.... Since I knew that to drive up to their house in an official Film Institute car would certainly break the mood, I'd stop about a block away and ask them if they didn't mind walking the remaining distance. They were much too excited to wonder at this strange request. We then followed them on foot, which is how we were able to capture those tearful and joy- ous homecomings.... Making Story of a Battle taught me that preparation can enhance spontaneity instead of negating it. Above all, it gave me a perspective on the expressive potential of the documentary mode. I learned how a film- maker could confront an actual situation and - without either violating it or totally subordinating himself to it -interact with existing circum- stances to the best advantage of his own creative purpose. (Julianne Burton, "Popular Culture and Perpetual Quest: An Interview with Manuel Octavio G6mez, Jump/Cut: A Review of Contemporary Cinema 20 [May 1979], 19.) 10. I am indebted to Alfonso Gumucio Dagr6n's description of Revoluci6n in his Historia del cine boliviano (Mexico City: UNAM, 1983), pp. 203-04. 11. O homen de couro (Man of Leather, 1969, available from Cinema Guild) - a slightly later example of the Farkas group's work in the Brazilian Northeast - offers an even more systematic catalogue of modes of address. The opening minutes constitute a survey of possible voices and attitudes. The voice-over narrator exercises a dual function here: as voice of God and as surrogate for the mythic voice of the social actors. When he recites folk songs and tales, it is without "marking" the different source and nature of his words through changes in tone or rhythm or intonation. Though not distinct enough to merit separate treatment, this film is also notable for its use of synchronous self- presentation of its social actors, particularly the "unreliable" self-representation of the cowboy's wife. Her obvious discomfort at finding herself in front of a camera, coupled with the rote, almost singsong quality of her recitation, sug- gest to the viewers that her actual attitudes are quite the opposite of those she espouses before the camera. 12. Jose Carlos Avellar notes this historical dichotomy without using these particular terms in his essay on Brazilian documentary in Brazilian Cinema, ed. Randal Johnson and Robert Stam (New Brunswick, N.J.: Associated Uni- versity Presses, 1982), p. 331. 13. Ibid., p. 329. 14. Ibid., pp. 331-32. 15. This and subsequent quotations are taken from my interview with the filmmaker in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America, pp. 13-23. 83 Julianne Burton 16. The full text of Carlos's narration appeared in late 1965 in an issue of the Uruguayan weekly Marcha under the title "Habla el propio Carlos." 17. See my interview for Handler's description of the genesis, mode of pro- duction, and reception of the film. 18. See Julianne Burton, 'Theory and Practice of Film and Popular Culture in Cuba: A Conversation with Julio Garcia Espinosa," in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America, pp. 243-57. 19. See my version of Andres Caicedo's and Luis Ospina's interview with Silva and Rodriguez in ibid., pp. 25-34. 20. Birri, La Escuela Documental de Santa Fe, p. 13. 21. For a particularly compelling account of a field experience that forced one group of filmmakers to come to terms with their own unconscious com- plicity in imposing exploitative, Westernized expectations on indigenous peoples, see Jorge Sanjinez's "Cine revolucionario: La experiencia boliviana," Cine cubano, nos. 76-77 (1972), 1-15. An abbreviated English version appears in Cinema and Social Change in Latin America, pp. 35-48. 22. The students at the Escuela Documental distributed Tire did through- out the province with a primitive "mobile cinema" that consisted of a truck and a projector. This first sustained experiment in establishing "parallel" structures of distribution and exhibition anticipated the much more ambitious mobile cinema project instituted by the Cubans and demonstrated in Cortazar's Por primera vez. This is but a single example of numerous strategies used by Latin American filmmakers to democratize modes of diffusion and reception. 23. See Julianne Burton, "Film Artisans and Film Industries in Latin America, 1956-1980: Theoretical and Critical Implications of Variations in Modes of Filmic Production and Consumption," Latin American Program Work- ing Paper no. 102 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, October 1981). 84 PART II Wide Angles