Cinema of Chile
Chilean cinema refers to all films produced in Chile or made by Chileans. It had its origins at the start of the 20th century with the first Chilean film screening in 1902 and the first Chilean feature film appearing in 1910. The oldest surviving feature is El Húsar de la Muerte, and the last silent film was Patrullas de Avanzada. The Chilean film industry struggled in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, despite some box-office successes such as El Diamante de Maharajá. The 1960s saw the development of the "New Chilean Cinema", with films like Three Sad Tigers, Jackal of Nahueltoro and Valparaíso mi amor. After the 1973 military coup, film production was low, with many filmmakers working in exile. It increased after the end of the Pinochet regime in 1989, with occasional critical and/or popular successes such as Johnny cien pesos, Historias de Fútbol and Gringuito.
Greater box office success came in the late 1990s and early 2000s with films like El Chacotero Sentimental: la película, Sexo con Amor, Sub Terra, and Machuca all of which were surpassed by Stefan v/s Kramer and Sin filtro.
In recent years, Chilean films have made increasingly regular appearances at international film festivals, with No becoming the first Chilean film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and A Fantastic Woman the first to win it.
History
Origins
On 17 February 1895 entrepreneur Francisco de Paula Casajuana Granada presented the first Kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device, in Santiago. Next year, on 25 August 1896, the first Cinématographe reels were shown to an astounded audience in Santiago. These were the same movies that only eight months earlier, the Lumiere Brothers had shown in Paris.In the north of Chile, the Potassium nitrate mining industry created enough wealth to allow cities like Antofagasta and Iquique some privileges rare in other parts of the country.
In Iquique, photographer Luis Oddó Osorio was enthralled by this new technology and started to create his own short films. On 20 May 1897, he screened the short documentary "Una cueca en Cavancha" in the Great Philharmonic Hall on Tarapaca Street. Osorio followed his first short with "El desfile en honor del Brasil", "La llegada de un tren de pasajeros a la estación de Iquique", "Bomba Tarapacá Nº7" and "Grupo de gananciosos en la partida de football".
In 1897, some circuses began to screen movies, which attracted great interest at first but soon trailed off due to the lack of new material. In the same year in Santiago, two new movie venues opened which both featured Edison's Vitascope, less popular than the Cinématographe. In June that year, the Bioscop was also launched as another alternative to the cinematographe, although it eventually failed. By the end of the year, all these new places would be closed.
In 1900, the Apollo Theatre in Santiago exhibited the film "Carreras en Viña", and some other foreign films. The exact date that the films screened and further details of this event remain unknown.
In the port city of Valparaíso, the first film ever fully produced in Chile was launched at the Teatro ODEON on 26 May 1902. The film, Ejercicio General del Cuerpo de Bomberos, filmed on 20 May the same year, was only three minutes long and showed the annual public show performed by the Valparaíso Fire Department in the city's Aníbal Pinto square. Nothing is known of the film's director, cinematographer or production team, and only 27 seconds of footage remain today, held by the Catholic University of Valparaíso.
In 1903, "Un paseo por playa ancha" was filmed in Valparaiso by Maurice Albert Massonnier. The film is split into three parts. First, a huaso charges into the scene, causing some commotion among the people around, and dances the traditional Chilean cueca accompanied by musicians. This is followed by a scene where the characters eat a Chilean Cazuela. Finally, in the last scene, a fight breaks but is quickly controlled by a guard. Maurice Albert Massonnier was sent to Chile by the Lumiere Brothers' company, one of many sent around the world to document and produce films for them. After screening his film in Chile, Massonnier sent the film to Paris, where several copies were made. One of those copies was found in 1994 by Chilean film restorer Daniel Sandoval in an archive on Bois-d'Arcy. "Un paseo por playa ancha" is now the oldest surviving Chilean movie. Massonier ended up settling in Chile and made his own production company, "Empresa Massonnier y Ca".
The silent era
Film production boomed in Chile in the silent era, with 78 films released between 1910 and 1931. The first full-length film, Manuel Rodríguez, was released in 1910. Directed by Adolfo Urzúa, and starring Nicanor de la Sotta, it told the story of Manuel Rodríguez Erdoíza, who fought for Chile's independence from Spain until his death in 1818.Among the many Chilean directors who took up the art in this period – Salvatore Giambastini, Juan Pérez Berrocal, Jorge "Coke" Délano, Nicanor de la Sotta, Carlos Borcosque and Alberto Santana – one name in particular stands out for film historians: Pedro Sienna, a former stage actor who went on to direct and act in some of the best films of the age.
It was Sienna who wrote, directed and starred in the first Chilean feature-length film that has survived to this day, El Húsar de la Muerte.
Premiered in Santiago on 24 November 1925, El Húsar de la Muerte – like Adolfo Urzúa's eponymous Manuel Rodríguez – tells the story of Manuel Rodríguez Erdoíza. The film was restored in 1962 by the University of Chile's film archive, with a musical soundtrack by well-known Chilean composer and pianist Sergio Ortega. El Húsar de la Muerte was shown in the Treasures from the Archives category of the 2005 London Film Festival. Critic Carolina Robino described El Húsar de la Muerte in BBC Mundo as "an extremely refined film for its era. The visual imagery has an extraordinary richness. Sienna plays masterfully with the time-shifts, with the subjective view of the characters and with their thoughts. Without words, it tells an epic story with exquisite touches of humor and provides an accurate description of Chilean colonial society."
The last silent movie produced in Chile was Patrullas de Avanzada, directed by Eric Page and released in 1931.
1940s and 1960s
In 1942, the Chilean Production Development Corporation created the Chile Films project, which provided filmmakers with technical resources and supported the Chilean film industry. One of the films supported by the CORFO is the film animated titled 15 mil dibujos. Despite this, the industry began to struggle in the late 1940s with some studios experiencing financial difficulties. Large sums of money were spent on cinematic "super-productions" to attract foreign directors, but most failed to make a profit. One film which did buck the trend, however, was adventure-comedy El Diamante de Maharajá, starring comedian Lucho Córdoba, which was a box-office hit.The low-output trend continued into the 1950s, with only 13 films released in Chile over the course of the decade. Towards the end of the 1950s, however, two films appeared which gave a taste of the new wave of socially conscious cinema that would sweep Chile in the 1960s: Naum Kramarenko's Tres miradas a la calle and Deja que los perros ladren.
The "New Chilean Cinema", 1960s-1989
In the 1960s, a vibrant national film culture developed which came to be known as the "New Chilean Cinema". An experimental film department was founded at the University of Chile, along with a Film Institute at the Catholic University of Chile. The industry also received support from the revitalised Chile Films project which had begun in the 1940s, and saw an increasing demand for as more filmmakers sought to capture the country’s evolving social landscape. During this period, young directors such as Raúl Ruiz, Patricio Guzmán, Aldo Francia, Helvio Soto and Miguel Littín emerged, along with a new genre inspired by social and political currents on the 1960s, the documentary.The first ever "Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano" took place in Viña del Mar in 1967. Shortly afterwards some of the most important films from the New Chilean Cinema period were released: veteran Patricio Kaulen's Largo viaje, Raúl Ruiz's Three Sad Tigers, Miguel Littín's Jackal of Nahueltoro, Aldo Francia's Valparaíso mi amor and Helvio Soto's Caliche sangriento.
Politics was a key theme for Chilean cinema in the 1960s and beyond, as it was for similar movements in other South American countries and for Chilean movements in other fields of the arts, such as the Nueva Canción Chilena. "This left-wing Chilean filmmakers' movement cannot be understood without connecting it to the emerging social and political identity of the American continent", states the Chilean cultural website Memoria Chilena.
The 1973 military coup drove many filmmakers abroad, where they continued to make films reflecting on and criticising the Chilean military government under Augusto Pinochet. Memoria Chilena says: "The premises of the Nuevo Cine did not die with the massive exile of filmmakers. Instead they were reinterpreted in the cinema of exile as protest against the repression under the military regime or expressing nostalgia for the shattered revolution." Some of the best known include The Promised Land, Il pleut sur Santiago, Dialogues of Exiles, Actas de Marusia, Cantata de Chile, Noch nad Chili, The Battle of Chile, Marilú Mallet's Journal inachevé, Angelina Vásquez's Presencia lejana and Acta General de Chile.