IU Fine Arts Theater (upstairs), 1201 East 7th Street, on the north side of Showalter Fountain, next to the IU Auditorium
In October 2019, there was an unexpected revolution, a social explosion. One and a half million people demonstrated in the streets of Santiago for more democracy, a more dignified life, a better education, a better health system and a new Constitution. Chile had recovered its memory. The event that activist-filmmaker Patricio Guzmán had been waiting for since his student struggles in 1973 had finally materialized.
After decades in which Guzmán saw Chile turn into a sort of “huge mall with windows that didn’t show what was going on behind them,” society at large woke up to see their young turning the streets into battlefields, and the state using disproportionate force against them.
Guzmán was there when the coup against Salvador Allende took place in 1973 — his epic film depicting those events, The Battle of Chile, remains one of the most widely praised documentary films of all time, and was named “one of the 10 best political documentary films in the world” by Cineaste. My Imaginary Country offers filmgoers one of this year’s most keen and perceptive accounts of transformative events and social change happening right before our eyes. As Elisa Loncón, a Mapuche woman who presided over the Constitutional Convention states powerfully: “Marichiweu! The people won’t be defeated!”
WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
