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I just ran across this trilogy of films while attempting to search for Cuban films. IMDB offers nothing but dates. This Website offers an interesting account (though it says that the film is broken down into two parts, IMDB lists three). The film is obviously prohibitively priced ($490!!!) but I have read somewhere that it has been released in Brazil, can anyone confirm that? It sounds like a marvellous documentary (though equally as elusive as The Hour of the Furnaces probably). Can anyone share their thoughts if they have seen it?

"The Battle of Chile," at least part 1, is far more ubiquitous than "Hour of the Furnaces." At least it's easily available in many university libraries and is well-known among activist groups (I think) and I believe the Film Forum in NYC recently screened all the films in the series. There are three parts, although in 1997 the director Patricio Guzman made an epilogue of sorts with "Chile, Obstinate Memory." I have seen the first film twice. It is without a doubt the single most depressing film I have ever seen. If it were ever on TV I would tape it but I don't think I could bear to watch it again. Film begins with election results as the anti-Allende elite surprisingly meet with defeat. The film then follows striking workers, Allende's speeches, angry confrontations and attempts by anti-Allende fascists and business men to topple the government, ending with the attack on La Moneda palace. While each side is allowed their say the narrative voice-over is deeply supportive of Allende and his "revolution." To its credit the film depicts the deep disagreements between many of the militant organized workers and Allende, yet offers no analysis of Allende's betrayal of the workers. Allende refused to allow the workers to arm themselves and fought against their attempts to take over their workplaces and usher in socialism. Instead of a revolutionary civil war Allende's social democratic vision led to the massacre and torture of the workers and the vistory of a brutal fascist government. The film's narration in no way questions the commonplace view of Allende as a leftist martyr and he certainly was that, but to paint him only as a saint simply leaves the viewer unarmed and unprepared for future struggles. That said, it is an excellent film and I would love to see part 2 & 3. It is a brutal experience, though. "Obstinate Memory" is an interesting film but more of "where-are-they-now" film than a continuation of the earlier trilogy.

I consider The Battle of Chile to be the most impressive and moving documentary I've ever seen. Opportunities to view the film are limited and I had to wait 20 years for the chance to finally see it.

The film is available on DVD, but alas only with French subtitles.

Hour of the Furnances is likewise available, but only with French subtitles. Exactly where it can be obtained slips my mind at the moment.

is there any new information on this? I would love to see this. I live in NYC. The New York public library just has the film reels and I don't have a projector. I have yet to see if Columbia has a copy, so I apologize if that ends up answering my own question. Any other source? Is it going to be playing anytime soon?

Why is this so difficult to find? Will no distributor pick it up, or is it something more like government interference?

thanks

aox, you should definitely be able to get the VHS tapes in New York. Try searching using the Spanish title (La Batalla de Chile). There are quite a few libraries that have it on tape under one title or the other so if need be you can try to get it through ILL.

As for why it isn't easier to get, this is just how things are with many films like this one. Things from First Run/Icarus are usually priced for institutions. Anyone reading this should take a moment to send an email to First Run Features, which releases things for the home video market, to request that they release the film on DVD so that it'll be affordable for individuals.

I also want to write a brief and belated response to Orphic Lycidas's post from last year.
I had a similar reaction to the film in some ways but disagree with a couple of specific things here. I don't believe that Allende betrayed the workers by preventing them from taking up arms. He was certainly a believer in peaceful political change rather than the more unwieldy path of outright revolution, but increasingly as tensions built up he saw the need for arms to protect what had been achieved. The reason the workers were unarmed was because of a shortage of weapons in the hands of those loyal to Chilean democracy. By the time the writing was on the wall, it was too late to correct this imbalance. While it is true that there remained divisions between different socialist factions, these did not ultimately lead to the coup. The much deeper and more violent rift was between the Chilean elite and its supporters in the military on the one hand, and the Allende government and the supporters of the democratic revolution on the other. The lack of unity among the Chilean left might have had some impact on events, but it's important not to overestimate it. By the time the wheels of the coup were in motion, the only real hope for it to have failed would have been a split in the military after Allende was killed, which didn't happen.
Secondly, I respectfully disagree that "Chile, Obstinate Memory" is basically just a where-are-they-now film. I found that it deals pretty directly with a broader subject of historical memory, and while several of the old-timers are interviewed, it also shows how seeing the film for the first time, young Chileans are devastated by its immediacy and by exposure to a perspective on the events that was suppressed during Pinochet's rule and even afterwards. They then are able to debate not only the historical events but how they have lived on in the country's contemporary political landscape.
I found it to be a very, very moving, and while it sort of about La Batalla de Chile, it is about much more than that and is an excellent film in its own right. I would recommend Chile Obstinate Memory even to those who have not yet seen the big magnum opus, if you can get it through your library. It has the advantage on only being an hour in length, so it's much easier to get through than the earlier film.

Gregory wrote:aox, you should definitely be able to get the VHS tapes in New York. Try searching using the Spanish title (La Batalla de Chile.

My only concern is that these tapes wouldn't have english subtitles.

Another question for those that have seen these: Does it ever go into the American involvement and support for the fascists? or is this strictly rooted in the indigenous locality?

Normally, I would never ask such a question and just watch the film, but this one is hard to find.

I'm in WorldCat and it says the NY Public Library has the tapes under the title La Batalla de Chile, and that these are published by First Run/Icarus from 1993, which I'm almost positive were subtitled.

The FRIF tapes definitely have subs. A lot of university libraries stock these, if people are looking for them.

Gregory wrote:I also want to write a brief and belated response to Orphic Lycidas's post from last year.
I had a similar reaction to the film in some ways but disagree with a couple of specific things here. I don't believe that Allende betrayed the workers by preventing them from taking up arms. He was certainly a believer in peaceful political change rather than the more unwieldy path of outright revolution, but increasingly as tensions built up he saw the need for arms to protect what had been achieved. The reason the workers were unarmed was because of a shortage of weapons in the hands of those loyal to Chilean democracy. By the time the writing was on the wall, it was too late to correct this imbalance. While it is true that there remained divisions between different socialist factions, these did not ultimately lead to the coup. The much deeper and more violent rift was between the Chilean elite and its supporters in the military on the one hand, and the Allende government and the supporters of the democratic revolution on the other. The lack of unity among the Chilean left might have had some impact on events, but it's important not to overestimate it. By the time the wheels of the coup were in motion, the only real hope for it to have failed would have been a split in the military after Allende was killed, which didn't happen.

It's true that Allende's Popular Front believed in a “peaceful, parliamentary road to socialism” in which the bourgeois state could be wielded in the interests of the workers and peasants. That sounds very nice and all but it requires one to believe that a state dominated by domestic and foreign capital and a US trained military could be democratically responsive. This philosophy required a confrontation with the militantly organized working class that had put Allende in power. During the bosses' strike and the economic sabotage the workers established industrial committees, Supply and Price Committees, self-defense groups, etc. Allende gave the go-ahead to police and military disruption of these initiatives, including the right to to search factories. To quote Allende in September 1972 - a whole year before the coup: “There will be no armed forces here other than those stipulated in the constitution. That is to say, the army, the navy and the air force. I shall eliminate any others if they appear.” He also fired his Interior Minister for permitting worker occupations. Given the choice between appeasing the right and proceeding towards socialism he chose to appease the right (this was the typical Stalinist line at the time). All this while landlords were forming fascist paramilitary groups like Patria y Libertad.

The first failed coup against Allende took place in June '73. It's covered at the end of the first film, if I remember correctly. Allende and his Stalinist allies responded by reactivating the October '72 arms control law. The rest, as they say, is history. Allende committed suicide, the fascists took over, murdered thousands, tortured countless more, a million refugees left the country, the US sent in the Chicago boys who completely destroyed the economy and then organized an international terrorism network run from Chile. There was nothing inevitable about the coup. The choice presented was between revolutionary civil war and the massacre of the workers. Allende's liberal/Stalinist ideology was strongly opposed to working class independence. By betrayal I don't suggest opportunism or conscious dishonesty, only ideological blindness and extraordinary ignorance. He effectively disarmed the workers - he was the reason there was a 'shortage of weapons in the hands of those loyal to Chilean democracy' - and the results were pretty horrific for all of Latin America.

aox wrote:Another question for those that have seen these: Does it ever go into the American involvement and support for the fascists? or is this strictly rooted in the indigenous locality?

It's been such a long time since I've seen this film but I think it is mostly deals with what was going on directly on the ground in Chile. I don't know how much was known at the time about US support for the coup. We still don't quite know for sure whether Nixon had a part in organizing it although he certainly played a part in destabilizing the country before hand and embracing Pinochet after the fact.

Some of Allende’s decisions should be seen in the context of severe political crisis -- trying to uphold the law to a degree necessary to continuing the experiment -- rather than as reflections of his political vision. It is difficult to see how anything he did could have saved the government when he was conspired against by a powerful domestic elite, the military, ITT, the CIA, the World Bank, the U.S. State Department, etc. In the presence of all these powerful forces lined up against the reforms, it is naïve to think that any victory for the left could have come from accelerating toward an uncontrollable revolutionary situation, as many within the Marxist parties were doing. In light of the fact that the military and police took power so easily and deployed such a massive scale of violence after the coup, it is pretty hard to see any hope that workers could organize themselves into fighting units great enough to have the slightest chance of defeating the state’s formidable forces. They would have been massacred in very short order. And if you think Allende stood in the way of this because he wanted to keep workers weak then there’s probably little point in continuing the discussion.

It seems like you’re using facts selectively in your statements about how workers were disarmed. The re-implementation of the 1972 gun control law had little to do with Stalinism or some agenda that came from Allende; it had to do with the role of the military in the cabinet that was part of an attempt to prevent a successful coup by making some concessions to the opposition. After the failed coup you mention, commanders of the armed forces occupied ministries and sent detachments to disarm workers. It was hardly as if Allende himself disarmed workers because he personally feared their power. He clearly did not have full control over the government, especially by this time.

Both from the standpoint of general political strategy and ideology, I simply can’t understand the argument that Allende should have aligned himself with the MIR except on purely ideological grounds that ignore Chile’s political realities and how precarious his position was from day one. His coalition didn’t have a majority in the chamber of deputies or the senate, so he couldn’t have even taken office let alone survive long enough to implement any of his party’s revolutionary aims had he done anything carefully build and maintain alliances.
It was not just this militant sector of the working class that put Allende in power, as you claim. I mean, Unidad Popular was a broad coalition, after all, and he had to navigate a complex web of domestic political loyalties and powers. For Allende to align himself more exclusively with the farthest-left portion of his entire political base, would have been undemocratic and foolish (alienating so much of his support would have been political suicide).
You offer a few facts that pit him against the workers who occupied the factories, but this is not a very complete or accurate picture. Allende called for them to occupy the factories, businesses, and farms in the first place. What he then opposed was the refusal to return the factories to private ownership – Allende took a somewhat careful and gradualist approach to such seizures, and when you look at how powerful the right was, it’s really not hard to understand why.

It seems to me you’re using hindsight to look at what happened (the coup and subsequent violence) and then concocting some totally implausible scenario of something that you say could have prevented it (“revolutionary civil war”), and you’re offering these as the only two possible historical outcomes. I think you’re also projecting the climate of violence and chaos back into a earlier time period when the “climate of violence” was not perceived as the foremost political concern in Chile – an earlier time when it would have been necessary to somehow perceive that it was hopeless to work toward strengthening military loyalty and that it was somehow necessary to obtain massive amounts of weapons in preparation for a violent confrontation that would have thrown out all the political gains of the first year and that only a minority favored.

Icarus releases Battle of Chile in November:

FIRST RELEASE ON DVD!
PATRICIO GUZMÁN’S THE BATTLE OF CHILE
(Street Date: November 17, 2009 / Pre-Book Date: October 13, 2009)
THE BATTLE OF CHILE is one of the classics of Latin American cinema, an epic documentary that chronicles Chile’s peaceful socialist revolution, led by Salvador Allende, and the violent counterrevolution and military coup against it, led by Augusto Pinochet. The film was hailed on its original release by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker as “Spectacular… A major film” and described by Judy Stone in The San Francisco Chronicle as “A landmark in the presentation of a living history on film.”
The three-part film will be released on a special edition three-disc DVD, including Part I: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (96 mins.), Part II; The Coup d’Etat (88 mins.) and Part III: The Power of the People (78 mins.).

THE BATTLE OF CHILE
(Parts I, II and III) (on 3 discs)
A film by Patricio Guzmán, in coproduction with the Instituto Cubano del Arte y Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC) and Chris Marker
B&W, 262 mins., 1976-78, Chile-Cuba-France
Spanish with optional English subtitles
Bonus Features
Booklet
UPC # 8-54565-00119-0
SRP: $39.98
Pre-Book Date: October 13, 2009
Street Date: November 17, 2009

I was very excited to learn of the impending release of The Battle of Chile until I went to the Icarus website and found out what the price will be. The previous posting shows a SRP of $39.98. I can't find anywhere on the internet where that price is listed. But on the Icarus website, there is the following information:

The Batttle of Chile, Parts 1 & 2: Sale: $490
The Battle of Chile, Part 3: Sale: $285

The DVD of Chile, Obstinate Memory, is available now, for a cool $390.

As posted above, the SRP will be $39.98.

Quite a steal at that, too. I wonder if Chile, Obstinate Memory will also be released at an affordable price.

I think the Battle of Chile is an absolutely first-rate documentary film. It has lost none of its urgency and meaning over the years, and the truths contained right under its surface are something that the whole of humanity needs to take in. However, I showed the third part in a university class on film and history, and the majority disliked it. It was too slow-paced, repetitive, and was sorely in need of "plot" and "characters," apparently. Some criticized the film for being "biased" because not enough opponents of Allende were interviewed. Never mind that it wasn't supposed to be an overview of all political opinions but rather an account of how workers and farmers in particular reacted to a crisis intentionally instigated by the opposition. It's frustrating that no matter how decisively the myth of historical "objectivity" is challenged in debates about the humanities, we apparently continue to drum into people's heads in primary and secondary education that neutrality is something to demand of any given book or film.

Fiery Angel wrote:Icarus releases Battle of Chile in November:

FIRST RELEASE ON DVD!
PATRICIO GUZMÁN’S THE BATTLE OF CHILE
(Street Date: November 17, 2009 / Pre-Book Date: October 13, 2009)
THE BATTLE OF CHILE is one of the classics of Latin American cinema, an epic documentary that chronicles Chile’s peaceful socialist revolution, led by Salvador Allende, and the violent counterrevolution and military coup against it, led by Augusto Pinochet. The film was hailed on its original release by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker as “Spectacular… A major film” and described by Judy Stone in The San Francisco Chronicle as “A landmark in the presentation of a living history on film.”
The three-part film will be released on a special edition three-disc DVD, including Part I: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (96 mins.), Part II; The Coup d’Etat (88 mins.) and Part III: The Power of the People (78 mins.).

THE BATTLE OF CHILE
(Parts I, II and III) (on 3 discs)
A film by Patricio Guzmán, in coproduction with the Instituto Cubano del Arte y Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC) and Chris Marker
B&W, 262 mins., 1976-78, Chile-Cuba-France
Spanish with optional English subtitles
Bonus Features
Booklet
UPC # 8-54565-00119-0
SRP: $39.98
Pre-Book Date: October 13, 2009
Street Date: November 17, 2009

This is one I've been waiting years to see since my only viewing, on tv, probably over a quarter of a century ago, now.
On the same subject, the BBC did a marvellous documentary series on the fall of Yugoslavia, in the early 90's, which I'm hoping will also have an imminent DVD release.

Weird. Netflix took this off my queue this morning saying it is no longer being released in November and has been bumped to December. Amazon is still listing November 17th.

gelich wrote:I was very excited to learn of the impending release of The Battle of Chile until I went to the Icarus website and found out what the price will be. The previous posting shows a SRP of $39.98. I can't find anywhere on the internet where that price is listed. But on the Icarus website, there is the following information:

The Batttle of Chile, Parts 1 & 2: Sale: $490
The Battle of Chile, Part 3: Sale: $285

The DVD of Chile, Obstinate Memory, is available now, for a cool $390.

That's the old version with the institutional prices.

aox wrote:Weird. Netflix took this off my queue this morning saying it is no longer being released in November and has been bumped to December. Amazon is still listing November 17th.

Amazon is now on December 8th.

Battle of Chile has been confirmed with a December 8, 2009 street date. The 4 disc DVD set will contain parts 1, 2 and 3 of the documentary (each on a separate disc), in addition to a 4th bonus disc containing another documentary about Chile that director Patricio Guzman released in 1997. The set features an improved English subtitle translation, along with a newly recorded audio commentary by the director. MSRP is $44.98.

One of the must-owns of the year, as far as I'm concerned!

Here's the press kit on the DVD release courtesy of Icarus Films:

http://homevideo.icarusfilms.com/press/pdfs/boc_pk.pdf

Wittsdream wrote:...in addition to a 4th bonus disc containing another documentary about Chile that director Patricio Guzman released in 1997.

It's called "Chile, Obstinate Memory," and it's a beautiful follow-up (my first post above has more comments).

You can have it for less than 26$ from here
People from the UK can easily buy it from Amazon marketplace at a similar price a couple of weeks after it's been released, but if you want it now, this is your best chance. Also, notice that sometimes DVDPacific ships pre-orders earlier than other retailers.

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:

perkizitore wrote:You can have it for less than 26$ from here.

That's the member's only price, though.

Member's price means having an account to the shop, it doesn't work like B&N where you have to pay for membership.

That's good news. Thanks for the clarification. Sweet deal indeed!

Do they charge right away?

Dadapass wrote:Do they charge right away?

Not before actual shipping.