FILMER OBSTINÉMENT, RENCONTRE AVEC PATRICIO GUZMAN

It starts with a young man, a long time ago —as the image quality attests— publicly reading a text referring to the death of Salvador Allende in an emotional voice. We then see the same man today, camera in hand, filming a close-up of a map of Chile. Going from one time period to the other, with no continuity solution, is the project of this “encounter”, a film portrait of the filmmaker directed by Boris Nicot. Patricio Guzman’s life has been marked, and even shaped, by the history of Chile, and making film a way of understanding (and a receptacle of) that past is his commitment in the present. Such are the interrelated threads of this film, from his life caught up in the tide of History to his films, and back. In his workshop, at the editing table, amongst his archives and location photos for his work in progress (“The Pearl Button”), he discusses his films, explaining points of view and shooting contexts. This is the life of a man for whom “the past hasn’t died, it resonates and reappears depending on the meanders of my own life”, as he himself puts it. It is the life of a filmmaker working in the fairest possible way to understand and overcome the shock of the 1973 coup, an event he still perceives, here in France, as if it had occurred only three months ago. It is a film in the form of an admiration exercise, serving his generous, precise words, accompanied by the discreet and attentive presence of Boris Nicot, his first listener and relay.