Chile – long and narrow – over 4,300 km long but surprisingly slender with its widest point only about 350 km. Chile shares borders with Argentina, Bolivia and Peru and is in possession of the mystical Island Rapa Nui, along with the driest desert in the world, Atacama of million stars. Squeezed between the majestic Andes and the Pacific ocean, it is still not known where this land of a thousand landscapes got its name. It could have been either the Aimara word chili meaning ‘where the land ends’, the Mapuche word chilli meaning the same thing (‘where the land ends’) or a Mapuche word meaning sea gulls. Other theories say that it comes from a Quechua word chiri meaning ‘cold’, or another Quechua word tchili meaning ‘snow’ or ‘ the deepest point of the Earth’. There are other hypotheses as well regarding the name of this Southernmost land with a long history,with its ups and downs.
But first, as always. Food.
The friendly Paula in Fairfield
There are two cafes in Sydney that offer Chilean food; la Paula, also called Paula Continental Cakes in far-western Sydney, Fairfield and Pochota in Mascot, close to the airport. One warm summer Saturday when five of us had an activity planned in Western Sydney, we decided to stop in Fairfield and check out the offerings of la Paula– which turned out to be a really good decision. The food is simple but delicious, and the service is wonderful. It truly is a gem. L (17) and A (11) get to practice their Spanish successfully and we go home with Chilean treats to share with some other Virtual Nomads.
If you walk past it, it is easy to nearly miss it. From the outside, the shopfront looks like an eatery in an industrial area, but when you walk in, you are instantly welcomed by its friendly and bustling atmosphere with Chilean flags and products, and staff, some of whom only speak a few words of English. We learn that it is nearly an institution in the area. La Paula has been run by the same family in the location for over 30 years (first the parents, then the offspring, two sisters called Daniela and Claudia Casanova). The Casanova family first opened it in Liverpool but moved to Fairfield in the mid-80s. It is the oldest Chilean restaurant in Sydney and clearly has a very loyal clientele. The restaurant was not packed on a summer Saturday afternoon a few days before the New Year’s but all tables were definitely full. Spanish was spoken in most, if not in all tables. Most of the Spanish I hear is Chilean but here and there I hear people from other Latin American countries as well. The restaurant has several 5-star reviews, now including ours. Each dish is handmade following the original recipes of the Casanova family – and you can notice that in the taste – everything is fresh and delicious to the tastebuds.
Empanadas are pastry filled with a range of yumminess and clearly a hit at la Paula. We ordered baked empanadas: meat ones (empanada de carne) alongside ones with spinach (empanada de espinaca). La Paula offers two types of empanadas; baked and fried. The empanadas are excellent. The meat empanada is the most traditional one (and the most ordered) and it comes with beef, onion, egg, olive and spices. Besides spinach, la empanada de espinaca is filled with cheese and egg. We would have liked to have had some fried empanadas with homemade cheese, but they were sold out for the day.
A(11) opts for a simple completo – a hot dog – there are several options for hot dogs/ completes (some of them come with mayonnaise, sauerkraut and palta – which is avocado) but A wants a plain one and is very happy with it. L (17) and NA (18) each go for a different sandwich with fries. NA chooses a Barros Luca – a steak sandwich or churrasco as Paula calls it – with sliced steak and melted cheese. L goes for a lomito palta mayo (a sliced pork meat sandwich – pictured) that has pork, mayonnaise and palta (avocado). Even if the food looks ordinary, there is something that makes it delicious, say the youngsters.
An absolute win is Pupusas which is originally a dish from El Salvador and usually not common in Chile. Pupusas are cheese filled corn pancakes – in El Salvador they also sometimes include pork but this was not the case with la Paula, where pupusas came with cabbage salad and tomato sauce. We mix it with a delicious mixed salad with palta (avocado), tomato, onion and lettuce. The food is fresh and tastes homemade in the best possible way.
The food is accompanied by Chilean soft drinks.
After lunch, we decide to buy some Chilean desserts to bring home and maybe share with a fellow Virtual Nomad EB and her family, as we will meet them for a Moonlight Cinema session (a feature of Sydney summer, movies under the stars in different locations, our favourite being Moonlight Cinema in Centennial park where you can bring your own picnic rug and food, drinks etc.). The La Paula display cabinet shows different desserts, many of them with manjar blanco – the Chilean version of dulce de leche (typical of Argentina), made of condensed milk and evaporated milk. It is very hard to choose but we end up taking a few different types of Chilenitos and Alfajores (two biscuits served as a sandwich with a generous amount of manjar blanco in the middle).
Where the land ends
Chile is a land of a thousand landscapes that run from the majestic Andes to the driest desert in the world, the mighty Atacama and within its 4000+ km land the country boasts many volcanoes, glaciers, mountains, valleys, islands and a long, long coastline. Home to the Indigenous Mapuche who successfully fought against the Inca Empire (1432-1533 – only the north part of modern Chile was conquered by the Inca) and the Spanish colonizers. As in other parts of the Americas, Spain conquered vast areas, including Chile. While the Spaniards were really into the Peruvian gold and other shiny things, Chile seemed to offer less monetary treasures so they were a bit less enthusiastic about it. The Mapuche were strong and resourceful, and resisted the Spanish conquest for more than three centuries. After independence, industrialisation resulted in the end of the Mapuche resistance in the 1880s. Currently around 10% of Chileans are of Mapuche origin.
Spanish Pedro de Valdivia founded the capital Santiago in 1541 – he was killed later by the Mapuche. In the Mapuche resistance history, a war warrior Lautaro is a famous figure. He was captured as a teenager and served as a personal servant to Pedro de Valdivia but later led many battles by the Mapuche side. He observed and learned from the Spanish military actions and therefore it was easy for him to know where their weaknesses were. He was killed by a Spanish ambush in 1557 while he was attempting to free the whole of Chile from Spanish rule.
Chile gained independence from Spain in 1818. Chile started to industrialise, gaining economic and also some military power when winning the War of Pacific (1879-83) against Bolivia and Peru. There were some turbulences within, including short wars in 1829-30, 1851 and 1859. The 20th century Chile saw economic and population growth, democratisation and urbanisation. Democratically elected left-wing Salvador Allende became president in 1970 but in 1973 a military coup seized power and placed Augusto Pinochet as the dictator for the next 17 years. During his regime, at least 3000 people were killed or forcefully disappeared, and nearly 30,000 were imprisoned and/or tortured. The 1988 referendum brought the regime to its end in 1990. In 2011 the Chilean government recognised additional victims and the total number of dead, tortured and imprisoned people were confirmed to be more than 40,000. The transition to democracy has resulted in fairly peaceful democratic and economic development. The current president is a former student leader Gabriel Boric who won the presidency in 2021 at the age of 35.
Books from Chile: the literature giants Isabel, Roberto and José, and some others
You cannot talk about Chilean literature without mentioning Isabel Allende, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. When I was young, I was enchanted by Pablo’s poems (“La noche está estrellada, y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”) but I fell out of love with him when I read his biography, in which he confesses to raping a young maid in Sri Lanka, and does not recognise his actions as a rape. He also abandoned his child and wife and did all sorts of things that makes him ever so yuckier. So no Pablo. Pablo boo.
Gabriela Mistral is a Nobel-winning poet and Isabel Allende has been called the world’s most read Spanish-writing author. I have read some of her books so I will not for this stop. Instead, I have invited my rising literature critic L (17) to read and review Isabel’s most famous book – and top rated on Goodreads – The House of the Spirits (1982). My own favourite book from Isabel is her most personal and raw book Paula (1995), written about the terminal illness and eventual death of her daughter Paula at the age of 29.
L’s review: (I am now 18! This took me a while… I’ll explain why!)
Wow. What a tremendous achievement this book is, at 500 pages of beautiful prose in very small print. Before I begin my ranting and raving, I definitely acknowledge both that I read a translation, and that this book holds so much power. I can certainly see how Allende’s words impact and inspire readers for life, and can guarantee I will think about this narrative for years to come. If someone told me this was their favourite book, however, I would perhaps question that due to my own experience: one of pure rage!!!!
Okay. So, this book supposedly follows, essentially, 4 generations of Chilean women, culminating in the horrors of the 1973 coup and proceeding dictatorship. The story holds and is structured around many facets of Allende’s deeply familial experiences, with the on-page bravery of her uncle, and her understanding and relationship with the magical realism of connections to the spiritual universe. The reason I found this book as such a masterpiece was due to the constructive elements, namely the wonder of her words, which (mostly) terrifically hit the nail on the head in dissecting the humanity within.
BUT!!
There were many, many parts of it that I despised. Sorry, that’s a lie. One particular story feature boiled my blood until it almost evaporated beneath my skin. ESTEBAN TRUEBA!!!!! What a horrible man who did not get what he deserved (I know that is partially the point of the story, especially with the symbolic and peaceful conclusion). It seemed very uneven at times! He would rape many underage women, physically, emotionally, financially, sexually and psychologically abuse everyone he met (even a corpse, spoilers!) without exception, and have moments of clarity where he appeared to be forgiven by the very people he quite literally knocked the teeth out of, even after their death! Why would Clara marry someone who would be so cruel when she was a brilliant clairvoyant? Why would any of his relatives be as forgiving as they were? I had to stop reading at times (including on my birthday) because this aspect enraged me so. My dear boyfriend (NA) asked me if I was ‘still reading the book that makes [me] angry’ and that I ‘yelled about’.
That said, it was incredibly entertaining, keeping me (when out of anger and ready to face the story) slowly digesting every word to savor the (melo)drama. Allende is a master of curating mood and passion (it is true that I lost count of how many times the characters ‘made love’, nothing wrong with that, of course!), and the last 100 pages were some of the finest I have ever read, despite some of my moral disagreements and personal preferences (I thought some narrative choices were quite neat, compared to the beautiful rawness of other moments: an example is the character of Ferula, who is unfortunately not referenced very much after her death, who I quite liked. Despite the emotional and triumphant finale with a lovely message, some of the realness of female brutality that had truly struck my very soul was lost in Alba’s final moments with her grandfather (again, Treuba, my object of sheer disgust), who contributed to her uncomparable suffering in a non-direct but otherwise crucial manner.
All in all, this was a safe 4 stars out of 5, because it is rare that a book will make me THIS mad, which is true testament to the author’s talents for evoking pure, unadulterated emotion. The novel also showed me a new side of the world I had not been exposed to, in an often fun, intriguing and visceral way, which is all I could really ask for.
(I am so sorry for the length of my literary rant– I promise that for future reviews I will rein it in (surely I will not be this enraged over words on a page very often!)
While L is reading her Chile book, I turn my gaze to other books:
Roberto Bolaño is considered a literature giant. He left his native Chile at the age of fifteen, lived around the world (most notably Mexico and Catalonia), had a complex relationship with his motherland (as he was incarcerated briefly during the early days of Pinochet, but was also a fierce critic of the ‘literature elite’ of the country, including Ms Allende) and died at the age of 50 of liver failure. His estate continues to milk his fame, and his personal and private life has attracted much interest and produced several dedicated books. Years ago I tried to read his opus magna, a very celebrated and hailed 1000+ page book called 2666 which might or might not be an unfinished manuscript. 2666 features on many of the ‘best Latin American literature’ lists, and in quite a few occupies the top spot. The mammoth size of the book put me off and at the time I could not finish it. Roberto was also an author that I did not associate with Chile as he had lived many years in Catalonia close to Barcelona, and when I lived in Barcelona, he was considered a ‘local author’. For this entry of Virtual Nomad, I was thinking of returning to my intent of reading 2666 but then abandoned the thought and decided to opt for his other very celebrated book (of mere 600+ pages) Los Detectives Salvajes from 1998 (translated into English as The Savage Detectives, 2007). Again, I have the benefit of being able to read these verbal figure skaters in the original language – but honestly in this case the language itself is fairly simple, so I doubt the novel’s presentation would have suffered from translation. According to countless literature critics, the brilliance is in the form of its non-linear storytelling and “sprawling, fragmented narrative that reflects the messy reality of human experience” rather than linguistics itself. Both 2666 and The Savage Detectives feature on the 2024 New York Times ‘Best Books of the 21st Century’ list (composed by 503 writers and academics), respectively on the 6th and 38th spot.
Now, this is a very celebrated book with dedicated discussion groups and several people comparing it to On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It is particularly loved by literature critics and other writers. It is considered to reflect everything from mortality to the fleeting nature of everyday existence, and becomes a testimony to the profoundly mundane nature of life. One reviewer had tattooed the book’s name (or symbol?) on his arm to remind him of the book and someone else said that it capsulated everything that literature is about at its best. It is said to have an exceptional character development ( each with their distinctive voice); and that it reflects exile, identity and the lightness of being; and studies the creative process and the relationship between life and art. Then of course there are people that do not get it at all, and quite a few that abandon it after the first 100 pages. One reviewer summed it up by saying:” I mean, seriously, nothing happened. And it isn’t even as if nothing has happened particularly artfully or lyrically. It’s a very prosaic kind of nothing.”
The plot? The main characters are so-called poets named Arturo Bolano and Ulisses Lima – based on Roberto Bolaño himself (Arturo) and his real-life best friend, Mario Santiago Papasquiaro (Ulisses). They start a poetry movement called Infrarealists (also real) in 1970s Mexico City, surrounded by a large group of people, mainly other poets (many also based on real people). They hate Octavio Paz (a Mexican writer and poet, a Nobel laureate) and disappear while trying to find a lost poetess Cesárea Tijanero. The 600+ pages are divided into three parts, of which the ‘savage detectives’ is the middle, most extensive one.
What was this book for me? Honestly? I did read all of its 600+ pages, but it took me a long time. For me it is a book that has parts of four, even five stars at times, and sections that barely hit one – it is fragmented, very long, partly interesting, partly not. The first part, the coming-of-age diary of a young poet who reads a lot, has a lot of sex and fantasises of having even more sex, is only partly interesting. Yeah I get that the young poets (there are more than one) feel invincible and their life’s meaning is to live in the moment, and then time and age do their thing and peel the innocence out of the young souls. The second part (the most extensive) consists of testimonies of many people (some said 52 but I did not count) that knew Bolano and Ulisses, and it is my favourite part of the book. The personal testimonies contrast each other and give multiple perspectives to events, and are actually quite interesting (and almost fascinating at times) until it goes on and on forever and loses its spark once you start losing interest in the characters because quite frankly, in the end, Bolano and Ulisses are not that interesting. But some parts, I admit, are beyond brilliance – and other parts are boring as hell. The third part is again the diary of the young poet and frankly an unnecessary part. To me, it feels like Roberto just could not let go of the story and the people in it.
While I do not question the brilliance of this book, I recognise that I am not its right audience. I read books for compelling stories, deep thoughts, learning, reflecting and engaging emotional journeys – books that move or inform, and go somewhere. I got none of that from this book – it reads almost like a forensic report, an endless group study or a very long, inconclusive yapping session. Books like this are for people who love books that are more about writing than about a story, books that talk a lot but say very little, are cerebral more than emotional. The way the movie Memento challenged convention filmmaking, this book is unconventional in its fragmented timelines and endless personal testimonies, stories within stories. I understand why a literature critic would love it but in the end, did I? That leads into a dilemma: should I give it 4-5 stars for its perceived brilliance and unconventional form or should I give it two stars because in the end I had to push myself through it and its endless descriptions of different people and their mundane life (some genuinely interesting, some really not) and long lists of names of poets. Reading is a subjective exercise so I am thinking of giving it three stars, and then still thinking that I maybe should have given it four stars or maybe I should have given it two stars. Or maybe five because it is a book like no other or maybe one because in some parts I could only read a couple of pages before being bored (and JK said that sometimes it looked like reading it was like a punishment). So yes, maybe three stars. But then, because of the very last page, I could give it four.
Maybe that is one of the reasons for its brilliance. Then again, maybe not.
I plan to read two other books from Chilean authors and I have hard time deciding between
José Donoso and then other names I have been recommended, including Alia Trabucco Zerán, Diamela Eltit, Lina Meruane and Nona Fernández. My friend M CLA also recommends an anti-poet Nicanor Parra (but can I really do one more of those?). In the end I give up and decide to read José’s most famous book, El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970), all an institution in Chilean literature; and then my failed intention was to choose between the other four to read one more book. No wonder Virtual Nomad stops are so long.
José Donoso was one of the most acclaimed writers from Chile, and part of the magical realism movement (whose arguably most famous associated writer was Colombian Gabriel Garcia Márquez). El obscene pájaro de la noche (1970, translated as The Obscene Bird of Night first in 1973 but the most recent translation from 2024 adds twenty pages that were removed from the 1973 translation). It is another dense, highly praised book, with 500+ pages. In the Prologue, a Chilean writer and literary critic Álvaro Bisama says that El obscene pájaro de la noche is “the most complex, the most unyielding and the most unbearable of José’s books”. He continues that it is unbearable because it “requires tolerance and commitment from the reader regarding its dense and nervous writing that changes its core constantly, mixing identities, and makes the reader drown in the corners of a voice that syntonises too many voices, all misaligned in their possible bodies”.(my translation). I hope I am not getting into another “talks so much and says so little” books but I give it a try.
It IS a confusing book, and it is indeed a book that challenges the reader. Sometimes there is a narrator and sometimes there is not, and sometimes the narration changes in one paragraph. It is grotesque and intriguing, but also infuriating and at times annoying. Still, even if I did not fully love it, I found it mesmerising, mind-bending and captivating. Its messiness can be exhausting and sometimes I did not fully understand what I was reading and who was talking but it does break the forms and codes of modern literature in a mind-blowing way. A vulgar, ludicrous and bizarre story that is perverted, maniacal and freakish. It is difficult to sum up what it is about but it reads almost as a gothic horror story of distorted people and distorted realities. The central character (maybe) is Mudito (‘the Mute’), a prisoner of his mutilated body living in a convent/maze of dark corners and deep secrets surrounded by nuns / witches. He was once the assistant to the most powerful politician of the country and runs a ‘palace of monsters’ (people with severe deformations) so that his master’s deformed son would live among equals – but because of his desire for his master’s angelic wife (who herself might be a prisoner to an old woman or maybe a yellow dog), he is transformed into the Mudito who also serves as a living doll / baby for a young woman with developmental delay and an eternal pregnancy (who was impregnated – maybe – by him or someone else -wearing a giant costume head of a –Giant). It is an astonishing roller coaster and one of the weirdest, wildest, most unusual literature rides I have ever had. Without a hint of literature snobbism, it is nauseating and profoundly strange, but truly original.
After a memorable book, whatever comes next will no doubt carry the burden of a difficult predecessor. My next book is by Alia Trabucco Zerán who studied creative writing in New York with a Fulbright scholarship and finished a PhD in Spanish and Latin American Studies in London. La Resta from 2015 (the English translation is called The Remainder) is her debut, a Man Booker International Prize shortlisted and winner of literature awards in Chile.
Writing a compelling story is difficult, and Alia achieves it partially. With a fascinating start, it is a story about three people – first children, then young adults – whose parents have different destinies under the Chile of Pinochet. Paloma, a romanticized and somewhat caricatured bad girl, has lived in exile in Germany with her parents. She wants to bring her dead mother’s body to Santiago. She comes in contact with Iqueta whom she knew briefly as a child, and Iqueta’s childhood friend Felipe. Iqueta and Felipe are the alternating narrators in the book – Iqueta’s chapters are descriptive and sequential, and Felipe’s are one long sentence (often a sentence of 2,5 pages) of brain mush and obsession about dead bodies. The basic story is that Paloma’s mother’s body (that travels to Chile on a different plane than Paloma, a weird fact that is never explained) gets lost in transit and sent to Buenos Aires due to a volcano erupting, and the three need to embark on a road trip to find the body. There is much intent and effort in incorporating intergenerational trauma and guilt into the story but it fails to build anything deeper or overall meaningful, and I am also bothered by the weakesh construction of the characters that are more caricatures than real people. It is a book with a lot of cleverness and ingenious writing but loses its steam as the story progresses.
Diamela Eltit has been called one of the most daring Latin American authors. She has been a high school Spanish teacher, a university professor, anti-Pinochet activist, wife of a former socialist presidential candidate and has held many writing workshops for young students. Jamás el fuego nunca (2007, translated in 2021 as Never did the Fire – the translator Daniel Hahn kept a diary about the translation process) is a relatively short but very dense book; structurally an internal / external monologue of a woman who is isolated in a room with her dying partner. She observes him and his bodily functions (long sentences about how she is disgusted about the way he eats rice) and his pain while reminiscing about their past as part of a radical left-wing group, the failure of romantic love and the passages of loss – the loss of the illusions of the youth and the ideals they once had and other deep personal losses. Death is approaching, his body crumbles and time is closed into a small space of a small room they cannot leave. Highly skilled writing and linguistic tricks, but as a book itself it is fairly monotone to read and hard to fully appreciate. It feels as if the descriptive flatness is deliberate to reflect the dead time in the room and the nothingness that their life has converted into.
My final book from Chile is Sangre en el ojo (2012) by Lina Meruane (translated as Seeing Red in 2017) – a fictionalised memoir of Lucina / Lina who loses her eyesight in a foreign country, then travels to Chile and then back again. The author herself had the same condition as Lina in the book, but in real life she [the real-life Lina] did not lose her full eye sight whereas Lina in the book does. The premise is interesting but when I start reading it, I remember why auto-fiction is at times excruciating and self-serving, and it takes a long time for the book to finally fly – and towards the end it does. Let’s just say that the third act makes it worth the read, but it is a long path to get there, through a never-ending stream of consciousness and victimization. It is a short, quite dense book – and interestingly Lina was named by Roberto Bolaño as a leading voice of the new Chilean writing (maybe for the endless yapping?). The book has won several awards, and Lina has written more books about the disease.
The Chilean Film Festival
Chile is another cinematographic powerhouse with a generous offer of movies. I have several Chilean friends, so I look for their approval for my ‘10 films from Chile’ list. My beautiful and brave friend M DLA not only approves of the list, but also recommends a 4-part documentary series that is significant and important to her family. Unfortunately, some of the films are not available, so I end up adding others. So, in the end, my Chilean Film Festival consists of 12 cinematographic products: first the ones from the ‘10 films from Chile’ that I can find: Una mujer fantástica (A fantastic woman, 2017); Violeta se fue a los cielos (Violeta went to heaven, 2011); Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus (2013); Cielo (2017); El Chacotero Sentimental (1999); Machuca (2004); No (2012 – I have seen this one years ago but I want to rewatch it with the kids); Chile, las Imágenes Prohibidas (Chile, prohibited images: forty years later, 2013) and Colonia Dignidad (a Netflix documentary series of one of the world’s most disturbed and terrible cults). After the list is approved, along the way I add the Maid (2009), El castigo (The Punishment, 2022), La memoria infinita (The Eternal Memory, 2023) and what turns out to be my favourite of them all: the Mole Agent (2020).
The movies that were on the original list but not available and therefore added to the ‘watch one day’ file are Princesita (2017, Marialy Rivas), the Club (2015), Sin Norte (Lost North, 2015) and Y De Pronto el Amanecer (And Suddenly the Dawn, 2017 by Silvio Caiossi).
In addition, the movie Gloria (2013) is on many ‘Best Movies from Chile’ lists but because I have seen it already some years ago, I did not watch it again for this occasion. It has a magnificent Julianne Moore in the title role. I also highly recommend the movie No (2012) that I have seen a few times, with another magnificent actor in the main role, Gael Bernal.
So, let the Chilean Film Festival begin.
In these times of growing transphobia, it is a good moment to watch Una mujer fantástica (A fantastic woman, 2017) by Sebastián Leio – a multi awarded movie about a transgender woman facing the death of her partner and the hatred of the dead partner’s family. The main character is played by a mesmerising Daniela Vega, who in 2018 was named as one of the most influential people in the world by the Time Magazine. The movie is gentle and humane without any sensational undertones. It is about people and the human experience of love and loss – and the astonishing and unreasonable hatred that some people express on the freedom and life choices of others and the constant microaggressions trans people face. The centrepiece is the understated dignity that Daniela’s character has at the vanishing of the protection she enjoyed while her partner was alive. She faces institutional humiliation (the police, doctors), passive-aggressive treatment anywhere she goes, and abusive personal attacks while dealing with grief and loneliness. The film is credited for a shift in treatment towards transgender people in 2017 and the passing of the 2018 Gender Identity Law in Chile after the movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. But while the movie created a momentum in 2017, unfortunately, its impact seems to be far forgotten in 2024.
Violeta se fue a los cielos (Violeta went to heaven, 2011) by Andrés Wood is a nonlinear biography of Violeta Parra, an important figure in the revival of folk music in Chile. Born to poverty, Violeta became an important voice of the Nueva Canción (New Song Movement) denouncing the worsening social conditions in the country, political oppression and fighting for freedom of expression. Violeta has been called the Edith Piaf of Chile and she is famous for her song Gracias a la Vida. Violeta died of suicide at the age of 49.
The movie is nonlinear, beautifully filmed in warm colours and with an outstanding performance by Francisca Gavilán, who seems to be born to play Violeta. It is a poetic film which requires the audience to have some degree of knowledge about Violeta and her life. As I am somewhat familiar with her story, for me the film is a fascinating and magnificent homage to someone so talented yet volatile, complex and impulsive (the story is based on a book by her son who has been heavily involved with the making of the movie). Music plays an important part of the film and is the narrator to many of the important and devastating events in Violeta’s life; including the death of her youngest child and the torrid love affair with Swiss musician Gilbert Favre.
Crystal fairy and the magical cactus (2013) is a refreshing small indie film from Sebastián Silva. Based on a true story – and apparently following the real events very truthfully – the actors include Silva himself, his two brothers and two American (indie) actors Michael Cera and Gaby Hoffman. The dialogue is mainly improvised (while the actors might or might not be high on Mescaline) which brings a certain freshness to the story. The story follows an obnoxious and annoying American tourist (Michael) on a quest for a psychedelic drug experience with Mescaline (found in a cactus called San Pedro/Trichocereus pachanoi). He takes a trip with three Chilean friends (Sebastián and his brothers) and accidently invites an American new-age hippie princess named Crystal Fairy on the night before the trip begins to come along for the ride. Apparently everything that happens in the movie is what really happened. Sebastián met a woman called Crystal Fairy and her story is real. The acting is wonderful and feels very genuine. The movie does not pretend to be the best movie around, but rather an illustrated memory of a moment in time. While the movie is charming and easy to follow, even if not that memorable for most part, it is the very last minutes of the movie, and the story of Crystal Fairy, that comes out of nowhere and is truly impactful. In an interview (Movieline, 2013), Gaby Hoffman says about her character: I talked to Seb about Crystal Fairy. I would tell him, “Never let me go too far. Don’t let me try to make her so funny that I lose sight of who this person really was”. She was a huge influence in his life. He had a very emotional experience with her.”
Gaby Hoffman (see previous movie) said that her favourite movie from Sebastián Silva is The Maid (2009, ‘La Nana’ in Spanish). In fact, she said it is one of the best movies ever, so I decide to watch that before going back to the preset list. This is the forth movie about a live-in maid that I watch for Virtual Nomad (the others appeared in Bolivia, Brazil, Cabo Verde). It is about Raquel, having been with the same family for 23 years and categorised by excessive use of cleaning products, who starts to have dizzy spells leading to the family wanting to bring in someone to help work with Raquel. The movie is very empathetic to Raquel’s sometimes questionable methods of defending her territory, and that is what probably makes this small movie quite nice. The characters are multidimensional which is hilarious at times – the teenage daughter who wants to fire Raquel (without thinking about the consequences) but at the dinner table (while Raquel is serving the family) gets passionate about human rights in Russia, or the mother who struggles with the temperamental Raquel and just wants to please everyone. I liked the movie and I think it is an interesting watch – it is not very different from the other three that are of a similar theme but still a reminder of the sacrifices living-in service staff make.
Cielo (2017, “Sky” in English) by Alison McAlpine is an interesting documentary of the breathtakingly stunning night sky of the Atacama Desert. Atacama, the driest desert in the world, is situated in Northern Chile. The documentary is about the sky, but also about the scientists that work there and the people living in the area. It is about stories and the land, and the sky that seems to have its own persona. The scientists talk about their perspective and the people living in the Atacama give their perspective from encounters with spirits to the presence of the stars as old friends. It is best to watch on a wide screen as the footage of the nocturnal Atacama is spectacular.
El Chacotero Sentimental (Christián Galaz and others, 1999) is based on an actual radio program in the Radio Station of Radio Pop & Rock in which a radio DJ gives advice to people that call the program. The three stories in the movie are based on actual, anonymous, stories of callers between February 1997 and October 1998. It was the commercially most successful movie from Chile in decades. The stories are quite different – the transition from the first story, a light-hearted but profoundly ridiculous sex story to the very dark second story is quite a contrast. The second story is the most impactful and it feels like the centrepiece, as the two others serve as buffers (the third being another story about horny people). Quite frankly, for me this film was by far the least interesting (and the lowest in overall quality) of the Virtual Nomad Chile Film Festival.
Machuca (2004) is a superb film by Andrés Wood. Set against the background of the political instability before and after the military coup of 1972, it tells a story about a friendship of two boys from very different backgrounds. 12-year old Gonzalo comes from a wealthy family (with its own problems) and goes to an exclusive boys’ school in Santiago (based on a real school). The priest (based on a real person) that runs the school invites five boys from poor and mostly Indigenous neighbourhoods to join the school. One of the boys, Pedro Machuca, befriends Gonzalo and they enjoy an intense but short friendship in a turbulent world. Gonzalo also meets Silvana (a spectacular performance by Manuela Martelli) who joins the boys in a trio of friendship. A coming of age story through the lens of social justice and subtle complexities of daily life and relationships within the changing world. It is very touching, very real and with superb production, cinematography, acting and directing – and most importantly shows the turbulent times through the eyes of children. It does not shy away from the economic and political tensions of the Allende era but efficiently shows the brutality of the military regime.
In 2016, in Hokkaido Japan, a couple punished their seven year old son’s bad behaviour in the car by leaving him by the road and driving off. When they drove back in a few minutes, the boy had disappeared and while the world was holding its shared breath, was not found until after seven days miraculously surviving freezing nights. It is not clear if El Castigo (The Punishment, 2022) by Matías Bize is inspired by this event, but the setting is very similar. A couple leaves their son Lucas by the road as a punishment and when they drive back, he is nowhere to be found. It is remarkably shot in real time with one long take (80 minutes) which brings intensity to the story, and one can just admire the work of the actors who totally stay in character for the whole length. It is easy to villainise one of the characters and feel empathy for the other, even with the movie trying to explain underlying feelings. The fundamental aspect is that not all people are born to be parents, and the film explores the psychology of certain emotional neglect (be that one’s own emotions and desires, or directed towards another person).
La Memoria Infinita (the Eternal Memory, 2023) by Maite Alberdi is a multi-awarded documentary about a couple living with the husband’s Alzheimer’s disease and consequent dementia. In this case, the couple is composed of a renowned journalist Augusto Góngora and his partner of 25 years, actress (and at one time equivalent to the Minister of Culture) Paulina Urrutia. It is a warm, gorgeous, loving and heartbreaking testimony of the deterioration of a brilliant mind and the impact it has on the people around him. Augusto had a long and acclaimed career as a journalist, restoring the shared memory of the atrocities of the Chilean military dictatorship, including the death of a close friend. The documentary is exquisite, skilfully combining videos of Augusto’s long career, his reporting of social injustice, memories of his family life and his slow, depthful but steady progress into losing himself to dementia. And it is about Paulina, seventeen years younger than Augusto, and her love and care for him. I watched it first by myself and then again with my partner JK who also found it incredibly touching.
Because we found La Memoria Infinita so compelling, we decide to check out another of Maite’s documentaries, the (again) multi-awarded, highly praised El Agente Topo (the Mole Agent, 2020). It is an outstanding, moving and occasionally hilarious documentary of an 83-year old ‘mole agent’ investigating the living conditions of a nursing home in Santiago. The story grows into a wonderful and compassionate human story about old age, love, friendship and life itself. Of all the hugely interesting films of the Chilean Film Festival, this is my favourite. Both JK and I love it – it has heart and soul, and it owes a lot to the subject of the documentary, Sergio Chamy, a warm and caring human who carries himself and treats others with immense dignity.
The successful Netflix comedy series A Man in the Inside (with Ted Danson) is based on this documentary but while Maite’s documentary is raw and real, the series feels artificial and unnecessarily affluent. It has lost the authenticity that Maite’s documentary has.
A lot has been said about cults and sects but if there is a competition regarding which one is the worst of the very worst, the Colonia Dignidad cult in Chile must be close to the top of that list. I did know a bit about it beforehand, but I had never even imagined the entire, terrible truth of the cult of ultra-crazy Paul Schäfer. JK and I watched a 6-episode long, outstanding however hard to stomach Netflix documentary series, Colonia Dignidad. It is an incredible documentary to open your eyes, that you just cannot watch on one go. Paul Schäfer himself was a German religious preacher who fled Germany in 1959 due to paedophilia accusations, and founded a colony in Chile in 1961 with 300 mainly German followers – that included a large number of kidnapped children. The colony was basically set up to be his personal paedophilia haven (of young boys) dressed up as a youth center and a Christian colony where adults were separated from their children and the extreme controller Schäfer reigned through questionable theology and super restricted, tyrannical and controlling behaviour and regulations. A personal friend of Pinochet, he also welcomed the Chilean secret police to kill and torture political dissidents, often working class young people (and participated in the killing himself). A fenced, barricaded colony of brainwashing, Northern Korea-type idolatraction, torture, sexual and emotional abuse, arms possession and dealing, human rights violations, paedophilia, forced labour, fear-based control system that was allowed to continue for nearly forty years.
(There is also a fictional movie about the commune, starring Emma Watson and Daniel but again, it is fiction whereas the series we watched shows the awful truth).
My friend M DLA recommends Chile, las Imágenes Prohibidas (Chile, prohibited images: forty years later) which is a four-episode miniseries that show audio-visual material mainly from foreign correspondents filmed during the early days. M DLA has a personal connection with the series as her parents both are human rights lawyers connected with the original footage and the act of restoring it.
The series has four episodes, all available on Youtube but unfortunately only in Spanish which means that JK, who would really love to see this, cannot join me in watching. It is an outstanding series. The series not only shows unedited material, but the producers also looked for the people in the original footage taken during the dictatorship and asked them to reflect on the time the events were filmed. The result is an astonishing account of different events, many of them very upsetting. For example, in the first episode, a woman called Corina tells of how her father and four brothers were taken, disappeared and how their remains were found in ‘mine ovens’. There are many stories of disappearances and people (especially mothers) looking for their loved ones. Stories of state terror, brutality of the police forces, violence and personal stories of loss, despair and heartbreak.
Art during the pandemic
Christina Vera Aguilar is an interesting Chilean artist whose mother and grandfather are artists (she a painter, sculptor and writer, and he a muralist). Christina represented Chile in an international children’s art competition at the age of 9 and has been painting ever since. She lives in Concepcion and says that her art is “influenced by the natural beauty of central Chile and its Pacific coastline”. In her art, she is interested in exploring the spiritual and mystic side of the landscape and her environment.
Next stop: China
Thank you beautiful L for your proof reading!