Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival - Interview with Patricio Guzman

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Interview with Patricio Guzman, director of The Pinochet Case

Original interview conducted on the 10th October 2001 in French with Le Site du Cinephile www.ifrance.com/lesiteducinephile/interviews/patricio_guzman.htm

- When and how you did you decide to undertake this project?

The decision was taken when Pinochet was arrested in London. At that time, I was living in Madrid. I saw Pinochet on television and I thought that there must be an error, a legal accident. I then started to call my friends to ask them what had happened, but nobody knew.

The following day things continued in the same direction, and the week after too. I then immediately thought it was necessary to make a film on all that. I started to discuss with the producers whom I know in Paris to find money and to do something. I was moved by the subject from the very start of the affair. At this time, I already working on four or five parallel projects on Chile, but I immediately stopped these projects. I thought "Now, the principal project is that." Here is the beginning of the project.

- It's a film where there are many testimonies. Did you succeed in interviewing all the people you wanted to, more precisely the politicians and the legal authorities?

All the victims wanted to testify but, for example, the five lawyers for Pinochet - three Chilean and two English - refused our interviews. They said that this was not good for them, that they did not have time, etc. At one time, I had the intention of interviewing Chilean President Ricardo Largos, to know what his position was vis-a-vis this business, but he never answered.

On the other hand, Judge Garzon - the famous Spanish judge - was very nice with me. We dined together; he showed me his office, papers, his work plan. But he did not have the right to speak about a case in progress, only after the case is closed. Besides that, I didn't have any difficulty.

- And how did you work with the victims? Did they collaborate easily?

In Santiago, there is an association of the families and missing prisoners. This is an organization which functions very well. I had spoken with the person in charge to present my project and it was okay. I then organized a meeting with the women, not all of them though. The president had made a selection since she knows all the women. There were some who did not like the cinema. There were others who did not like to speak about themselves. I thus had a meeting with "the best", if I can say that. And in this meeting, I called on each one of them (they were fifty.) I looked at their faces, their manners, their expressions and I made a selection. I let them know that it was impossible for all of the interviews to be in film. It was necessary that that was clear.

- In testimonies of the victims, there are many testimonies of women, how do you explain that?

Because the women have a quality to speak about the pain. They are able to speak about the pain and all humiliations, to recognize the process of the prison, torture, and in a manner that men are unable to achieve. They are unable to make direct confessions of their humiliation. Very difficult. Women had the habit to speak between them. The best was the example this woman explains how she spoke by "telephone" in the prison. While the men wallow in the pain, their failure; their pride is broken and they are unable to speak.

It is one aspect of the things. On the other hand, I ask myself the same thing all the time: why do women speak more easily? And in history, they are stronger also. It is the women who lived all the pain in all the wars. It is they who mourn; they who give life and who, at the same time, accompany the life right up to death. In our civilization, there is a symbolism of the role of the woman. I am not conscious of this legendary historical role, but I am not surprised because all good testimonies come from the women.

- Did you have difficulties for filming in Chile?

No. Today, Chile is a State of the Right. It is a fragile democracy, but the institutions are routine. And then, we really did not film in official places. Judge Garzon invited us to the north of the country, where they were doing excavations to seek skeletons and we went on the same aircraft. He also took us along to visit the house of torture and the medico-legal institute where they reconstruct skeletons.

- You directed The Battle of Chile, Chile - Obstinate Memory, and today The Pinochet Case. Is documentary a work of memory for you, a work against forgetting?

Of course, it is a very effective manner to work the memory, to make things move a little bit in Chile and everywhere else. But I do not have a historical program in my head. I make things because I like them. I am very touched by Chile. It is more a question of love and interest, than of conscience or historical method.

- Do you consider yourself a political filmmaker?

Yes, all the time. I have no problem with that. I think that engagement is a thing which is in the soul, in the heart. There is no division in the heart between the political and the artistic. I think that things are completely integrated; there are no contradictions. I am happy not to have these contradictions; this was never a problem for me.