Patrici Patricio Guzman's Chile, Obstinate Memory

Unlike any other Latin American country, since the nineteenth century, Chile has had a traditional electoral democracy. With its socialist revolutionary leader, Salvador Allende, creating the electoral coalition called “Popular Unity,” Allende won the 1970 presidential election of Chile. His presidency produced a radicalization among workers, but later his controlled insurrection was defeated by the uncontrollable revolution started by Chilean citizens. The military later overthrew Allende in 1973 and Augusto Pinochet assumed power. Patricio Guzman, a Chilean film director made a film of the depiction of student's reactions to his screening of The Battle of Chile, a documentary called Chile, Obstinate Memory. Even after decades of this regime, the student movement in Chile is going steady and this film compares and contrasts with it in various factors.

The Battle of Chile, is another documentary by Guzman which depicts the accounts of the last ten months of the Popular Unity government, ending with the September 11th, 1973 coup d’etat. Guzman first screened this film in England, and after twenty years of it being filmed, he returned to Chile to screen it for the first time. In this film, he captured the encounter of the trapped memories that The Battle of Chile left on its living characters and the documented events that it seized. In Chile, Obstinate Memory, the viewers are watching The Battle of Chile and they are a new generation of Chileans. This generation of Chileans can barely remember the revolution and the coup. They are capable of reflecting on their experiences of watching the film after so many years have passed from the overthrow of