Discoveries from Chile World Cinema

The early 20th century fable “The Fox and the Otter,” from the Historia y Conocimiento Oral Mapuche: Sobrevivientes de la campaña del desierto y ocupación de la Araucanía (1899–1926), tells the story of a homoerotic relationship between two animals – a fox and an otter, both males – where anal penetration is seen as an offense to masculinity. This 3D animated video proposes a new version of the fable, where its protagonist is a transgender vixen who, by means of its charms, achieves to attract the otter, unsettling colonial constructions about desire and heterosexuality and allowing to break these paradigms and create new cosmologies.

Max is a recluse by nature. But at Cafe Cicatriz, he encounters a rare moment of human connection. Can he bare to expose his truth?

The story of the Chilean band Los Bunkers, from start in Concepción to the first tour in Mexico.

Free adaptation of the tale Mrs. Snow by the Grimm Brothers represented by children from the biggest illegal settlement of Santiago. An orphan must go rescue an embroidery when she is transported to the magical world of Mrs. Holle. The girl works for her for a while, shaking pillows and blankets to produce snow on Earth. After some time, the girl decides to return home and Mrs. Holle rewards her with gold. Arriving home, her stepsister imitates her in an attempt to get the same reward, but she behaves lazy and rude, which results in her being grounded. All roads lead to the common zone, but each reaps what it sows.

Monserrat (25), always accompanied by her great friend Francia, has to survive the circumstances of her life in an extravagant well-to-do neighborhood in Santiago de Chile after being evicted from her home. Hybrid fiction-documentary short film shot with iPhone, 2021.

Cecilia is the mother of my son's father. She recorded her family life with a handycam for more than 15 years. Today, she recounts her experiences and I review her images. “No star” explores the traces left in the family archive, and the contradictions we live with motherhood.

In the streets of Recoleta, a commune located in the northern sector of the city of Santiago, capital of Chile, there are people marginalized from society, addicted to base paste. In this documentary we meet El Rusio (40), Christopher (24), Andrés (25), Claudio (37), Marcela (41) and Elba (63). Who through their narrations make us understand their point of view of the life they lead on the street. The representation of youth as: wanting to enjoy life to the fullest; adulthood as: maturity and repentance; and old age as: loneliness. She is seen by these characters.

A young man from Santiago confronts his father.

Mexico DF.; 70's. 30 buildings. 904 apartments. 5000 people. 3,000 exiles. Alejandra, 3 years old, Chilean. Pablo, 2 years old, Argentine. Villa Olímpica, your place in the world. Years later, end of the dictatorships in the south. The return of the parents is the exile of the children. The largest exile community in the world becomes a diaspora. Leave everything behind and start over.

This documentary film by Rapoport-Bordenave tattoos on the screen the relationship who Juan Carmona, a larch tree worker in the Andes, has with the generosity of nature. Through his broken voice and the melodies hummed by the leaves stirred by the wind, the film envelops us in a space with no floor or roof, inviting us to float in the out-of-focus memories of his previous life as a shellfish catcher.

After spending the night together, a former couple has different plans for the future. She wants to go on with her day normally, but he needs to find out whether she is seeing someone new. All of this while they wait for the delivery of two cups of mote con huesillos.

Two friends talk before one of them go in a journey.

SCL is a concert - film by the Chilean group Los Bunkers. This contains the audiovisual record of the concert held at the Movistar Arena on August 2, 2013 for the release of their seventh album La Velocidad de la Luz.

1986: Gangs of young people take over abandoned warehouses, lost ruins in the center of a city besieged by the dictatorship.

With anger and melancholy, the director describes her home in Chile. The former natural paradise is now covered by monotonous pine forests - alien, thirsty, waiting for the next fire.

The world comes to an end. In the midst of love, excesses and euphoria, a group of friends have a nostalgic reflection on their lives. As time progresses and death approaches, their reflections turn into a farewell between chaos and the end of a decaying world.

Albertina sells flowers in the cemetery of San Miguel de Azapa (Chile), a small town built on indigenous tombs. For half a century, she has commanded traditions that seek to achieve prosperity for the living by keeping her relationship with the dead on good terms. The death of this matriarch triggers a series of rites that her family and friends carefully observe. Thus the community seeks to ensure a good dispatch of the soul of their “grandmother” and preserve the traditions that she promoted.

Recorded on October 26, 2002 at the Estadio Victor Jara, Santiago, Chile.

A tour across Chile's diverse scenarios through the observation of bus stops and passenger's small talk.

Flor del Carmen, daughter of the foreman of a farm, is in love with a peon: her father is opposed to this marriage, but instead yields to the threats of a rich and cynical peasant who lent him money while in trouble, in exchange he offers his daughter to him.

Exposé of the CIA-financed efforts of the Edwards family of Chile to cover up the human rights abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship through its newspaper 'El Mercurio'.

Evergreen Abundance is a documentary that invites viewers to rediscover themselves and journey through the bond between people and the forest. This bond harbors a neglected heritage that emerges as an alternative to the challenges facing humanity today. Exploring various forestry experiences in Chile, the film serves as an introduction to edible forests and proof that these practices are still alive and being passed down among us.

The fate of Edmundo, a miner who has already survived the world-famous rescue of the 33 chilean miners, intersects with that of a woman, Raquel, who has found the fullness of her existence in a strange diet.

A couple in the port of Valparaíso is falling apart.

In Costa Rica, the family of Melba (65) and Víctor (70) has sheltered over 130 children in the last 40 years. Today, some of them seek paths to adulthood while a new child is integrated into this great family with the adventures and difficulties of a home that continues to multiply despite the parents’ advanced age.

A Daidalist short film with a clear Lynchian influence. Adapted from the comix of the same name.

Ventanas is a sacrifice zone. Beaches, water, and air are polluted by a vast industrial complex. During her last summer of childhood, Luz spends her days dreaming in the streets she calls home. When her mother is hospitalized due to a risky pregnancy, Mila, her half-sister, returns to take care of the household. Together, they share experiences that lead Luz to navigate the challenges of growing up, accompanied by a small rabbit.

From the sea that invades the frame at the end of the previous installment, we move towards an upside-down glitched world that struggles between form and essence. The city shapes battles nature in a back-and-forth that seeks light within the profound darkness, giving birth to a new way of seeing; the camera transforms the present into an instantaneous memory. Recorded and (mostly) edited on a cell phone. Part II of the "overthere" project, a saga about the relation of the digital pixel with the natural world.

A young man finds someone else's suitcase in the street and decides to take it to his apartment. Upon examining it, he discovers his enigmatic ego alongside a manifesto that reveals a sophisticated vision of his future, while he questions the consequences of his actions, torn between good and evil.

In this intimate short film, a young person reconstructs fragments of their story, tinged with melancholy, grief, and the memory of their mother. Through reflections on sadness, emotional inheritance, and the sea, ‘Azul’ becomes a sensitive portrait of what remains when someone is gone, and of what endures: a voice, a color, a desire. Sometimes everything is tinged with blue.

Directed by the Archbishop of Concepción, Monsignor Fernando Chomali, the documentary ‘Miércoles 15.30, memorias de una ausencia’ addresses the stories of loss, pain, and the search for justice of the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees of Concepción. The Association, created under the auspices of the Archbishopric of Concepción and the Human Rights Pastoral during the dictatorship, has been working and meeting for more than 40 years to find their relatives.

Orfelina Sepúlveda is a survivor of the Fuerte el Morro clandestine detention, torture, and disappearance center in Talcahuano, Chile. Hundreds of young students and supporters of the Chilean popular movement of the 1970s were taken to this facility. Orfelina remembers the dark times that this South American country experienced with pain and hope, maintaining her firm conviction that the struggle for freedom and equality is a collective one.

On the streets of Rancagua, a team of audiovisual artists follow a very peculiar homeless man with serious mental health issues with their camera. He spends day and night collecting what appears to be trash, but is actually a machine he is building to contact someone named Laurita, the object of his love and the reason he lost his sanity.

In an old hallway, a man tries to organize abandoned objects while an elderly woman in a rocking chair ignores him. After finding a hammer and breaking the wall, the woman disappears, leaving only a wreath of flowers behind.

After a successful tour throughout Chile, Estoy Bien releases their debut album Apoyo Emocional on April 27th, 2024 at a packed Club Subterráneo.

Feyentuafiyiñ Bafkence Kimvn is an act of reciprocal communication between the gvbamtucefe (those who give advice) and the picikece (children).

Marc is a small time thug in his 50's peddling drugs for a brutal dealer called Camila Camion in small town Chile. After falling victim to a rival cartel during a drop gone bad, Marc is forced to embark on a bank robbing spree with his best friend José and a young inexperience petty thief to pay off the debt owed to Camila before she has him taken out.

Antonio, a lonely old man, receives a call asking him to be the best man at a wedding. Excited, he searches the city for a suit, nostalgically remembering his own wedding. Finally, it is revealed that he is the best man for his granddaughter's cats.

Short monologue in which the director reflects on what it means to him to be free.

Bastián, a boy from La Faena questions his future as he walks through the neighborhood where he grew up, weighed down by the responsabilities that keep him stuck there everyday.

Gabriela returns to her family home in Chile, left behind after exile. Between her grandparents' tenderness and her mother's emotional distance, she begins to question how love can endure when shaped by fear, absence, and silence.

A documentary following Chilean pop rock band Kudai's journey from an Italian pop cover band called CIAO to their first tour after their debut album Vuelo.

An intimate portrait of the South American poet Nicanor Parra, reading his poetry and talking with friends. Made during Parra's visit to the YMHA Poetry Center in New York. "... a series of punches to the solar plexus – physical, moral, audio and visual – of the audience." - The Sunday Magazine, Santiago, Chile.

​​In the Unidad Vecinal Portales, also known as Villa Portales, a group of teenagers who have been friends for years, live together united by skateboarding. Through their conversations we delve into their humor and what is important to them, their uncomfortable opinions and what really unites them as men and friends.

Call for solidarity with Chile through a song by Víctor Jara. Montage film. (Chronology of Chilean cinema in exile 1973/1983, Zuzana M. Pick, 1984)

This dreamlike, poetic video provokes the viewer to question the nature of the most human of experiences. The collage aesthetic exposes how human relationships—between men and women, men and men, women and women—are mediated by dominant ideologies as represented in the mass media and religion. Bobe posits no theories and draws no conclusions, leaving the viewer with a truly postmodern conundrum about life, love, art, men, women and death.

In the streets of Recoleta, a commune located in the northern sector of the city of Santiago, capital of Chile, there are people marginalized from society, addicted to base paste. In this documentary we meet El Rusio (40), Christopher (24), Andrés (25), Claudio (37), Marcela (41) and Elba (63). Who through their narrations make us understand their point of view of the life they lead on the street. The representation of youth as: wanting to enjoy life to the fullest; adulthood as: maturity and repentance; and old age as: loneliness. She is seen by these characters.