My Imaginary Country (2022)
(Mi país imaginario, Patricio Guzmán, Chile/France 2022, 83 min., DCP, Spanish w/English subtitles)
About 1.5 million Chileans revolted in 2019 against the constitution, injustices, and privatized pension system imposed during the Pinochet dictatorship. Filmmaker Guzmán, who had documented the CIA-inspired coup that deposed Salvador Allende’s socialist government (The Battle of Chile, 1976 /1979) returned to his country to record this struggle, told through interviews with women participants: “There are flames that consume and flames that nourish.” This screening commemorates fifty years of hemispheric solidarity on the part of the Rochester Committee on Latin America, a long-time sponsor of the Labor Film Series and takes place just three days before Chilean Independence Day.