Notre Dame welcomed three well-known Chilean film directors for the Chilean Film Festival this past weekend. Directors Ignacio Agüero, Gonzalo Justiniano, and Andres Wood all joined the Notre Dame community for a discussion panel answering questions from the audience on Thursday, with screenings of the films following the discussion and continuing throughout the weekend.
All three of the directors are graduates of Saint George’s, a college in Santiago, Chile that was founded by Notre Dame and the Congregation of Holy Cross. As a result of this historical relationship, the directors each noted that they felt a strong connection with the Notre Dame.
The assortment of films selected represented “a very interesting way to show Chile,” Agüero noted. All five films embrace a different aspect of Chilean culture and a different style of film-making.
Justiniano’s film, B-HAPPY, has a simple, yet meaningful message. Justiniano’s inspiration for this light-hearted film was a Chilean youth he befriended. “I met a young girl, about 14 years old, with lots of problems in her life, and yet she still had lots of energy. She always showed her positive side and wanted to be happy. B-HAPPY is the simple but strong story of this girl’s life and her determination to go forward where the light is,” Justiniano described.
After the making of B-HAPPY in 2003, Justiniano switched from drama to comedy. “Life is a mixture of drama and comedy, and I always have work passing from one side to the other,” he said.
Two of Andres Woods’ films were shown over the course of the weekend. In regard to his film-making, Woods said he tries “to add as many layers to the films as possible and [he] wants the audience to catch it,” rather than making themes painfully obvious. The first film shown, VIOLETA WENT TO HEAVEN, is based on the story of the famous Chilean singer and artist, Violeta Parra. An iconic music star of the country, Parra’s story is incredible and Woods’ interesting sequencing and filming techniques only add to the story.
MACHUCA was the second film directed by Woods to be shown at the festival. This film illustrated many stories based on Woods’ experiences at Saint George’s in Chile when he was younger. Woods attended film school in New York, but his education at Saint George’s certainly made an impact on his life. On the subject, he noted that “everything, in a way starts, at Saint George’s—there is a spirit there that makes people have a special relationship with their country.”
The final two films shown were documentaries by Ignacio Agüero. AGUSTIN’S NEWSPAPER follows a group of journalism students from the University of Chile as they attempt to investigate the role of the newspaper in reporting their country’s political history during the election of Salvador Allende and the years following the coup against him in 1973. His other film, 100 CHILDREN WAITING FOR A TRAIN, first came out five years ago but is still a beautiful film about how spaces transform when different people use them. In the case of the film, a church room doubled as a theater – a space where children could go to escape from their daily lives and learn about the magic of the cinema.
Ellen Roof is a freshman majoring in business and psychology who is in shock that her first year at Notre Dame is coming to a close. Email her at eroof@nd.edu.
