Northwest Film Forum

Internationally hailed as a powerful historical portrait of the passions of a people divided and a nation on the brink of civil war, The Battle of Chile chronicles the tumultuous last months of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government (1970-1973) in Chile.

The Equipo Tercer Año, the Chilean filmmaking team led by Patricio Guzmán (Allende)—including cameraman Jorge Müller Silva, chief of production Federico Elton, soundman Bernardo Menz, and assistant director Jose Pino—which photographed and assembled this three-part, four-and-a-half-hour epic documentary, offers the viewer the vivid experience of being thrust into the midst of a society in crisis. The camera is seemingly everywhere, from intense debates in the halls of congress to the smoke and violence of street demonstrations, from the army’s raids on industrial centers for “stockpiled weapons” to mass political rallies in the streets of Santiago, and from the unforgettable sequence in which a newsreel cameraman records his own death by gunfire to the devastating aerial bombardment of the presidential palace.