Macarena Aguiló's THE CHILEAN BUILDING probes Pinochet's Chile from a new angle

After everything we've seen concerning the last half-century of Chilean history, including the hope and promise of the democratically elected Allende government, its betrayal from within and without (the disgusting and illegal efforts of Nixon and Kissinger) and the horror of the subsequent Pinochet dictatorship -- all this would take in countless documentaries, docudramas, poignant philosophical musings and narrative films -- nothing I have witnessed has had quite the same odd impact as the surprisingly quiet new documentary, THE CHILEAN BUILDING, opening this coming Monday at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem.

If your first thoughts regarding the title of this doc run to the likes of, "Oh, that must be the building in which left-leaning citizens were tortured" (as did mine), forget it. The titular building can be found in Cuba, and it was the final home, after trekking across Europe, for more than 60 Chilean children whose parents, back home in Chile, were fighting against the Pinochet regime. Consequently any living relatives of these "freedom fighters" were possible fodder for kidnap, torture and murder by the dictatorship. Children were especially vulnerable. In fact, the film's director, Macarena Aguiló (shown above) was herself kidnapped as a child -- a ploy by the dictatorship to get at her father, who was then in hiding.

This "plan," which came to be known as Project Home included some 20 Chilean adults who supervised the more than 60 children, including Ms Aguiló -- whose mothers and fathers were members of the leftist organization Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), some of whom were never seen again -- through their childhood and/or adolescent years to adulthood. TrustMovies never realized that such a program existed, but it makes perfect sense in terms of safety for the children, while freeing the parents to do whatever they had to, without the additional fear for their offspring.

The program began in Europe, with France and Belgium especially helpful (we got a taste of the French allegiance in Blame It on Fidel), and then moved on to Cuba, where that building of the title came to be the home for the kids. The documentary itself is very sophisticated, both in the way it uses so many different elements to tell its story -- home movies, interviews, animation (lovely simple hand-drawn stuff by Nestor Perez), drawings, maps -- and the viewpoints it encompasses: that of the filmmaker herself, who is a part of this Project Home; of the parents lost to their children in one way or another, alive and fighting or dead and gone; and the surro-gate parents. Most interesting and moving is the fact that Aguiló lets us see the children and the parents -- both then and now.

To hear the older adults speaking of the revolution and what it meant to them is sad because, of course, little has happened in the forty years since. The idea -- the dream -- of equality lingers still. Aguiló talks to her adoptive dad and shows us her "three social siblings" in The Chilean House. One man talks of his mother back then: "She had chosen a clear and concise action, and I could not go with her." This sort of thing makes one grow up fast.

The film is full of funny moments, too. In Cuba, the women envied the way the Chilean men worked around the house doing the chores. "Our men would never do that. We were jealous!" The movie also gives us a sense of what communal life was all about. MIR, we are told, was fond of Project Home, but also could be critical: Kids could never correct adults, it seems, even when the kids were right. Eventually, the Project Home children found respite in the La Beca school, "where the adults understood us."

We learn about the "fake" lives that the real parents were living in Chile, with fake names, fake friends, fake everything. "Yet often they had real feelings, even for their "fake" friends," we are told. The film and its participants try not to allow emotions or tears to cloud up the commentary, but every so often feelings escape, and the film becomes all the more moving for the individuals' attempts to block this. One of the parents explains, "Reality proved more stubborn that we had predicted, and we saw that things were not turning out as we wished."  A father who had abandoned his children tells us, "I am not a part of the new life they built, and I don't want to be. That's the price of protecting a country, and of fighting a dictatorship."

What this movie finally gets at, and about as strongly and precisely as I have seen, is the price we all must finally pay for past actions. As another young woman explains it, "What these families are experiencing is the need not to risk damaging all that they have built up -- their life, which is dangling by a very narrow thread -- by talking about the past." And yet, as the filmmaker and her documentary tell us at the close: "Emptiness is a path that is only filled when you walk it."

The Chilean Building, from Magic Lantern, is a movie worth experiencing. Filmed in Chile, Cuba, France and Belgium, the documentary, lasting 96 minutes, will open for a week's run at the Maysles Cinema, beginning this Monday August 13  through Sunday, August 19, showing nightly at 7:30pm. Click here for directions.

Of Stars and Bones: Patricio Guzmán's profound NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT

New Yorkers are blessed this week to have two documen-taries as diverse and humbling as Bill Cunningham New York (covered two days ago) and now the latest exploration of history and memory in Chile from Patricio Guzmán, the filmmaker/poet who has given us The Battle of Chile; Chile, Obstinate Memory; and the documen-tary about Salvador Allende (also covered earlier this week).

His new film NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT, which won Best Docu-mentary at last year's European Film Awards, may not actually bring to a close Guzmán's accounting of the ravaging of his birth country by the Pinochet regime (nothing save the filmmaker's own death will shut that door), but it is hard to imagine that he might do anything better, richer or more profound than this new film.

From the metallic sheen of the telescope (below) that opens the movie to the lace napkin and linen tablecloth in the kitchen or the slim, sculpted legs of a wooden chair in the living room that we see soon after -- the objects that begin the film are captured with such attention and love that we feel somehow secure. We're in the Atacama Desert, where the humidity is the lowest of anywhere on our planet and the air is ultra-clear for viewing the stars. Guzmán (shown at left) narrates the film himself, and his soothing, meditative voice, accompanied by a parade of stunning images, tells of the history of this unusual desert (where rain never comes), with its mollusks and meteorites, archeology and (now) astronomy.

The filmmaker speaks first with an astronomer -- a smart, thoughtful fellow who lives and works in the desert -- and who waxes philosophical about everything from the stars to time itself: "Does the present exist?" he asks, after giving us a terrific explanation of why not. "Maybe only in our mind." (So much for that once popular phrase, Be Here Now.) Another man notes that the country of Chile still remains in the grasp of the coup d'etat: "We've hidden away our nearest past, the 19th Century -- and the Indians." He speaks of buried minerals and buried men, as we watch a row of musical spoons waft and sing in the wind and think about what we owe other living humans beings.

A half-hour in, we get the real connection: Near the observatory (above) lies the remains of Chacabuco, the largest concentration camp of the Pinochet regime. We meet a former prisoner from the camp who explains how he and others in a group of prisoners would observe the stars and feel oddly... free. (Until the guards made them stop because they might use those stars to navigate to freedom. As if.)

We learn that the regime buried many of their prisoners here in the surrounding desert. And then, to ensure that the bodies could not be found, identified and the guilty prosecuted, they dug up those corpses, broke them apart and re-buried them. We meet several of the women (below) who now spend their lives digging and searching through the many bones (and bits of bones) for their "disappeared" loved ones. One of these sits in the desert and speaks of finding and then stroking her brothers foot. "We were reuinited. Only then could I take in the fact that he was dead."

We also meet an exiled mother and son, now back in Chile. He's an astronomer, she gives massages to the victims of the torture. Guzmán does not dwell on the atrocities, as we've seen and heard about them previously. Yet through these people and their stories we glimpse quite enough to make this terrible time indelible.

The last story is that of a young female astronomer (above) who could easily stand in for this entire country. Used as a child hostage by the Pinochet regime to get her grandparents to tell the whereabouts of her parents (which they did  in order to save the child's life), she lost both parents and was raised by her grandparents. How the young woman, herself now a mother, has come to terms with all that has happened, how she feels and why, her splendid use of the word "defect," and how, via astronomy and contemplation, she has found her place in the universe -- all this is profoundly important and moving, a privilege to experience.

You will stand up after watching Nostalgia for the Light feeling invigorated and chastened, with the images of the disappeared -- in close-up above, and all together, like some mammoth AIDS quilt made of tiles, below -- an indelible, even welcome presence. Though absent, they are still here.

Many of the people interviewed in the film are not particularly religious, yet their thoughts and ideas stuck me as being as close to the truth about what unites us to each other and to the universe as anything I have yet heard.  If this is not pleasing to the Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalist religions, it is certainly good enough for me. As I hope it will be for you.

Nostalgia for the Light, from Icarus Films, debuts this Friday, March 18, at IFC Center, New York, for an exclusive two-week engagement. For a complete listing of venues -- cities, dates and theaters (14 in the U.S., two in Canada) where you can see this film, click here. Coming from Icarus, of course, there will also, eventually, be a DVD available.

Note: Interested in meeting this wonderful filmmaker? Señor Guzmán will appear in person at IFC Center on Friday, 3/18, and Saturday, 3/19, at the 8:10 shows.