On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende's democratically-elected Chilean government was overthrown in a bloody coup by General Augusto Pinochet's army.

Patricio Guzman and five colleagues had been filming the political developments in Chile throughout the nine months leading up to that day. The bombing of the Presidential Palace, during which Allende died, would now become the ending for Guzman's seminal documentary THE BATTLE OF CHILE, an epic chronicle of that country's open and peaceful socialist revolution, and of the violent counter-revolution against it.

After its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and winning eight Grand Prize awards at other international festivals, when THE BATTLE OF CHILE came to the United States it was immediately hailed by critics as "Spellbinding"¹, "Overwhelming"², and as "An epic!"³

The Village Voice called it "The major political film of our time,"⁴ and the San Francisco Chronicle "A landmark in the presentation of living history on film."⁵

Long banned in Chile after Pinochet's coup, only in 1997 could Guzman return to show THE BATTLE OF CHILE there for the first time. CHILE, OBSTINATE MEMORY, included as the fourth disc in the DVD box set, is the extraordinarily moving record of that homecoming, and a fitting conclusion to a "thrilling documentary double feature,"⁶ "the unusual opportunity to see one film artist sustain an inquiry into the life of a troubled country over the course of decades."⁷ 

About the DVD box set: The 4-disc DVD box set includes Guzmán's CHILE, OBSTINATE MEMORY, a 16-page booklet including a new introduction to Patricio Guzman's work by Cecilia Ricciarelli, and Pauline Kael's review of the film, and  a 22-minute interview with Patricio Guzman conducted by Brazlian film critic Jose Carlos Avellar. Released in 2009. 

Attributions: (1) Molly Haskell, New York Magazine; (2) Judith Crist, The New York Post; (3) Vincent Canby, The New York Times; (4) Tom Allen; (5) Judy Stone; (6) The Chicago Tribune; (7) Claudia Dreifus, The New York Times

Click here for Lawrence Van Gelder's New York Times review.

“The Battle of Chile, Patricio Guzmán’s 264-minute account of the social whirlwind that engulfed Salvador Allende’s socialist government in the early 1970s, is an epic documentary, an openly Marxist analysis and a stunning exercise in “you are there” vérité.” —J. Hoberman, The New York Times

"Great films rarely arrive as unheralded as The Battle of Chile." —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

"Not only the best films about Allende and the coup d'etat, but among the best documentary films every made, changing our concepts of political documentary within a framework accessible to the widest audience." —Time Out Film Guide