The Chilean dictatorship by the foreign cameras: the social life under repression in the internationals TV and cinema

Abstract

The coup d’état in Chile had an impact abroad, what makes that it can be defined as a “world-event”. For the foreigners’ television channels and filmmakers, the September 11, 1973 encouraged the realization of films and TV’s reports to denounce the repression in the South American country, intending to collapse the image of a “normal” everyday sold by the militaries for the outside of the borders. In the second half of the 1970s, further than denounce, this international audiovisual productions searched to understand the processes of restoration of the social life and creation of a new ideology in the social groups (mainly by the empowerment of the guilds) that were giving a long term to the dictatorship. In view of this, this article analyses some audiovisuals sources shots in Chile by foreign filmmakers soon after the coup d’état and the behind Swiss documentary Chili: ordre, travail, obéissance (1977). The main idea is to understand the representations that these sources build about the everydayness during the Pinochet dictatorship in these two moments. Shots under the scouting of the Military Junta, these sources use a lot of everyday life footages made in Chile, since these have often been the only possible images that they could register under repression. Nevertheless, edited abroad, these scenes have been incorporated in films and TV’s reports to confront the militaries speech about the “normalization” of the country that they were intending to transmit to the international public opinion.