/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-CHILE: The ‘Discovery’ of Director Raul Ruiz

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Sep 3 2002 (IPS) - Raúl Ruiz is one of Chile’s most prolific and famous film directors, but also the least known in his own country, a paradox partially remedied by a recent retrospective of his works.

Chilean film-lovers could enjoy Ruiz’s seven major feature-length movies as well as roundtable discussions about his work with the director himself and with film critics last week in Santiago.

If there is another adjective to be added to Ruiz’s name, beyond prolific, famous and unknown, it is “hermetic”, which places him among those who are known as “film authors”.

So it may not be so strange that the impact of his career, which covers a hundred productions, including documentaries, shorts and feature-length films, can be explained with a sports metaphor, as Ruiz himself uses.

“As in the rest of the world, film has been impregnated with certain football terms. Each time one makes a movie it is as if one were attempting to make a goal, and everyone gets in your way to prevent the goal. In that case, the only option a filmmaker like me has is to provoke a penalty call, and that is when I make the goal,” he said.

Ruiz, born Jul 25, 1941, in Puerto Montt, 1,000 km south of Santiago, began building links to the art world through theatre in the early 1960s, and only later did he move towards making documentaries.

In 1968, after living for a year in Argentina, he produced “Tres tristes tigres” (Three Sad Tigers), his first feature film, which was included in the retrospective last week in Santiago.

In 1973 he was done filming “Palomita Blanca” (White Dove), based on the novel of the same name by Chilean writer Enrique Lafourcade, when the Augusto Pinochet-led coup occurred, on Sep 11. He, like thousands of Chileans, went into exile.

“Palomita Blanca” finally made its premiere in Santiago in 1993, thanks to the recovery of the film copies that had been abandoned in the warehouses of Chile Film, a state-run enterprise that the Pinochet regime (1973-1990) had sold.

“Tres tristes tigres” and “Palomita Blanca”, in addition to “El tiempo recobrado” (Recovered Time, 1999, France), are Ruiz’s three films that are best known in Chile through showings on the commercial film circuit.

The three were included in the retrospective, along with “Genealogías de un crimen” (Genealogies of a Crime, 1996, France), “Tres vidas y una sola muerte” (Three Lives and Just One Death, 1996, France), “Fado mayor y menor” (Fado in Major and Minor, 1993, France-Portugal), and “La comedia de la inocencia” (The Comedy of Innocence, 2000, France), all of which were new to the Chilean audiences.

The Ruiz film festival began Aug 22 with “Tres vidas.”, in which appears Italy’s Marcello Mastroianni, who died in 1996, and who Ruiz pays tribute, describing him as one of the most lucid, talented and versatile contemporary actors.

It is not frivolous praise, if one considers that Ruiz has directed actors such as France’s Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Beart, Spain’s Marisa Paredes, Chile’s Nelson Villagra, and U.S. actor John Malkovich.

The Chilean filmmaker, who has lived a long exile in France, maintains strong ties with his country of origin.

Ruiz told Wikén magazine that he is currently working on “Cofralandes”, a five-part documentary in which he imparts his impressions of Chile.

“I hope to finish it before I die. The contract, meanwhile, says it should be ready before the end of the year,” he said.

Upon “discovering” Ruiz, Chileans are also encountering a vision of filmmaking as a creative process that challenges “gut criticisms” as much as the commercialisation of what is known as “the seventh art”.

“I have always moved between two worlds: that of theory and that of the great film. And now that I am getting older, the two worlds are gradually combining,” he said.

“I want the audiences to see the film that they paid to see, and also the film that they are imagining, which is another,” said the filmmaker.

Ruiz rejects mainstream movies, like most of those produced in Hollywood, because the “prevent the viewer from telling his or her own story, because it is already pre-digested.”