By IPS Correspondents
SANTIAGO, Aug 17 2004 (IPS)

Chilean director Miguel Littin plans to complete his film "La última luna" (The Last Moon) in September, aiming to release it in Chile this year and also project it onto the "wall of shame" that the Israeli government is building to close off the Palestinian West Bank.

The film deals with the friendship between a Palestinian and an Israeli and was shot in Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2003. Littin will now be able to complete production thanks to a state grant he won from Chile’s National Arts Fund (FONDART).

Littin, of Palestinian origin, is one of Chile’s most internationally well-known film makers, with many films to his name.

His career kicked off in 1969 with "El chacal de Nahueltoro" (The Jackal of Nahueltoro) which was considered the best Chilean film of the 20th century in a survey of critics.

The film maker went into exile following Chile’s coup d’etat in 1973 – the same year "La tierra prometida" (The Promised Land) was released. Later, in Mexico, he filmed "Actas de Marusia" (Letters from Marusia), based on a novel by writer and songwriter Patricio Manns, where Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté played the lead.

In 1978, Littin presented "El recurso del método", inspired by the book of the same name by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, and in 1979 "La viuda Montiel" (the Widow Montiel), based on a story by Colombian Nobel Literature Prizewinner Gabriel García Márquez.

Both films starred Chilean actor Nelso Villagra, star also of "El chacal de Nahueltoro."

"Alsino y el cóndor" (Alsino and the Condor) followed in 1982, a feature filmed in Nicaragua while that Central American country was governed by the leftist Sandinistas, although it was inspired by the classic novel by Chile’s Pedro Prado.

Back in Chile following the return of democracy in March 1990, Littin produced "Los náufragos" (the Castaways) in 1995, then travelled abroad again to make "Sandino" a mega-production on the life of Nicaragua’s national hero Augusto César Sandino, also released in 1995.

But both "Sandino" and "Tierra del Fuego", another high budget film, released in 2000, fell foul of the critics.

Littin also made documentaries, starting in 1971 with "Compañero presidente" (Comrade President), dedicated to Salvador Allende – the socialist president overthrown in the third year of his presidency in 1973 by General Augusto Pinochet.

In 1985 he presented "Acta general de Chile" (Final Statement on Chile) on European television. He filmed this documentary about the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile after entering the country under a false identity.

The story of this event was told in all its details by García Márquez in his book "La aventura de Miguel Littin clandestino en Chile" (Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin).

Littin was born in Palmilla, around 200 kilometres south of Santiago, in 1942. He has never failed to identify with his Palestinian roots and his political vocation led him to become mayor of his hometown for two terms in the 1990s with the backing of the co-governing Socialist Party.

In 2001 he returned to his documentary bent with "Crónicas palestinas" (A Palestinian Chronicle) dealing with the second Intifada (popular uprising) in the territories occupied by Israel.

Now, with "La última luna" (The Last Moon), Littin is keeping the Palestinian territories in view while returning to fiction with a project that seeks to delve into the crucial issue of coexistence between Arabs and Jews.

The director has said the film "deals with the problems between Israelis and Palestinians. It is hard-hitting and is tremendously relevant to the moment, with regards to the problem experienced by these two peoples."

The script is spoken in Arabic and Hebrew and will be subtitled for screening in Chile and elsewhere, although the Palestinians will see the original if Littin is able to pull off his plan of using the West Bank wall as a screen.

There are three Chileans in the cast: Francisca Merino, Alejandro Goic and Tamara Acosta, and filming was completed under extremely difficult conditions in the occupied territories, in locations such as Bethlehem, Bait Sahur and Beit Yala.

"Curfews could be imposed at any time, highways could be closed and we would be unable to leave the hotel. We had to improvise work schedules day by day," Littin said in a radio interview on Radio Cooperativa de Santiago.

"Israeli helicopters were flying overhead, their guns aiming down, while we were filming," he said.

In Littin’s opinion, the nine-metre high barrier being built by the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon "does not separate Israel from Palestine, but fragments Palestine itself, making it an inhuman measure which goes against all the rights of man."

The wall "does not contribute in the least to stopping individual terrorism, rather in itself it constitutes an atrocious manifestation of state terrorism," he concluded.

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