October 25, 2002
Clandestine in Chile, A Story of Another Revenge
Yesterday, i found a nice book, Clandestine in Chile, written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian nobel prize literature award winner. I was impressed with this book because of its unordinary story, and actually is a real story.
It's about Miguel Littín, a Chilean born director and producer who was made head of Chile's film industry by the Allende government in 1970. After Allende's overthrow in 1973 Littín fled to Mexico, where he continued to work in exile. He returns to his native country disguised as a Uruguayan public-relations agent. His purpose is to film Chile today, to record the "abominable silences" of his beloved country under siege. This really desperate action was successfully done, he managed three filmmaker teams came from three different countries, Italia, France and Netherland. The wonderful is, each teams doesn't know each other existences and purposes, and every team, doesn't know that they actually directed by Littín using another man. Even he also several times appeared on the film, which actually he used to manage his crews by his fellows hands.
The another story that Marquez wrote on this book is Littín's self story. About how he fight the denial of himself to be another man that in Littín's real life is hated by him. It's also a funny story that his close friend, codenamed with Frankie, a respectable Chilean filmmaker, doesn't know that the Uruguay man is his friend. And, even his own mother-in-law doesn't know him exactly. To do this, he need to change his performance under a psychologist and clandestine special consultant (clandestine is an undercover operational, usually by inteligence agency to act in protected area, politically, usually to sabotage-infiltriate-or covert mission). Yes, he do the most amazing work by that fact that he is really a non-professional covert agent that usually work like this.
And, for the god's sake, his job is really great. He several times had do many mistakes, and really near with death. And finally, we just very grateful that still exist a man like him. Finally, he could do his revenge with Pinochet, and also made his present to give a tail behind Pinochet's government.
Posted at October 25, 2002 03:45 PM | Books
