Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Chilean cinema emerged at the turn of the twentieth
century, mainly at the initiative of European immigrants
who were interested in documenting local events. The
first known Chilean film, Un ejercicio general de bomberos
(General Drill of the Fire Brigade), was shot and screened
in the coastal city of Valparaiso in 1902. Celluloid evidence
of this and other periods has been lost owing to
lack of preservation and, occasionally, active destruction
by a hostile government. Similar issues have existed in
Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, but Chile is distinguished
from these major filmmaking countries in its chronic
difficulty in achieving an industrial scale of production
(in spite of the high level of industrialization in other
economic sectors); a precocious disposition in favor of
international co-productions (dating to the 1940s); an
unusually strong preference for realism and featurelength
documentary; and the fact that a major portion
of Chilean cinema has been produced in exile. However,
with the staging of the First International Festival of New
Latin American Cinema at Viña del Mar in 1967, Chile
became a crucible for that emerging body of film.
Chilean cinema must, then, be considered in light of
the distinct periods of its development as well as the
evolving definition of the ‘‘national.’’
INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS
Following early artisanal efforts based mainly in
Santiago, a period of intense filmmaking activity in
the silent 1920s, in ten cities, resulted in more than
fifty films up to 1930. These films included documentary
and fictional portrayals of historical figures, such as
communist leader Luis Emilio Recabarren (whose
funeral was filmed by Carlos Pellegrini and Luis
CHILE
Pizarro in 1924) and independence guerrilla fighter
Manuel Rodríguez (in El Húsar de la muerte, [The
Deadly Hussar, Pedro Sienna, 1925), alongside fictional
genre films ranging from patriotic reconstructions and
melodramas to urban comedies. The transition to
sound, inaugurated in 1934 by US-trained Jorge
Délano (b. 1895) with Norte y sur (North and South),
did not lead to an industrial boom but rather a decline
in production (about one feature per year up to 1940).
The creation of the Corporación de Fomento a la
Producción (CORFO) in 1938 by the Popular Front
government briefly reversed the downward trend by
providing 50 percent of the development capital for
Chile Films, a studio complex built in 1942 and
inspired by the import-substitution model then thriving
in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. In contrast to the
current pattern of export-based industrialization in
much of the developing world, this was a model of
industrial development, popular in mid-twentieth century
Latin America, that involved the substitution of
costly imports by goods that could be produced locally.
Thus, new production was based on the prior existence
of a domestic market, rather than on external demand
for products that were then protected by strong tariffs.
Included in this category were basic industrial machinery,
household supplies, oil, minerals, wood products,
and non-durable goods such as shoes and textiles. The
Chile Films studio folded in 1949, and its long-term
effects on the development of Chilean cinema were
mixed: it depended on Argentina Sono Films for technical
expertise, and it welcomed Argentine directors at
the helm of its genre-oriented productions, which have
been generally described as ‘‘folklorist.’’
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 265