Excellent Footage


I rate this 7/10.

+7 because of its valuable footage and factual (although one sided) historical events.

-3 because the narrator is very opinionated and slanted, biased, and distorts his interpretation of claims with half truths and lies.

Examples: Leftist Protesters are regarded as "Demonstrators", while right-wing protesters are labeled by him as "troublemakers". I've seen this done many times in political documentaries, especially when Israel labels Palestinian protesters as "terrorists".

You got to keep in mind, in a communist/socialist environment the right-wingers will become oppressed. In a right-wing environment the roles are reversed, the communist/socialists become the oppressed. Watching this film and understanding it requires critical thinking skills to analyze what is relevant or irrelevant, in this case the narrator's talking is irrelevant.

I only wish that the footage's Patricio Guzman obtained wasn't butchered up to serve his own self-serving perception of what occurred in Chile. It would be nice if an unbiased or non-political director obtained the complete footage and re-make this documentary with an objective narration rather than Patricio's subjective point of view.

In one scene, the "left-wing demonstrators" antagonize the Christian Right-Wingers by heading to their Ministry in order to provoke trouble. These demonstrators are met with gun shots from the building windows and flying objects falling over their heads. A valid statement is made by one of the "Christian" party supporters, in which he points out that no policing authority was present to protect them, which is why they took a defensive position. The narrator however slants this by making them the aggressors and assumes they were being offensive.

The 2nd and 3rd parts of this documentary only gets worse with the narrators (Guzman's) opinionated slanted position.

I am apolitical and without bias on political matters, in case anyone assumes I am defending Pinochet's reign or Fascism.

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I'm glad I read this review prior to renting the documentary. Too many documentaries are anything but factual with a political slant I find both obnoxious and patronizing. Propaganda is propaganda, whether left, right or something else entirely. Same inflammatory adjectives and adverbs.

I'm still going to rent it--need to get back in touch with a Chilean childhood that confused me, in large part due to U.S. involvement--but thanks for the caveat emptor.

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Frankly, I'm just amazed that anybody expects a "documentary" to be unbiased and without bias or motive. This is ALWAYS a factor. There is no such thing as an objective documentary, and to hold films like this one up to this artificial standard is naive at best. We already know what point of view the work is taking.

What is more important is the ability to go into such a viewing experience aware of some of the facts, and be conscious of what the biases are... and then judge the work accordingly. It's no secret that this is a propaganda film... but is it a valuable one? Despite its clear Marxist agenda, does it still provide an interesting and enlightening view of events from that time? Would a "pro-capitalist" version of events be somehow less compromised?

I quite enjoyed this film, and regardless of the slant from the filmmakers, I thought it painted a fascinating diagram of the machinations of government and revolution from any point of view.

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"We already know what point of view the work is taking."

WTF ????

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