Puissances du quotidien : remèdes contre l’absence dans un cinéma chilien de l’exil

Abstract

After the 1973 coup d’État, Chilean cinema quickly retook its activity from abroad. Two key films were then produced, pioneer manifestations of exile cinema: Dialogue of the exiled (Raoul Ruiz, 1974) and There’s no forgetting (Mallet, Fajardo & González 1975). The present article seeks to bring into dialogue these two works through the prism of a shared feature: the description of the everyday banalities of life in exile. Drawing freely on Henri Bergson’s notion of absence, and critically engaging with Said’s, Didi-Huberman’s and Traverso’s reflections on the experience of exile, the text will explain why, in times of a radical adversity, Chilean cinema sought shelter in a “poetics of the everyday”, apparently stranger to any direct political agenda. Some sequences will then be analyzed to show how these films succeed to signify exile without conceding to a paralyzing melancholy or to a categorical political statement.

Keywords

• Chilean cinema
• exile
• everyday
• Raoul Ruiz
• Marilú Mallet