While poetry has long been the golden nugget of this narrow country, Chilean cinema is gaining world recognition. The previous generation saw censorship and an artistic exodus with the military dictatorship, but today’s Chile has rebounded with a fresh and sometimes daring emphasis on the arts.
Twentieth-century Chile has produced many of Latin America’s most celebrated writers. The most acclaimed are poets Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, both Nobel Prize winners.
Mistral (born Lucila Godoy Alcayaga; 1889–1957) was a shy young rural schoolmistress from Elqui Valley who won great acclaim for her compassionate, reflective and mystical poetry. She became South America’s first Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1945. Langston Hughes’ Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral provides an introduction.
Nicanor Parra (1914–2018) drew Nobel Prize attention for his hugely influential and colloquial ‘antipoetry.’ De hojas de Parra (From the Pages of Parra) and Poemas y antipoemas (Poems and Antipoems) are his best known. Bohemian Jorge Teillier (1935–96) wrote poetry of teenage angst and solitude.
Fragile social facades were explored by José Donoso (1924–96). His celebrated novel Curfew offers a portrait of life under the dictatorship through the eyes of a returned exile, while Coronación (Coronation), made into a hit film, follows the fall of a dynasty.
Chile’s most famous contemporary literary export is Isabel Allende (b 1942), niece of late president Salvador Allende. She wove ‘magical realism’ into best-selling stories with Chilean historic references, such as House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia and Maya’s Notebook. My Invented Country (2004) gives insight into perceptions of Chile and Allende herself. She was granted the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.
US resident Ariel Dorfman (b 1942) is another huge literary presence, with plays La negra Ester (Black Ester) and Death and the Maiden. The latter is set after the fall of a South American dictator, and is also an acclaimed movie.
Novelist Antonio Skármeta (b 1940) became famous for Ardiente paciencia (Burning Patience), inspired by Neruda and adapted into the award-winning film Il postino (The Postman).
Luis Sepúlveda (b 1949) is one of Chile’s most prolific writers, with such books as Nombre de torero (The Name of the Bullfighter), a tough noir set in Germany and Chile; and the excellent short-story collection Patagonia Express. For a lighter romp through Chile, Roberto Ampuero (b 1953) writes mystery novels, such as El Alemán de Atacama (The German of Atacama), whose main character is a Valparaíso-based Cuban detective.
Justly considered one of the greats in Latin American literature, the work of Roberto Bolaño (1955–2005) is enjoying a renaissance. The posthumous publication of his encyclopedic 2666 seals his cult-hero status, but it’s worth checking out other works. Born in Santiago, he spent most of his adult life in exile in Mexico and Spain.
Best-selling author Marcela Serrano (b 1951) tackles women’s issues in books such as Antigua vida mia (My Life Before: A Novel) and others. Homosexuality and other taboo subjects are treated with top-notch shock value by Pedro Lemebel (b 1950), author of novel Tengo miedo torero (My Tender Matador).
Younger writers rejecting the ‘magical realism’ of Latin literature include Alberto Fuguet (b 1964), whose Sobredosis (Overdose) and Mala onda (Bad Vibes) have earned acclaim and scowls. Among other contemporary talents, look for the erotic narratives of Andrea Maturana, fiction writer Alejandro Zambra, novelist Carlos Franz and writers Marcelo Mellado, Gonzalo Contreras, María Luisa Bombal, Lina Meruane and Claudia Apablaza.
Before the 1973 coup Chilean cinema was among the most experimental in Latin America and it is now returning to reclaim some status. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s kooky El Topo (The Mole; 1971) is an underground cult classic mixing genres long before Tarantino.
There was little film production in Chile during the Pinochet years, but exiled directors kept shooting. Miguel Littín’s Alsino y el condor (Alsino and the Condor; 1983) was nominated for an Academy Award. Exiled documentary-maker Patricio Guzmán has often made the military dictatorship his subject matter. The prolific Paris-based Raúl Ruiz is another exile. His English-language movies include the psychological thriller Shattered Image (1998).
Post-dictatorship, Chile’s weakened film industry was understandably preoccupied with the after-effects of the former regime. Ricardo Larraín’s La frontera (The Borderland; 1991) explored internal exile, and Gonzalo Justiniano’s Amnesia (1994) used the story of a Chilean soldier forced to shoot prisoners to challenge Chileans not to forget past atrocities.
Then the mood lightened. The most successful Chilean movie to date, Cristián Galaz’s El chacotero sentimental (The Sentimental Teaser; 1999) won 18 national and international awards for the true story of a frank radio host whose listeners reveal their love entanglements. Silvio Caiozzi, among Chile’s most respected veteran directors, adapted a José Donoso novel to make Coronación (Coronation; 2000), about the fall of a family dynasty. Comedy Taxi para tres (Taxi for Three; 2001), by Orlando Lübbert, follows bandits in their heisted taxi. Pablo Larraín’s Tony Manero (2008) sends up a disco-obsessed murderer.
A period drama about the referendum on the Pinochet presidency, No (2013), directed by Pablo Larraín and starring Gael García Bernal, was the first Chilean film nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Larraín has gone on to direct internationally, as with award-winning Jackie (2017), and make other Chilean classics like El club (2015), about sex offenders in the Catholic Church, and Neruda (2016), a fictionalized account of Neruda’s forced exile when communism was outlawed.
In a kind of celluloid therapy, the film industry has worked through Chile’s traumatic past while gaining international success. Machuca (2004), directed by Andrés Wood, shows two boys’ lives during the coup. Sub terra (2003) dramatizes mining exploitation. Mi mejor enemigo (My Best Enemy; 2004), a collaboration with Argentina and Spain, is set in Patagonia during the Beagle conflict (a 1978 territorial dispute between Argentina and Chile over three islands in the Beagle Channel). El perro (2017), directed by Marcela Said, explores the uneasy friendship between an upper-class woman and a former member of the secret police.
It’s not all war, torture and politics, though. The new breed of globally influenced teen flicks originated with Promedio rojo (loosely translated as Flunking Grades; 2005) from director Nicolás López. Crystal Fairy and the Magic Cactus (2013) cast comedic actor Michael Cera as an arrogant tourist on a quest to trip on San Pedro cactus. Director Matías Bize’s La vida de los pesces (The Life of Fish; 2010) and En la cama (In Bed; 2005) both gained attention abroad. La once (Tea Time; 2015), directed by Maite Alberdi, is a quiet documentary about female friendships through the decades. Filmmaker Alicia Scherson’s moody Bolaño adaptation Il futuro (The Future; 2013) was well-received at Sundance.
Emerging tendencies include examining the rich theme of class conflict and using more female protagonists to tell Chilean stories. Darling of the Sundance Film Festival, Sebastián Silva’s La nana (The Maid; 2009) tells the story of a maid whose personal life is too deeply entwined with her charges. On its heels, Gloria (2013), directed by Sebastián Lelio, was another favorite of international film festivals. From the same director, groundbreaking A Fantastic Woman (2017) is a spellbinding portrait of a transgender woman in Santiago.
Fabulous scenery makes Chile a dream location for foreign movies too; contemporary films to have been shot here include The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Bond movie Quantam of Solace (2008) and The Colony, based on a Nazi sect in Chile, with Emma Watson. The documentary-style film 180° South (2010) uses a surfer’s quest to explore Patagonia to highlight environmental issues, with gorgeous scenery footage. Blockbuster The 33 (2015) dramatized the real-life Chilean mining disaster.
Born in a provincial town as Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, Neruda devised his famous alias fearing that his blue-collar family would mock his ambition. The leftist poet led a flamboyant life, building gloriously outlandish homes in Santiago, Valparaíso and Isla Negra. His most famous house, La Chascona, was named after his third wife Matilde Urrutia’s perpetually tangled shock of hair.
Awarded a diplomatic post after early literary success, he gained international celebrity wearing his political opinions on his sleeve. He helped political refugees flee after the Spanish Civil War and officially joined the Communist Party once back in Chile, where he was elected senator. After helping Gabriel González Videla secure the presidency in 1946, he had to escape over the Andes into exile when the president outlawed the Communist Party.
All the while Neruda wrote poems. A presidential candidate in 1969, he pulled out of the race in support of Salvador Allende. While serving as Allende’s ambassador to France, he received a Nobel Prize, becoming only the third Latin American writer to win the award.
Shortly afterward he returned to Chile with failing health. Pressure was mounting on Allende’s presidency. Mere days after the 1973 coup, Neruda died of cancer and a broken heart. His will left everything to the Chilean people through a foundation. The Pinochet regime set about sacking and vandalizing his homes. Later his widow lovingly restored them, and they are now open to the public.
Neruda’s works include Heights of Macchu Picchu, Canto General and Passions and Impressions, available in translation.