Film Screening: The Pinochet Case
September 18, 2024 - 6:00 pm
Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Film screening followed by a Q&A Session
Augusto Pinochet, the general who overthrew President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, was the first dictator in Latin America – or the world – to be humbled by the international justice system since the Nuremberg trials.
In September 1998, Pinochet flew to London on a pleasure trip. He rested for a few days. He had tea with Margaret Thatcher. But, suddenly, he began experiencing back pain and underwent an operation in the London Clinic. Upon waking from surgery, he was arrested by the London police. Who was responsible for this?
This film by Patricio Guzmán investigates the legal origins of the case in Spain – where it began two years before Pinochet’s arrest. With the film’s protagonists, among them the prosecutor Carlos Castressana who filed the charges, and Judge Baltasar Garzon, who upheld them and issued the arrest warrant, THE PINOCHET CASE explores how a small group of people in Madrid laid the groundwork for this incredible feat.
Scotland Yard served the arrest warrant, and THE PINOCHET CASE also follows the workings of the British legal system that ensued. Crucial to the legal case against Pinochet were the testimonies of victims of those crimes. Hundreds of Chileans, most of them women, relatives of the “disappeared,” ex-prisoners that had suffered all kinds of torture and interrogation in secret prisons, traveled to Madrid to testify. THE PINOCHET CASE movingly incorporates their stories.
When Pinochet finally returned to Chile, he faced 200 accusations of crimes, this time in Chilean courts. Eventually the Chilean Supreme Court also stripped him of his immunity, and on January 29, 2001, Judge Juan Guzmán placed Augusto Pinochet under house arrest. The people were no longer afraid, and the Chilean justice system started to make up for lost time.
Jerry W. Carlson (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is professor and a historian of narrative forms with special expertise in narrative theory, the history of the novel, global independent film, and the cinemas of the Americas. From 2013 to 2022 he served as Chair of the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College CUNY. In addition, at the CUNY Graduate Center he is a member of the doctoral faculties of French, Comparative Literature, and Film & Media Cultures and a Senior Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies. He has lectured at Stanford, Columbia, Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Cuba), the University of Paris, and the University of Sao Paulo, among others. His current research is focused on how film and prose fiction from the Global South portray the histories and legacies of slavery, imperialism and colonialism. Moreover, he is an active producer, director, and writer with multiple Emmy Awards. As a Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created the series City Cinematheque about film history, Canapé about French-American cultural relations, and Nueva York (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City. As an independent producer, his work includes the Showtime Networks production Dirt directed by Nancy Savoca and Looking for Palladin directed by Andrzej Krakowski. In 1998, he was inducted by France as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques.
Curator & Moderator: Jerry W. Carlson, Senior Fellow, The Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies & Professor, The City College & Graduate Center, CUNY
TO REGISTER send email to bildner@gc.cuny.edu
