Patricio Guzmán (‘The Battle of Chile’) Five Film Box Set Due Sept. 29

“Guzmán’s movies have the thrust of manifestos and the layered richness of epic novels.”
New York Magazine

FIVE FILMS BY PATRICO GUZMÁN

“What the world knows of Chile in the 1970s, it knows through the films of Patricio Guzmán.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Icarus Films is proud to announce the release of the special eight-disc box set collection Five Films by Patricio Guzmán featuring five of the master documentarian’s seminal works. Filmed over more than 35 years, Guzmán’s films here depict Chile’s path over that time, coping with political trauma and trying to come to terms with its history.

guzman-largeFrom The Battle of Chile, filmed in black and white, on 16mm film, in the midst of social upheaval and revolution, to Nostalgia for the Light, filmed with modern digital technology, filled with vibrant colors, poetic connections and introspection, Guzmán’s epic body of work is the unprecedented record of one country’s journey and one filmmaker’s evolution.

The box set will be released on Tuesday, September 29, 2015. On the same date the films will also be available on VOD, including The Battle of Chile, online for the first time ever.

Born in Santiago de Chile in 1941, Patricio Guzmán is one of the leading documentary filmmakers in the world. He studied filmmaking at the Film Institute at the Catholic University of Chile, and at the Official School of Film in Madrid. After the 1973 Chilean coup Guzmán left the country and has lived in Cuba, Spain and France, where he currently resides. Six of his films have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, including The Battle of Chile, The Pinochet Case, Salvador Allende, Nostalgia for the Light, for which he received the Grand Award from the European Film Academy in 2011.

Guzmán’s The Battle of Chile remains one of the most widely praised documentary films of all time, and was named “one of the 10 best political documentary films in the world” by Cineaste. His films have been extensively screened worldwide and he’s been the subject of numerous film retrospectives, most recently at the British Film Institute, Harvard Film Archive, and BAMcinématek. In 2013, he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and last February he was awarded with the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlinale for The Pearl Button, his most recent production (which is due to open theatrically in the US this fall).

“Mr. Guzmán’s belief in eternal memory is an astounding leap of faith.” —The New York Times
Five Films by Patricio Guzmán offers an extraordinary opportunity to revisit the work by one of world’s leading documentarians, who is the only director with two films in the top 20 of Sight & Sound’s list of Greatest Documentaries of All Time. The box set includes:
  • The Battle of Chile: Part One (1975), Part Two (1976) and Part Three (1978), the epic and universally acclaimed chronicle of Chile’s open and peaceful socialist revolution, and of the violent counter-revolution against it in 1973.
  • Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), the poignant portrait of a nation battling with historical reminiscences.
  • The Pinochet Case (2001), the haunting story of the landmark legal case against General Augusto Pinochet before and after his arrest in London in 1998
  • Salvador Allende (2004), the poetic and definitive portrait of the Chilean leader; and
  • Nostalgia for the Light (2011), the gorgeous, personal meditation on astronomy, archaeology, and politics.
And two major bonuses elements:
  • A 24-page booklet with a new essay written by José Miguel Palacios.
  • The documentary film Filming Obstinately, Meeting Patricio Guzmán (2014) by Boris Nicot, an intimate journey of the filmmaker’s work in the shadow of the tumultuous history of Chile.

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