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Carmen Castillo

Carmen Castillo

Directing

Biography

Born in Santiago de Chile, she worked at La Moneda Palace with Salvador Allende. After the death of her partner, Miguel Enriquez, at the hands of the military, Carmen Castillo, who was pregnant and injured, was expelled from Chile and came to France as a political refugee. She has directed numerous documentaries for television, especially for the French channels TF1 and FR3 and for the Franco-German Arte. The first was Los muros de Santiago (1983), which was followed by Estado de guerra: Nicaragua (1984). La Flaca Alejandra (1993) won the Golden FIPA at Cannes, in addition to other awards in Geneva, Monte Carlo, San Francisco and New York. She then directed La verdadera leyenda del Subcomandante Marcos (1995), Inca de oro (1996), El bolero, una educación amorosa (1999), First Prize at the Annecy Festival, Viaje con la cumbia por Colombia (2000), María Félix, la inalcanzable (2000), El Camino del Inca (2001), El astronomo y el indio (2002), First Prize at the Paris Scientific Film Festival, José Saramago, el tiempo de una memoria (2003), Mísia, la voz del fado (2003) and El país de mi padre (2004), Second Prize Fidocs in Santiago de Chile. He also directed the fiction feature film series for Arte Tierras extranjeras, between 1994 and 1999. Carmen Castillo's most recent work is Calle Santa Fé (2007), which was presented in Cannes' Un Certain Regard and will be shown at this year's San Sebastian Film Festival in the Zabaltegi section. She has also written the scripts for Inca de oro and Color Habana, which have already been completed, and those for Hasta luego and La montaña azul, which are in pre-production. Carmen Castillo has also published several books, including Un día de octubre en Santiago (1980), Ligne de fuite (1987) and Santiago/Paris, el vuelo de la memoria (2000), with Mónica Echeverría.

Known For

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In 2002, Carmen Castillo returned to Chile and did a memory exercise centred on the life of her father Fernando Castillo Velasco, former rector of Universidad Católica de Chile and Premio Nacional de Arquitectura (1983). This film tells the story of this return centred on the desire to get closer to the mystery of the life and work of an enlightened man. It is the time for a memory, not an expeditious biography. Fernando recounts excerpts from his life, his work as an architect, university rector and mayor of La Reina. From the "Fifth", the place of childhood, he remembers with sincerity and simplicity. Like a watchman, like a lighthouse, he illuminates our present, like a compass shows us the way to build a world where affection and social justice prevail.

El País de mi padre

2004Movie
El camino del inca

The 23,000km long route of the Incas laces its way through the Cordillera range of the Andes. This road network served as the major means of transport, of communication and of government administration in the history of pre-colonialist America. The film covers three periods that deeply marked this region and its Indian tribes. Three phases, three eras for a road, and a history of violence and injustice that constantly repeats itself. Crystallizing the spirit of the conquests that took place in the Atacama Desert, a Peruvian prince once said in regard to the Indians: “We must spare our enemies or we will hurt ourselves, because they will soon be ours with all that is theirs”. In visualizing this statement, it is easy for us to imagine what hell the men of these lands endured during centuries of invasion and submission.

El camino del inca

2002Movie