Wallmapu in Contemporary Chilean Cinema

Abstract

Chilean cinema has developed alongside the political changes of the past decade. Its aesthetic is one of discordance or disjuncture (desajuste), in which political and social issues seep into the country’s films through a variety of formal practices. Films made between 2010 and 2020 oscillate between an adherence to realism and the principle of “processualism” (procesualidad) as a way of revealing the mechanisms of representation and thus highlighting their own mediation. This article examines such an aesthetic of disjuncture by studying the cinematic representation of the conflict between the state and the Indigenous Mapuche people through the films El verano de los peces voladores (The Summer of Flying Fish, Marcela Said, 2013), Mala junta (Bad Influence, Claudia Huaiquimilla, 2016), Rey (King, Niles Atallah, 2017), and Notas para una película (Notes for a Film, Ignacio Agüero, 2022).