The adventure of Miguel Littín

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The adventure of Miguel Littín - Illegal in Chile (Spanish original title: La aventura de Miguel Littín clandestino en Chile ) is a report by Gabriel García Márquez about the six-week illegal stay of the filmmaker Miguel Littín in Chile in the spring of 1985 and the secret filming of one documentary about the state of the country during the Pinochet - dictatorship .

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Miguel Littín, Chilean filmmaker and Allende fanatic, fled abroad with his family immediately after Augusto Pinochet came to power. He lives in Spain and Mexico and continues to make films. From autumn 1984 he plans to return to Chile. He made contact with resistance organizations and put together three film teams: a Dutch, a French and an Italian. The teams apply for filming permits under various pretexts and shoot in different regions of Chile in early 1985. For security reasons, the teams don't know about each other and only the leader of each team knows the real reason for the shooting.

Littín changed his appearance, his walk, his accent and assumed the false identity of a Uruguayan advertising man. The external camouflage was so good that he was later not recognized even by his mother. Líttin found it difficult to change his behavior and he sometimes slipped back into his old identity.

He followed the film crews with a wrong wife who took over the organizational tasks of the project. He initially managed the work of the Italian team in the capital, Santiago de Chile, and coordinated the entire company. Chilean resistance fighters put together another six teams to support the project. Líttin also had himself filmed so that the government could not later deny his presence.

Because of the ubiquitous secret police and the nightly curfew , filming was a logistical challenge. Littín changed hotels every few days, took several taxis one after the other in different directions on trips within the city and was picked up by employees in different rental cars for longer distances. When the surveillance increased and there was a threat of arrest, he staged his departure and simultaneous exposure with the help of a journalist friend. A short time later, he returned 1000 km away.

Among other things, Littín wanted to reflect the mood in the country. He also shot in the slums of the big cities and interviewed residents about their attitude towards the military government and the murdered former President Salvador Allende. Other locations were z. B. the mining region around Concepción , Allende's birthplace Valparaíso or the house of Pablo Neruda in the village of Isla Negra. In addition, an interview was planned with a general who allegedly wants to report on conditions within the military apparatus. But Littín is always put off and in the end the contact does not come about.

The more than 32,000 m of film material was gradually smuggled to Littín's (real) wife in Madrid and edited there on his return. The result was a four-hour television film and a two-hour cinema version .

In addition to the progress of the shooting and Líttin's personal impressions of his home country, the report describes in a second storyline the situation in Chile under Allende and the events of 1973 , i.e. the military coup , Pinochet's takeover and the murder of Allende. This is linked to Líttin's personal fate - his emigration and the ban on returning.

Emergence

After Littín returned to Madrid, he told Márquez about his company. He saw the potential of the story and interviewed Littín for almost a week. From the resulting 18 hours of tape recordings , he developed a report. He changed certain names and circumstances in order to protect the relevant people. It was first published in 1986 ; the book came out in Germany in 1987 , translated by Ulli Langenbrinck at Kiepenheuer & Witsch .

style

Márquez tried to achieve authenticity in terms of content and style: he retained Littín's first-person perspective and also tried to maintain his tone of voice. The text also contains Líttin's subjective assessments and evaluations, which Márquez did not erase in favor of greater neutrality. Thus, the text moves between report and personal experience report.

source

  • Gabriel García Márquez: The Adventure of Miguel Líttin. Illegal in Chile. Translated from the Spanish by Ulli Langenbrinck. Frankfurt / M .: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 2004.