Adriana's Pact (Chile)
Directed by Lissette Orozco
Screening Sep. 9, 5pm
Dendy Opera Quay
“Every family has their secrets,” claims Adriana’s Pact director Lissette Orozco as she reflects on the role her aunt, Adriana Rivas, played during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.
As she bravely forges forward toward the unsettling truth, family bonds are tested. This profoundly personal documentary places Chile’s devastating history alongside hard family truths.
After the 1973 coup against the government of socialist president Salvador Allende, Pinochet presided over an almost two-decade-long reign of terror.
Rivas was a former agent in Pinochet’s notorious secret police. Currently living in Australia, the Chilean government has requested Rivas extradition to stand trial for her role in kidnappings and forced disappearances.
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El Amparo (Venezuela)
Directed by Roberto Calzadilla
Screening September 9, 7pm
Dendy Opera Quay
In 1988, by the creeks of the Arauca river — near the Colombian-Venezuelan border — two men survived a massacre in which 14 of their mates were killed.
The Venezuelan army accused them of being guerrilla fighters, intimidating them and attempting to remove them from the cell where they were guarded by a police officer. Their neighbours prevented their transfer, but the pressure they faced to give in and submit to the official story was overwhelming.
Based on real events, the film focuses on one of a number of state-sponsored massacres of civilians that occurred during the 1980s in Venezuela and were preludes to the bloodbath that would occur in the February 1989 Caracazo uprising, which killed and injured thousands.
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