Filming Chacabuco - Part I
We'd already decided not to stay at that seedy hotel. Even on the way out we could hear a measuredly ecstatic moaning sound from one of the guest rooms. True love, to be sure. Told the hotel owner gracias, but no, we'll keep looking. Went to another hotel, figured it was safe enough.
Niles' carefulness was profound, yet sound - total value of all the gear added up to about seven or eight thousand bucks, the sound equipment was borrowed, etc.
Top that off, Antofagasta wasn't shaping up to be the safest-seeming place. A port/mining city in Northern Chile, relatively close to the borders of Bolivia and Peru, its alternate name is "Antofapasta." Like calling Oakland "Cokeland".
Experiences throughout the week would confirm the keeps-you-on-your-toes nature of the destination. We found that the sound of wild screaming and rattling of jail bars coming from the police station was common at 11am. And then there was that night driving back into Antofagasta, that big red pickup truck...
...it came up quick behind us, passed, then drove off the road. And then there it was again, behind us. Passed us, then slammed on the break lights. And again, it was on our tail, filling the cabin of our rental car with brilliant white like the Angel of Terror. Repeatedly it passed us and tailed us until it got bored. Or so we thought. Once again found it rumbling up on our right-hand side right after we got into town. It was following us. But finally we were able to lose it on the darklit city streets, as they say in Spanish, zigzagueando.
Par for the course in an "extreme filming location." LOL.
Chacabuco, our primary location, lies about an hour and a half outside of Antofagasta. To the north, and inland. The morning after our arrival in Antofagasta, we headed in to the abandoned city.
For starters, though, the land. The Atacama Desert is bigger than the Sahara, and drier. Guidebooks talk about the "lunar" aspect to landscape. Sure, whatever. But hours before reaching Antofagasta, I could already tell. Walking out there would require a spacesuit.
The vast open plains shot out to a huge horizon drawn on by bizarre, bluish hill structures and up close the rolling hills were larger, but no less bizarre. Tanned and smoothed by ochre, ribboned by dark, dark stripes of rock. Valleys scattered with rectangular rocks. Small black shadows next to each one. Perfect place for the Mars rover.
The ground around Chacabuco is choppy and torn up by maneuvers explosions. Immediately surrounding the Adobe walls is a restricted area of land mines.
Chacabuco is a real city, complete with a plaza, dirt soccer field, theater, hospital and streets with names. But only one person lives there.
The signature image of Chacabuco is a doorway, through which you can see another doorway, followed by a third doorway, a fourth, a fifth. It never goes to infinity, but I've seen five, maybe six doorways in a single shot. And then the ubiquitous fissure in the wall, like a blast of lightning extinguished by a crashing wave.
Despite the extremely dry landscape, Chacabuco is like a shipwreck. A desert shipwreck. And while life is scarce in the desert, Chacabuco is being eaten alive.
It's a victim of ghastly disrepair, and the forces of time seem to have said: so be it. The imagery created by these man-made structures seems well out of man's hands.
A caved-in roof made of wooden planks reveals a ship deck slammed against the rocks. In another spot, a rusty slab of corrugated iron hangs suspended in air next to a wall from beneath which wood from the a broken awning jut out, casting shadows thin, stretched and straight like the pencil-drawn legs of a jellyfish coasting toward the sun, just after one hardy and muscular pump from the blackness of the sea floor.
The lone smokestack, the mast. Towering three times taller than Chacabuco's tallest building, it is danced around by squigly iron cables like the legs of the Giant Squid that's attached herself to it, become it.
A monument to Chacabuco the Nitrate Mining Town, it's a sadistic May pole, hatefully ironic.
In the early 20th century Chacabuco was one of many nitrate mining camps wrought with worker exploitation. From 1973-1974 it was used as a concentration camp for those thought to be affiliated with Allende's just-toppled, although democratically elected leftist government.
Last week we brought two ex Chacabuco prisoners, Rolando Carrasco and Santiago Cavieres, back to their former place of detention, and filmed them in the ruins of the camp where they once briefly lived. Their interviews will form part of Deserted Memory, the upcoming documentary about Chacabuco.
I'll write more about Chacabuco...
Niles' carefulness was profound, yet sound - total value of all the gear added up to about seven or eight thousand bucks, the sound equipment was borrowed, etc.
Top that off, Antofagasta wasn't shaping up to be the safest-seeming place. A port/mining city in Northern Chile, relatively close to the borders of Bolivia and Peru, its alternate name is "Antofapasta." Like calling Oakland "Cokeland".
Experiences throughout the week would confirm the keeps-you-on-your-toes nature of the destination. We found that the sound of wild screaming and rattling of jail bars coming from the police station was common at 11am. And then there was that night driving back into Antofagasta, that big red pickup truck...
...it came up quick behind us, passed, then drove off the road. And then there it was again, behind us. Passed us, then slammed on the break lights. And again, it was on our tail, filling the cabin of our rental car with brilliant white like the Angel of Terror. Repeatedly it passed us and tailed us until it got bored. Or so we thought. Once again found it rumbling up on our right-hand side right after we got into town. It was following us. But finally we were able to lose it on the darklit city streets, as they say in Spanish, zigzagueando.
Par for the course in an "extreme filming location." LOL.
Chacabuco, our primary location, lies about an hour and a half outside of Antofagasta. To the north, and inland. The morning after our arrival in Antofagasta, we headed in to the abandoned city.
For starters, though, the land. The Atacama Desert is bigger than the Sahara, and drier. Guidebooks talk about the "lunar" aspect to landscape. Sure, whatever. But hours before reaching Antofagasta, I could already tell. Walking out there would require a spacesuit.
The vast open plains shot out to a huge horizon drawn on by bizarre, bluish hill structures and up close the rolling hills were larger, but no less bizarre. Tanned and smoothed by ochre, ribboned by dark, dark stripes of rock. Valleys scattered with rectangular rocks. Small black shadows next to each one. Perfect place for the Mars rover.
The ground around Chacabuco is choppy and torn up by maneuvers explosions. Immediately surrounding the Adobe walls is a restricted area of land mines.
Chacabuco is a real city, complete with a plaza, dirt soccer field, theater, hospital and streets with names. But only one person lives there.
The signature image of Chacabuco is a doorway, through which you can see another doorway, followed by a third doorway, a fourth, a fifth. It never goes to infinity, but I've seen five, maybe six doorways in a single shot. And then the ubiquitous fissure in the wall, like a blast of lightning extinguished by a crashing wave.
Despite the extremely dry landscape, Chacabuco is like a shipwreck. A desert shipwreck. And while life is scarce in the desert, Chacabuco is being eaten alive.
It's a victim of ghastly disrepair, and the forces of time seem to have said: so be it. The imagery created by these man-made structures seems well out of man's hands.
A caved-in roof made of wooden planks reveals a ship deck slammed against the rocks. In another spot, a rusty slab of corrugated iron hangs suspended in air next to a wall from beneath which wood from the a broken awning jut out, casting shadows thin, stretched and straight like the pencil-drawn legs of a jellyfish coasting toward the sun, just after one hardy and muscular pump from the blackness of the sea floor.
The lone smokestack, the mast. Towering three times taller than Chacabuco's tallest building, it is danced around by squigly iron cables like the legs of the Giant Squid that's attached herself to it, become it.
A monument to Chacabuco the Nitrate Mining Town, it's a sadistic May pole, hatefully ironic.
In the early 20th century Chacabuco was one of many nitrate mining camps wrought with worker exploitation. From 1973-1974 it was used as a concentration camp for those thought to be affiliated with Allende's just-toppled, although democratically elected leftist government.
Last week we brought two ex Chacabuco prisoners, Rolando Carrasco and Santiago Cavieres, back to their former place of detention, and filmed them in the ruins of the camp where they once briefly lived. Their interviews will form part of Deserted Memory, the upcoming documentary about Chacabuco. I'll write more about Chacabuco...
posted by Chileno @ 10:25 PM
Share on Facebook
Search This Blog:
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home