Exiles: Raúl Ruiz

An insightful hour long documentary on prolific Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, made during one of his most productive periods while he was the co-director of Maison de Culture in Le Havre. The film includes substantial interviews with Ruiz as well as his collaborators including his wife and editing partner Valeria Sarmiento as they work at the editing table. The film profiles his many films with excepts from family films as well as his early work in Chile (with clips from Tres tristes tigres (1968) and La expropiación (1972)), his early films in France, documentary and television work and his recent work produeced in Le Havre (Mémoire des apparences (1986) and Mammame (1986)).

This documentary is part of the Exiles series, a late 1980s series of six BBC documentaries major artists and writers who live and work in exile. Other episodes, all directed by Jill Evans (some co-directed with Patchy Wheatley), focused on Erich Fried, Josef Skvorecky and Edward Said among others. —anonymous