RUIZ

Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011) was an experimental Chilean filmmaker, considered one of the best of the second half of the 20th century. A man with a disproportionate imagination and broad culture –influenced by Chilote mythology, high literature, western and “matinée”– and with a sense of humor, both irreverent and corrosive.

A “difficult” filmmaker, who bequeathed a great work, as huge as eclectic, as pedantic as humorous, inevitably Chilean and exasperatingly cerebral –as if he were afraid of basic and simple emotions– and with a narrative style that shied away from the “central conflict theory” and truism.

Years before becoming a filmmaker, he had tried to be a musician, priest and lawyer. However, he did not persevere in any of these activities. He was looking to create a hundred theater plays. After achieving it, he decided to study in Argentina: Film studies. After that, he would make a couple of iconic movies in Chile, such as “Three Sad Tigers” and “Little White Dove”. After the coup d'état, he would settle in France, leaving a production that exceeded one hundred films.

I greatly admire his cinematographic works, because these contravene historical rules, as if to say: "well, I will do it my way". These works propose that it is the type of image that determines the narration and not vice versa. On the other hand, the ordinary acts, interrupted by an incomprehensible incident, that continue to elapse towards something even more ordinary.