The films of Pablo Larraín (b. 1976) simultaneously expand and confound the tradition of vociferously political counter-cinema once proclaimed as the greatest legacy of Latin American cinema. Bracingly direct character portraits, Larraín's films cast awkward anti-heroes as the unlikely protagonists of a contested historic past revisited through dark, disconcerting allegories of treason, myopic idealism and the unbridled arrogance of power. With his latest and most audacious triumph, No, Larraín completed an unintentional trilogy of films that each look back differently at the dark – and in Chile still irreconcilably divisive – past of the brutal seventeen-year Pinochet dictatorship whose unbroken tyranny began in 1973 with the US-backed overthrow of Socialist President Salvador Allende. While markedly different from the films of fellow Chilean Patricio Guzmán, Larraín's work nevertheless shares a similarly obsessive return to the troubled Pinochet era that each time confirms a troubling notion of the past as a traumatic waking dream still haunting and confusing the present.

The first and most controversial showcase for Larraín's unconventional retelling of history from the shadowy margins was Tony Manero which returned to 1978 Chile via the demented figure of a sadistic dancer cruelly pushing his threadbare troupe to the breaking point in preparation for a high stakes televised disco competition. A black parody of the back-stage musical, Tony Manero unsettled audiences with its savage humor and the nightmarish mood of terror that pervades the film. Larraín's follow-up Post Mortem, looked back even more pointedly to the Pinochet era by reimagining the chaotic, frightful days leading up to and after Allende's September 11 overthrow and suicide, seen now through the jaundiced eyes of a sociopathic morgue attendant drifting through the shattered Santiago streets and past the corpses piling up horrifically in the neon-lit mortuary corridors.

On one level postmodern revisions of history from unexpected angles, Larraín's films are also inventive twists of film genres into trenchant, black satire. Indeed, if Tony Manero is a musical of sorts and Post Mortem a kind of zombie film, then No can be read as a screwball comedy revisiting the plebiscite that ultimately toppled Pinochet from the restless and frequently absurdist point of view of the rival ad men and agencies responsible for the warring liberal and conservative political campaigns. The sophistication and exacting control of Larraín's mediation on cinema and history lies also in the bold technique and stylization through which each film of his trilogy embraces a different patina and mood conjuring the specific texture of the past but also underscoring the controlled artificiality of the period film. In this way Tony Manero uses grainy 16mm to give pulsing life to the film's relentless darkness, while Post Mortem takes on a sci-fi otherworldliness through its use of distorting Soviet-era wide-angle lenses. In No, Larraín goes further still, using obsolete video equipment to radically embrace the saturated colors and imperfections of the televisual image which is its very subject.

As the privileged son of a high-level Pinochet cabinet member, Larraín's career trajectory as a political filmmaker carries a fiercely contrarian and provocative charge that is clearly legible in the films themselves and in Larraín's daring exploration of his country's troubled and still unsettled past. Larraín's films together explore a bold and difficult mode of political cinema that challenges the viewer to understand the insightful yet biased view from the trenches of history's battlefields while cautioning about the distorting power of cinema, and moving image media in general.

The Harvard Film Archive is truly privileged to welcome Pablo Larraín for a rare visit and opportunity to discuss his films. This program was made possible by the generous support of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), as part of the ARTS@DRCLAS initiative, and takes place in conjunction with the event, Democracy & Memory in Latin America, multidisciplinary exploration of the relationship between democracy and the collective memory of violence, injustice, repression, and resistance in Latin America. — Haden Guest