COUNTERPUNCH, FEBRUARY 15, 2019
Between Friday, February 22nd and the 28th, Anthology Film Archives will be presenting a retrospective of the films of Raymundo Gleyzer, a revolutionary born in 1941 and who died in a military prison in 1976 as one of thousands of desaparesidos. Like the myth of Sisyphus, the Latin American left seems to be perpetually condemned to being crushed by a boulder rolling back on it, just after it was pushed to the top of a mountain. For many young leftists, the sight one “pink tide” government after another being replaced by rightwing, pro-American forces is painful but this has been happening for generations.
In the early 70s, the stakes were much higher since the workers of Chile and Argentina were far more ready to seize power through a socialist revolution than has been the case more recently with temporizing governments like Lula’s. Gleyzer made films that were to the Argentine class struggle that Che Guevara’s AK-47 was to the guerrilla movements that were sweeping the continent. For putting the epochal struggle for the liberation of the South into a broader context, one that spans Simon Bolivar to today, Gleyzer’s films are essential. We should be grateful to the curators at Anthology Film Archives for scheduling this retrospective and urge my readers in the Greater New York area to make time to see his powerful body of work.
As I’m out here in the hinterlands of lower Northern Virginia with a range of commitments preventing longer distance travel, I checked youtube for the three Gleyzer films; lo and behold, they indeed are there, although it appears we’ll have to catch “The Traitors” searching on the Spanish title “Los Traidores.” So, for me, occasional viewing today as I devote most of the day to day two of the Great Backyard Bird Count (bit of a hyperbolic title, eh). Thanks for posting. BB
Comment by William Boyd — February 16, 2019 @ 12:32 pm