In 1972, Chilean director Raúl Ruiz began work on
Socialist Realism, a feature that would take a sardonic look at Popular Unity, the alliance of leftist and left-leaning parties led by socialist president Salvador Allende. On September 11 of the following year (not quite three years into the Allende administration), the military staged a coup d’état, ending a four-decade-long succession of democratically elected governments in Chile and establishing a junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet.
The coup left Ruiz little choice but to abandon
Socialist Realism and flee Chile for France with his wife and close collaborator, filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento. Much of the unedited material eventually wound up being stored at Duke University in North Carolina. Now, Sarmiento, working with the Chilean production company Poetastros, has launched an international campaign to complete what Gonzalo Valdivia, writing for the Chilean daily