José María Berzosa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
José María Berzosa | |
|---|---|
| Born | José María Berzosa 15 August 1928 |
| Died | 2 January 2018 (aged 89) |
| Alma mater | Institut des hautes études cinématographiques |
| Occupations | Film director, screenwriter, author |
| Years active | 1959–2001 |
| Known for |
|
José Maria Berzosa (15 August 1928 – 2 January 2018) was a Spanish television director who lived the most part of his life auto–exiled in France.
His documentaries are characterized by having the humor of Luis Buñuel and the erudition of Jorge Luis Borges. His work details objectivity ideas in favor of staging (even when he films «the real» and claims creative subjectivity).
One of his most important productions was "Chile Impresiones" (1976), a documentary for French television whose purpose was to discredit the international image of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, the de facto administration that justified its human rights violations in the name of order and depoliticization. The novelty of this film lies in its exposure of the Chilean reality using a methodology that combined ridicule with intimate scenes of everyday life. Berzosa interviewed three Chilean generals, asking them questions on ontological themes such as philosophy and aesthetics about happiness, ethics and art, which none of them, except to some extent Gustavo Leigh, knew how to answer. The Military Junta generals only discovered how Berzosa had portrayed them after the documentary was broadcast.
