Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi

Exiled Chilean musician, Quique Cruz, goes from the Bay Area to Chile and back as he creates his masterwork.

Film Signature Image
Series
Global Voices
Premiere Date
October 11, 2009
Length
60 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2008 Mill Valley Film Festival-Audience Award
  • Nominated laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2009 International Documentary Association (IDA)-Best Music Documentary Award
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2009 Mendocino Film Festival-Special Jury Award
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    Producer/Director

    Quique Cruz

    Cruz is a writer, musician/composer, and media artist. He is the creator, writer, and art director of Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi. Quique Cruz is also the coordinator and the producer of the book, the musical suite, exhibit, and documentary film. Quique Cruz is Ph.D. candidate in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University.” He holds a… Show more Masters in Latin American Studies from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in history from UC Berkeley. Show less

    Producer/Director

    Marilyn Mulford

    Mulford is a Sundance Award-winning documentary filmmaker. She has worked in all aspects of documentary and experimental filmmaking for many years. She directed Freedom on my Mind, a documentary about the Mississippi Voter Registration Project from 1961 to 1964. It was nominated for the Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize for Best documentary at… Show more Sundance. It aired on PBS’s The American Experience. She also produced and directed Chicano Park about a Mexican-American barrio being destroyed by city of San Diego. That film won top prize at the Chicago and Houston International Film Festivals, and Best of California at the National Educational Film Festival. Her organization, Interfaze Educational Productions, is located at the Saul Zaentz Media Center Building, in Berkeley, California. Show less

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    The Film

    A powerful, intense, and imaginative musical journey, Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi follows exiled Chilean musician Quique Cruz from the Bay Area to Chile and back, as he creates his masterwork: a multimedia installation to heal the wounds inflicted by Pinochet’s torturous regime.

    Growing up in a rural town in Chile during the sixties, Quique Cruz is full of dreams. Obsessed with being a musician from an early age, he quits school after eighth grade and leaves his home for the capital, Santiago, during the heady days of Nueva Canción, the “New Song Movement.” After the coup in 1973, the dream becomes a nightmare. Under the regime of General Augusto Pinochet, 17-year old Quique is incarcerated, brutally tortured, and after a year in different concentration camps, is finally exiled. Scarred physically and psychologically by torture and by the death or disappearance of many friends, Quique becomes silent and secretive, working menial jobs, deeply alienated from American society.

    With the arrest of Pinochet in London in 1999, a creative door opens in Quique; after 30 years of secrecy, he finds the strength to tell his story through the passionate creation of a multimedia project using narratives, film, poetry, and installations. But it is a voyage riddled with obstacles; the creation of the piece unleashes raw memories of torture and confinement, cracking through the armor of denial and stirring up agonizing emotions. But Quique discovers once again the power of art to transform even the deepest pain; he finds that new dreams can arise from the imagination as healing begins.

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