My Homeland
Through the works of young Chilean artists exiled in Sweden, Nestler reflects on Chile’s history after the military coup. His short essay film is based on the paintings of Nicolas de la Cruz and Jorge Kuhn, as well as the engravings of Rolando Pérez. Adrián Miranda’s Indian harp compositions provide the soundtrack. The film highlights the relationship between the histories Nestler has unraveled and the universal aspect of our own stories. As with Zeit, he draws attention to the visual and applied arts, especially their ability to interpret history. He guides his audience’s visual perception; his camera not only presents, but dissects and examines paintings and prints in great detail, only to reassemble and link their motifs.
Peter Nestler (b.1937) is one of the most singular and important filmmakers to emerge in postwar Germany. In the early 1960s Nestler made a series of poetic films about the changing realities in rural and industrial areas and about the working class communities, mostly in Germany, but also in the UK, where he filmed A Working Men's Club in Sheffield (1965). In the same year he directed From Greece (1965), on the rise of and struggle against fascism followed by the unsparing and exigent In the Ruhr Area (1967). Opposition to his political views and film aesthetics led Nestler to Sweden, where he worked mostly for television. Since the 1970s, Nestler has directed an extraordinary body of work further expanding the form and themes of his first films, including history, the working class, anti-fascism, the history of labour and production, and immigration. In the past 20 years, Nestler's films have continued to focus on change, remembrance and preservation, as exemplified by The North Calotte (1991), a remarkable travelogue tracing the harmful effects of industrialisation on the Sami communities and the landscape of Northern Europe.
(Source: https://dafilms.com/)
