This Friday “The Survivors. Colonia Dignidad” debuted in streaming, a documentary series that rescues testimonies of witnesses and victims of the crimes of the enclave led by Paul Schäfer.
“The Survivors, Colonia Dignidad”is titled the new documentary series that delves into the criminal history of the enclave he led Paul Schäfer under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. This time, the production runs by Amazon Studios and the Argentine firm Boxfish, with chapters that are already available on the streaming platform Prime Video.
“From the point of view of production, it is always difficult in a documentary of this type, where you are recounting a tragedy of dimensions for all those who are there, to generate and establish a bond of trust, starting from the basis that this bond is builds being clear from the beginning: all the voices will be there, as a golden rule. We are not going to tell anyone what they want to hear”, reflects the executive producer of the docuseries, Diego Guebelin dialogue with BioBioChile.
The series, narrated mostly by settlers and witnesses who knew the workings and methods of Colonia Dignidad up close, roams around the days of the organization’s greatest influence, describing the abuses that were committed and the protection networks that kept it in impunity.
Thus, with archive images and the voiceover of Benjamin Vicunathe plot intersperses stories of survivors with images of the first reports on denunciations of political violence, torture, disappearances, labor mistreatment and sexual abuseas well as the on-site clashes between groups of relatives of disappeared detainees and settlers who denied what had happened.
“This documentary series is the story of the survivors of a horror that happened in the sight of two states, and who can tell what they lived through, what they fight for and how they try to overcome it, despite everything,” it reads in the synopsis of the docuseries.
The scope of “Los Sobrevivientes, Colonia Dignidad” is international: today, with the debut of Prime Video, its five chapters are now available in more than 240 countries and territories around the world.
“We are calm because our approach tried to avoid voyeuristic gloating in any way. We had established a pact of trust with our interlocutors that we did not want to break, so there is no exposure of the social actor”, says the director of the series, Rosario Cervio a BioBioChile.
(Q): Are there authorities of political or economic power that should explain the links they maintained with Colonia Dignidad? The documentary shows images of the former Chancellor Hernán Larraín in the Colony…
(DG): Although from a legal point of view it may not be, from a human point of view I think so. There is no way to explain that this has happened in a period of 40 years and that nobody is responsible. As we said, we came out of the Manichaeans, of telling the “true crime” of Schäfer, which ends as it ends. One of the most relevant things is to know how they managed to be these 40 years working. Not only with the Chilean State, but with the German State.
(Q): What do you think is the responsibility of the German state
(RC): They were crimes that happened under the eyes of two states, Chile and Germany. They are not conjectures, there are researchers who have doctoral theses on this. Today the secret files in Germany were opened, but access is complicated, you need to be a relative or a direct victim. The gesture that Germany made a year and a half, or two years ago, of giving them symbolic compensation, was a way of repairing the damage without acknowledging it, because they insist on not assuming any blame.
(Q): Do you value the work of the docuseries “Colonia Dignidad: A German sect in Chile”, which premiered on Netflix last year? Unpublished and restored images of Colonia Dignidad were shown there.
(DG): There is no effort that does not help and that does not collaborate. The more looks there are on a topic, each one of the present, everything contributes. Restoring the material, contributes. I am telling you this from the outside, because part of the work with the people who give their most precious value, their testimony, is that they felt misrepresented in various documentaries. Our gaze was to try to get out of prejudice, and not seek a journalistic interrogation, without trying to go a little further.
(Q): How would you describe the contribution of Benjamín Vicuña in the off-screen narration of “Los Sobrevivientes, Colonia Dignidad”?
(RC): We had thought from the script structure to have a narrator, and the narrator is the place where we can ask certain questions. That is why it is not a locution that repeats what is seen in images, but rather it is set to reflect, but above all to reflect from the question.