Workers, tools, machines and procedures on a deep and diffuse background. The cinema as technological testimony of the factories in the Popular Unity

La fábrica como co-protagonista de las producciones cinematográficas en la Unidad Popular.

Abstract

During the government Unidad Popular (November 3, 1970 - September 11, 1973), the figure of the factory worker captured the interest of part of the cinematographic production in the country. National and international filmmakers devoted part of their work to recording the testimony of many workers and industrial employees, characterizing the very circumstances of the period in terms of manufacturing production and the organization of labor.  This experience, materialized in documentary or docufiction form, showcased a discreet repertoire of factories or manufacturing establishments located in the city of Santiago, as well as sequences of factory activities within them. Workers, tools, and machines appeared as statements of specific productive processes held by the manufacturing activity itself, transcending – in conjunction with spoken testimonies – as a material input of a productive and daily task, typical of what we could call a technological testimony of the period. This article seeks to approach a characterization of this testimony, thematizing and distinguishing that not all factories or manufacturing establishments were the same, that is, an abstract economic entity pigeonholed in political-productive slogans in the period; on the contrary, it is proposed that this technological testimony can help to open up the field of manufacturing production as a fertile territory to question the process of “Unidad popular” itself and correlatively the evolution of the manufacturing spaces within it.