SFBG: How do you define that political aspect?

GA: For me this film is about the human way, possibilities. For me human possibilities are the most radical expression of political issues, [so] for me at least it's a political film. Why? Because this film talks about the values of a group, the values of solidarity and the values of friendship, of course, but mostly the values of a group, how life can be different if a group manages in a bad [situation] together.

SFBG: I was very struck by the fact that the survivors all still know each other, they all still live in the neighborhood they grew up in, and that even the one that they know did something very selfish when they were up there is still a part of the group, if perhaps a little on the fringes. Do you think that the community this group was rooted in, both a geographical and a social web, helped them to survive?

GA: Yes, yes, this was very much a part of it.

SFBG: Despite the fact that it's not overtly political, Stranded seems a sort of a meta- version of your concern with social justice.

GA: Yes, yes, it is about human dignity and solidarity. These guys came from a very high level of our little society in Uruguay. This guy asked me, "Why do you make an apology for these guys, when these guys are, in the political range of this country, all conservatives? Can you say this is leftist film?" I answered -- like a little provocation, but not only -- "YES, it is!" [Laughs.] For me this film is a leftist film. But it's because of the values of solidarity -- the Right never talks about solidarity, about the rights of the group, except perhaps in a corporate way

A very good friend of mine, an anthropologist in Uruguay, said to me, "You know, the bourgeois elite, they move with such ease, it is no problem for them to transgress taboos or to justify that with clever things. For instance, never, never, poor people from the favela, or regular people who were in this condition [situation], never would they say at a press conference [where the survivors addressed the cannibalism issue] that they thought about the Last Supper!"

SFBG: You were originally going to call this film The Tenth Day. Why was that?

GA: When I took this working title, there were two ideas in one: the first thing is, they hear on the radio that the search was called off. The official story says that on the same day, they transgress [eat the flesh of someone killed in the crash] because the society has abandoned them. Working on the interviews for the film, I realize . . . that it's not true. They transgress before, about perhaps the seventh day.

SFBG: They start talking about it on the fifth or sixth day.

GA: We went to the mountain with four survivors, with some daughters, for five or six, seven years.

SFBG: I hadn't realized that. In the film, it seems like the first time they've returned....In America that would have been a big production with a therapist on hand. [Arijon laughs]

GA: During 30 years, the only guy who really goes there is Nando [Parrado], the one whose mother and sister died in the crash. He goes up there first on foot. Then a guy who lives there organizes these trips once or twice a year by horse for everyone who wants to be up there. It's an incredible trip.

Nobody of the survivors think about this fucking place, you know, but -- it was interesting, they return for the 30-year anniversary, they return from the Chilean side, with families, and all this. They go to put memorials on the graves. It was a very strong group situation, and we go to the grove and I see a few photographs, and a little video that was taken.

From this time, in 2002, they start individually or by two or by three, they start returning, like they are searching for something. Like Roberto [Canessa] said [in the film], we always return in our thoughts to the place where we suffer.

SFBG: Since so much of what you did was so very deliberate, framing them in the day, framing them against the evening, I wanted to ask: up til that point of transgression, the survivors start out as a group and the voices start out together, and then it's individual interview after individual. Was it a deliberate choice, that the first time we see them as a group of survivors, they are discussing the decision: "I said this, my cousin said that, he said this, and we made the decision"?

GA: I think the way the film is crafted, it represents a lot of things: There was a real discussion up there in these days just before the decision, and then the group moved to [a unanimous decision]. This group was never divided up there.

The other idea in the first title was the fantasy: if you read [Alive] by Piers Paul Read, it's very clear that they take the decision a few days before they hear on the radio that the search for them is called off. When Hollywood arrives, Hollywood: maquillage, maquillage! [dresses it up, dresses it up!] They put the two things together, because the cultures don't understand how they can take the decision. From this moment forward, a lot of members of the group integrate this version, they like this version, because -- this is my explanation -- they feel it's easier to understand for the families. Then a lot of them tell this version today. It's very interesting, the construction of memory.

SFBG: Given that you grew up in this milieu, you were friends with these kids, your father was a civil engineer, you were upper middle class, what led you to take a different path, that you've devoted your life to exposing injustice and social issues? Even after being stranded on the mountain, none of them went off to become a monk -- and here you are.

GA: Til 16 I was just a little idiot, just a little boy, going to parties, going to the beach. In my seventeenth year, I discovered politics. My father had his Che Guevara period -- a little bit, very quickly -- then he decided, no politics in his life.Very strange. He had very political friends and contacts, but not in his house. Then some cousins took me to demonstrations and for me it was a little bit difficult to take part with strong conviction, because for me, my father is a very important person and my house was nonpolitical..

I was going to demonstrations with friends, then discovering some very big writers, like Eduardo Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. When I was 17, I discovered this very personal wow: "Of course this world could be much better and I want to be a part of trying to make this change." For me it was a strong impact when I was 17 and 18 and 19, and then I decide to be part of this big revolution. And then I have a lot of problems with my little society on Uruguay and my class. And then I start dreaming and reading and working and talking into the night and sleeping in the day.

SFBG: And then you go into anthropology --

GA: Yes, and then I study some mathematics like my father, but then I discover the cinema, and fiction, and then wow -- cinema! "Forget my country, I need the world, I don't need my little country, this little society."

SFBG: Why [do you live in] France, rather than a Latin American country?

GA: Two things: I was a late bachelor -- in Uruguay that means I was 19 [laughs]. So my father said, you must make a big trip. The condition was three-four-five months of traveling, but one month I must study English just to do something, to meet people. He said, you can choose between the States -- he suggested San Francisco, I remember -- or Europe.

I choose Europe very quickly because I had discovered European cinema at this time, Truffaut, Godard, the Nouvelle Vague, all the neo-realist Italians, Ingmar Bergman. Altogether French cinema was very important to me, and I dreamed of entering a very big cinema school in Paris. I choose to go to Europe, and of course I met a girl in France who became my wife.

SFBG: Well, that explains France. [Arijon laughs]

GA: First I always dreamed to be a director, I knew that, but just to live and to pay my bills, I spent a lot of years as cameraman and Director of Photography [DP]. So I work as a DP then I really discovered the Third World. One of my little contradictions that I must try to arrange [sort] now. I live in the First World but I always film and travel to the Third. Even Africa, even Asia. I discovered my Latin American feelings from Paris.

SFBG: Since you are passionate about your Latin American heritage, how was it for you when you were nominated for Best Non-Latin American Director at the Havana Film Festival?

GA: When I heard that in the Karl Marx Theater, because it was a French production, I say, OK, I'm not very happy with the "non-Latin American production" but I go up there, I take the prize, of course, and then I feel very proud..

SFBG: I wondered if it was some political comment on their part, because you live in France?

GA: Perhaps, perhaps. [Laughs]

SFBG: As a director, why the documentary rather than narrative, since it was narrative that first interested you?

GA: I discovered the documentary way and some masterpieces of documentary. Fiction was the way that helped me discover the world and what kind of life I wanted to live, but when I moved to Paris, and I started filming -- it was the beginning of videotapes -- I became more political. Traveling and discovering Africa and Latin American, for me the reality was so much stronger, to be in a certain flown, in Mombasa, and not to write my very first fiction as love story. Then I forget fiction and I turn to reality for 20 years.

SFBG: You made a number of films for the French TV series called The Hidden Face of the Earth.

GA: I started, with nine other documentary filmmakers in Paris, a lot of different nationalities, a little thing called Alterdoc, www.alterdoc.com, to make some projects in common, to express our engagement in another way, to be more explicit. We had this idea in 2001 or 2002 in relation to the World Bank. We say why not? We are traveling every day in the Third World -- why not start a co-production? To make short films about two minutes, a moment with someone, a moment of dignity, not talking about the subject, a moment of dignity between this person and us, and the camera. We made about 20 little portraits. The other side of this project was workshops for documentaries in Third World, and now we do one in Kurdistan, in Iraq.

SFBG: For most documentarians I know, filmmaking is utterly a labor of love, they never break even, they never make money. How do you survive now that you are a director and not a DP drawing a salary?

GA: Perhaps in Europe it's a little bit easier. We have a very strong fabric of documentary activities. I have the chance to work with the Art Channel. But there is a problem with this. You live perhaps not so bad, but you make one film after the other, and then each work is just a TV episode. The danger is you are not seen as directing films.

SFBG: What's next?

GA: One documentary I'm thinking about two years and I start in one month. It's a trip in Latin America today, trying, with the book, The Open Veins of Latin America, trying to understand what's happened in this continent. The raw materials, the energy, the petrol, the mines, water. It's about the politics of the land, it will have just the people, raw materials and human stories, no presidents.

http://strandedthefilm.com/
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/stranded/