Pancho Adrienzén, Late 1970s & Peruvian Films
NOTE ON PERU IN THE 1970s In October 1968, President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was ousted in a military coup and succeeded by General Juan Velasco Alvarado. Velasco’s government was one of contradictions. It combined nationalizations; recognition of Cuba; agrarian, educational, and labor reform; Third Worldist rhetoric and behavior; repression of the working class; and imposition of an enormous foreign debt which led the country into a severe recession. The left was split by these contradictions, with the Peruvian Communist Party and other elements supporting the regime while others vehemently opposed it. In August 1975, General Francisco Morales Bermúdez replaced Velasco and led the country rightward. By 1977 the country had entered a depression and was subjected to “stabilization” measures by the International Monetary Fund: devaluation of the sol, a high rate of inflation, and harsh restriction of wage increases. The period was marked by growing labor militancy, including general strikes in 1978 and 1979; by the election of a constitutional assembly in 1978; and finally by new elections in 1980, with Belaúnde returning to power. The left parties united temporarily, but tragically and irresponsibly they split just before the elections, and so fared very poorly. JUMP CUT: Describe the formation of your group. Pancho Adrienzén: We came together to project films. In 1970 repression in the universities was very severe. The only way for students to organize politically was through clubs where they could link cultural and political work: film clubs, theater clubs, song clubs, and so on. Through the film clubs we could help students grow in their political consciousness by showing Cuban, Chinese, and Soviet films. But we always intended that our work reach beyond the university. From the beginning we showed films three or four times a week in unions and barriadas (poor communities circling Lima). We never exhibited films just for the love of films but clearly understood the political usefulness of such work. Our film exhibition project originally started out from a mass-based, neighborhood, organizing project in a barriada. Showing films let us get people together and carry out activities that would keep people thinking of themselves as active social agents. The project let us, as a group, work collectively. The films chosen served to highlight various social problems, show other countries’ realities, and demonstrate — in a small but very important way — that there is another kind of cinema. People also have to learn to look at commercial film with other eyes. What was the political stance of your group? Our vision of the world was Marxist, but we had members from different political groups. We never privileged any international line or position. We were in reality a broad political front. For all of us the fundamental factor was that the epoch of President Velasco was a reformist epoch: there would be no basic structural changes. Our effort was to help citizens of the barriadas and workers to organize independently and not succumb to the reformist propaganda of the government. It was this effort that united us and motivated us to work, and it is an effort we have been carrying out for almost ten years now. We want to use film as a weapon, as a way to forge independent, popular organizing and peoples coming to consciousness. Two films which we have distributed a lot come closest to our way of thinking: Eisenstein’s OCTOBER and a Cuban film by Manuel-Octavio Gomez about the literacy campaign, HISTORIA DE UNA BATALLA. The work in the university above all helped us to form a core group of politically committed, technically competent people. Have you changed your strategies over the years? Yes. In the beginning it was rather dispersed work, based on individual initiative and good will. After a while we became more organized, forming a group which took on responsibilities that obligated each of us to commit ourselves to the plan of work. We had weekly meetings where we discussed the political side of what had gone on, evaluated our activities, and planned new projects. Sometimes we even met two or three times a week — almost continuously. Many of us also became interested in aspects of production, in taking photographs and trying some filming. There was another development. At first a union would invite us to show a film for its anniversary or because it needed to raise funds or for some other reason. But we soon became dissatisfied with this process. We would show a film, a lot of people would come, there would be a political discussion about film, then people would go home. There was no follow through. And the unions did not get a lot of support because the whole thing was very sporadic and did not lead to any constant progression in the political consciousness of the working class. So we decided that every time a union invited us, we would commit them to a cycle of four or six films, shown in the same location and with a certain political rationale. For example, we could project a series on countries that had suffered repression, or countries that had struggled for liberation: Vietnam, China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. We also learned from this experience to apply the same policy in the barriadas. We learned at the same time to hold preliminary discussions with union and community leaders, so that they would understand the importance of each film. Thus, they were the ones who always presented the films and led the discussions. This is how we collaborated in the organizing of unions. From 1970 to 1973-1974, a great number of unions were formed in Peru, class-conscious unions. With these film projections we assisted in organizing those unions. Did you work with any particular political organization? We have worked with all the political organizations on the left: organizations opposed to right parties such as APRA and Acción Popular or SINAMOS (Sistema Nacional de Apoyo á la Movilización Social — the government’s branch intended to organize peasant collectives and other