Falklands War Film Opens in Argentina
by Andre Soares
Via AlertNet: A Reuters article by Mary Milliken discusses the new Argentinian film Iluminados por el fuego / Blessed by Fire, which depicts Argentina’s disastrous military campaign to take over the Falkland Islands (known in Argentina as Las Malvinas) from Britain in the early 1980s.
Directed and co-written by Tristán Bauer, and starring the excellent Gastón Pauls (the younger con man in Nueve reinas / Nine Queens), Iluminados por el fuego is based on a book by Edgardo Esteban, who was one of the underarmed and underfed conscripts sent to fight the much better equipped British army in the inhospitable archipelago.
"When you are 18, you don’t think about death," says Esteban, currently a TV journalist. "But ever since this war, death has been with us constantly. Two things help me close this chapter — the book and now the movie."
Iluminados por el fuego is partly told in flashbacks, having as its starting point the suicide of a war veteran. (Approximately 350 Falklands veterans have killed themselves — that’s more than the number of those who died in land battles on the islands.) The film also uses clips from newsreels, including one showing thousands of Argentines cheering then-president Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri following his declaration of war.
Despite widespread corruption and economic rot, Argentina’s military junta was quite popular among die-hard right-wingers, though the Falklands War debacle paved the way for the democratization of that country’s political system.
Iluminados por el fuego, which took five years to make, opens tomorrow in Argentina.
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ey weno soy rafael de argentina y tengo 16 años. La verdad es que valia la pena reconstruir un hecho como el que vivio toda esa gente (en mayor parte jovenes un poco mas grandes que yo) en Malvinas. Gaston Pauls es unn exelente actor y siempre se ha dedicado a tratar temas que jugaban con los principios y/o problemas sociales en argentina, por eso supongo que fue necesario o jugo buena parte en el papel de soldado nacional. Espero la pelicula no sea malinterpretada, quiero decir, mucha gente aqui en argentina a tomado una ideologia bastante errada sobre lo que el “nacionalismo” trata a partir de esta pelicula. Todos estamos enterados de los actuales problemas diplomaticos entre las naciones del mundo, pero a la hora de pelear en un campo de batalla, no cuenta mas que el odio entre las cabezeras que iniciaron el hecho, no creo que ningun soldado tanto argentino como ingles haya querido morir en accion o de frio alli abajo.
Quiero dejar como cierre a mi comentario la idea de ACTUAR AHORA, nuestra sociedad esta dividida, se recuerda demasiado el pasado, se vive poco el presente. No vamos nunca a llegar a nada concreto sino creamos un pensamiento en comun, por el que todos podamos luchar dentro de un sistema que el debil es dominado y obligado a permanecer inactivo por el hecho de no forjar su mente para vivir MEJOR.
No nos separemos, y recordemos tambien que la bandera no es mas que un rectangulo de tela que nos da “nacionalismo”, pero sin darnos cuenta separa a todo un mundo.
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