A Valparaíso (Joris Ivens, 1962) (Patreon)

This lovely short film (just under 30 minutes) is a poetic study of the titular port city in Chile, and it's an instance where physical geography lends itself to a uniquely cinematic experience. Valparaíso, as the narration explains, is settled on extremely hilly terrain, so much so that an elaborate system of cable cars has been constructed as the city's main mode of transportation. Almost every hilltop neighborhood is serviced by a cable car, and this results in a gloriously Cubist cityscape, wherein the rolling hills are traversed by steel girders and metal boxes sliding up and down the hillsides.

In terms of the cultural geography of Valparaíso, Ivens explains that the city represents an inverse of most area's economic distribution with respect to altitude. That is, typically hilltop living is desirable, a preserve for the very wealthy. By contrast, the higher up the hills you go in Valaparaíso, the people you find will be more destitute. That's because of the difficulty of getting goods and services up the hills, especially water. So the low lying areas are the basis for commerce, the fishing trade, and local wealth.

The film is in black-and-white for the first 20 minutes, until suddenly bursting into color. While Ivens presents A Valparaíso as a fairly straightforward city portrait, showing workers, children, and nightlife, he takes care to frame the vast inequities as unavoidable inheritances of the colonial legacy. The port developed to provide fresh seafood to Spaniards, and as with so many countries in South America, an economic and status disparity soon developed between "European" Latinx citizens and indigenous peoples, a conflict that continues to exist today.

I am embarrassingly ignorant of Ivens' filmmaking, especially in light of how historically important he is to the spirit of experimental documentary that permeates so many of the films I study and appreciate. It's certainly worth noting that A Valparaíso's narration was written by Chris Marker, its score produced by Georges Delerue, and Patricio Guzmán served as an assistant director. Ivens' influence is materially manifest by this small cinematic poem.