At the foot of the Andes Mountains in Chile lies an idyllic German colony. However, the beauty of the place contains a grim past. In 1961, the German preacher Paul Schäfer and his congregation moved to Chile with the stated aim of helping the poor. They established Colonia Dignidad (Colony of Dignity), which transformed into a closed sect. This film explores how the remaining residents of the colony deal with 45 years of child abuse, collective beatings and slave-like living conditions. It also reveals how people in the colony assisted Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973 – 1990) in torturing and killing political prisoners and burying them in mass graves on their own 16,000-hectare land.

Direction: Estephan Wagner, Marianne Hougen-Moraga

Script: Estephan Wagner, Marianne Hougen-Moraga

Production: Signe Byrge Sørensen

Co-Production: Heidi Elise Christensen

Cinematography: Estephan Wagner, Marianne Hougen-Moraga

Editing: Niels Pagh Andersen, Estephan Wagner

Sound: Jan Schermer

Visual Effects: Stefan Beekhuijzen

Original Title: UNDERTRYKKELSENS SANG

Original Languages: German, Spanish

Film Production Countries: Denmark, Netherlands, Chile

Website: https://www.finalcutforreal.dk/songs-of-repression-page

Statement of the Director/s
Estephan grew up in Chile under Pinochet’s military rule. Marianne in exile in Denmark. The direct consequences of a totalitarian regime have always been part of our reality.

Since we were small kids we both knew about Colonia Dignidad. But we knew about it from two very different perspectives. On the one hand, Estephan and his family visited the very German roadside restaurant run by the colony each year during their holidays. On the other, Marianne’s older family members told her in whispers about how political prisoners under Pinochet’s dictatorship were tortured and killed on the colony’s land. Estephan’s family was involved in fierce pro-colony lobbying against those allegations. Marianne’s family was on the opposite side.

As we became young adults, our developing views of the world sprouted more and more questions about Colonia Dignidad. What must it be like for people to continue living in a place where strong collective trauma dominates the psychological reality? How does the individual or the community deal with such suffering? And how does one learn to re-define truth, trust and love when those concepts have lost all meaning?

By the time we met and became a couple in our early 30s, we had both formed the idea that the world is not as black-and-white as our childhood had suggested. Suddenly it became urgent for us to explore and gain a deeper understanding of how we end up becoming who we are and how societies turn out the way they do. Colonia Dignidad was the obvious first step.

Like in most post-fascist realities around the world, the general discourse surrounding this complex place is still locked in black-and-white terms. There have been attempts to open up a discussion and space for reconciliation in and around the colony. But most mainstream media still show a clear-cut story of victims and victimisers. In reality the relationships between victims and victimisers are deeply entangled. Actually, most residents are both.

Throughout three and a half years we got very close to the colony’s inhabitants. We approached the place by encouraging the inhabitants to tell their own stories in their own way. We aimed at understanding their logic. We learned that the predominant views on their own history are also often black-and-white, although their conclusions may differ. We found that behind the attempt to create a paradise for themselves and for tourists, people living there have very different strategies for dealing with their traumas: from staying silent about the past and choosing only to remember the bright moments, to a desire to open up while being unable to vocalise their pain.

We aim to explore how the individual and the community re-write their past. Be it to be able to live on after having been abused, as a mechanism to forget and to avoid haunting nightmares, or be it to hide away from the shame and inner demons after having abused or tortured others.

Having worked intensely with the subject of repression for several years, our understanding has grown more nuanced than it was when we met and even more than from our differing childhood world views. It was as if the colony slowly revealed all the different ways in which human beings are able to create systems of repression to hold each other in place – to the point where even something supposedly as beautiful and free as music becomes a tool for repression.

Our aim with this film is to open up for a discussion about what happens when traumas are not overcome, so they do not repeat through generations. We believe that it is imperative to expose the roots of such structures in these times where totalitarian regimes are again gaining strength on a global level.

Estephan Wagner and Marianne Hougen-Moraga, March 2020

Biography of the Director/s
Marianne Hougen-Moraga is a director graduated with a Master's degree in Film Studies from Copenhagen University. She also holds a Master's degree in Screen Documentary from Goldsmiths College.

Estephan Wagner is a director and editor. Originally trained as an editor in Germany, he also graduated from the National Film and Television School in London. He has been working as a documentary director for more than a decade. His feature-length documentary THOSE WHO JUMP (2016) had theatrical distribution in Germany, France, the UK and Italy, has been screened at more than 70 film festivals and has won more than 15 awards including the prize of the ecumenical jury at Berlinale and the Cinema Eye Spotlight award.

Filmography of the Director/s
Marianne Hougen-Moraga:

2017 SEA OF SORROW, SEA OF HOPE, doc. short
2011 RETURNED, doc. short
2010 LITTLE REVOLUTION, doc. short
2007 MY MOTHER'S PROMISE, doc. short

Estephan Wagner:

2017 SEA OF SORROW, SEA OF HOPE, doc. short
2016 THOSE WHO JUMP, doc.
2013 LAST DREAMS, doc.
2010 VANISHING WORLDS, doc.
2009 THE FINISHING LINE, doc. short
2008 WAITING FOR WOMEN, doc. short
2007 EASE MY PAIN, doc. short
2002 BRÚJULA NÓMADE, doc. short

Awards Won
CPH:DOX: Main Competition Award, Politiken:Danish:Dox Critic's Award

Production Company:
Final Cut for Real
Maria Kristensen
Forbindelsesvej 7
Copenhagen, 2100, Denmark
E-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: +45 35436043
Website: http://www.finalcutforreal.dk/