All About El Salvador

The Cooper Point Journal Volume 10, Issue 25 (May 28, 1982)

Were it not for TESC, Olympia would be a cultural wasteland for its dearth of quality film entertainment. It is high time this fact is noted; and time for some much deserved credit to be extended to the school for its continuing excellence in at least this one area.

Pick up a current copy of the Daily Olympian and turn to the entertainment section of the paper. Now try to find something worthwhile to go out and see. You will be confronted with the choice of Paradise or Parasite, Dead and Buried, or Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Conan the Barbarian or Sword and Sorcery, Beach Girls or Porky’s. Not to beat the issue into the ground, it should suffice to say these are all instantly forgettable movies, and at $4 a throw, absurd wastes of money. And, sadly, there are but few exceptions to this general glut of trash.

Now contrast that sorry fare to the fiIms shown this semester on Friday night. Friday Nite Films has offered us works by Werner Herzog, Francois Truffaut, Nicholas Roeg, V. Schlondorf from W. Germany and O. Sembene from Senegal. Nothing less than an all-star lineup of international directors whose films we would have either had to go to Seattle to see or, much more likely, simply have missed altogether.

This past semester Friday Nite films ran the spectrum from Monty Python’s (And Now for Something Completely Different) humor and satire to the surrealistic weltanschauung of Brazilian director Rocha (Antonio Des Mortes). Somewhere in between, there was a strong feminist statement by Mai Zetterling (The Girls) and the touching reminiscences of Jewish childhood (Jan Kadar’s Lies My Father Told Me); every one a film full of substance and style, films not soon forgotten and, unlike with the Olympia Film Society’s offerings, all films at an affordable price brought right here to our backyard, as it were.

Fernando Altschul, Friday Nite Films coordinator, who has brought these samplings of the best in world cinema, promises another outstanding series of films for winter semester. Amongst the coming attractions are Ashes and Diamonds by the Polish director A. Wajda, State of Siege by Costa-Gavras (the man who gave us Z and Missing), Frank’s A Touch of Class, Viva La Murte by Arrabal and La come, Lucien by Louis Malle.

I for one wish to thank Fernando Altschul for his good work in procuring them for us. Mr. Altschul’s taste in cinema is eclectic and the films he brings are almost always right on the mark – continually of a high order, continually provocative.

Moving away from Friday Nite Films, and away from campus, there is a movie showing this week (through Friday) that is important viewing. Olympians against Intervention in EI Salvador are showing EI Salvador: Another Vietnam, a documentary with an incisive and devastating edge to it. The film begins with the words of former Secretary of State Charles Wilson explaining that Vietnam will not become another Korea and then proceeds to show clearly how EI Salvador has the potential to be, and already has been in many respects, another Vietnam.

Scenes and descriptions of punitive raids by U.S.-trained death squads eerily echo back to the “rural pacification,” scorched earth and seek and destroy missions of our Vietnamese debacle. The parallels are striking, frightening, and drawn in the film pointedly. We hear past-President Duarte defend the attacks against the civilian population by reminding the interviewer that peasants were not singled out as a group for oppression; but that since nearly everyone in EI Salvador is a peasant quite naturally they would be in the majority of those killed. We learn that the U.S. aid to EI Salvador which had been suspended at the time of the Mary Knoll Sisters’ murder was reinstated before any investigation of their deaths was concluded.

This is a timely production, short and effective, and is essential viewing for anyone concerned with gaining an understanding of the situation in EI Salvador that goes beyond the present Administration’s allegations. EI Salvador: Another Vietnam will be shown Friday at 6:45 and 9:00 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 1224 East Legion (by the armory), and a S2.00 donation is asked. For more information as to time and place of showing call Olympians against Intervention in EI Salvador at 943-7325.