Born in 1974 in Santiago, Chile, Alicia Scherson studied biology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and received her diploma from the International Film and Television School in Cuba. Afterwards she received a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Illinois in Chicago through the support of a Fulbright grant. After considerable success with a number of short films and documentaries, Scherson turned to filming her first feature, Play (2005), which won 17 awards including Best New Narrative Filmmaker at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and attracted the interest of international spectators and intellectual circles. Play features an experimental visual and auditory aesthetic that breaks realist conventions and mixes different mediums from MP3s to videogames.

Her second feature film, Tourists (2009), filmed mainly in Radal Siete Tazas National Park in central Chile, takes on a naturalist perspective that examines the interior life of the abandoned female protagonist as well as the region’s animal and vegetal species with scientific precision. Her latest release, The Future (2013), is based on Roberto Bolaño’s novel A Little Lumpen Novelita (2002) about two adolescents, orphaned as a result of a car accident, who search for a sense of belonging in the underworld of Rome.

The female protagonists—often independent and nonconformist—of Scherson’s films break the molds of traditional representations of women in Chilean cinema. When asked if film has a particular responsibility to address social issues which are excluded from public debate, Scherson responds:

I believe that forging an institutional concept of identity runs the risk of enclosing certain groups. For example, one hears talk of Mapuche identity or gay identity and, at its core, this invented diversity ends up turning identity into a little prison. I fear this greatly, and I feel that essentially all of the arts must look at the world, look at themselves and at us. However, the arts are not obligated to draw opinions about certain topics. I don’t believe that film or fiction in general should be forced to do so. (CineChile; my translation)

Vera R. Coleman

Arizona State University