Under Construction: or The Place I Was Born No Longer Exists

Directed by Ignacio Agüero

58 minutes / Color
Spanish / English subtitles
Release: 2001
Copyright: 2000

In the Providencia Barrio of Santiago, Chile, a neighbor lives through the demolition of the house next door and the construction of a building in the same place, over a two-year period.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION is about the passing of time and the transformation of a space where minor and major events occur: a death and a birth; neighborhoods disappearing; buildings being demolished and built; winters and springs passing.

In the end, when the building is finished, the protagonist looks up at his new neighbors, while they look down at him from their balcony: evidence of a space (and a past) that they now control.

"There are dozens, hundreds of films within the 77 minutes of UNDER CONSTRUCTION."—Pablo Marin, professor and filmmaker

"With an almost anthropologic, nostalgic, and sometimes humorous gaze, UNDER CONSTRUCTION is the best Chilean documentary of the new century. …Capturing the demolition process of an old house in Santiago, and the construction of the building that replaces it, Aguero observes a merciless, painful, undeniable reality."—Joel Poblete, film critic

"The weight of its images, the value of what was found in three years of shooting, the quality of the editing, and the soundtrack convey with eloquence the patience of an artist who struggled with a mountain of materials to give definitive form to what was observed during all the time that the film lived within himself."—Francisco Mouat, journalist

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