In “Message from Chile: Letters in Exile Cinema,” José Miguel Palacios and Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto focus eloquently on one particular aspect of films made by Chilean filmmakers in exile -the writing, reading and receiving of letters across the geographical divide of politically enforced separation.

The video essay’s repetition of the images and sounds of letter writing and reading as well as the associated paraphernalia (ink, pen, paper, a typewriter, desk), in visual representation and voice over produces the letter as a metonymic detail – symbolizing, in the words of its authors “the geographical and temporal dislocation caused by exile and the impossibility of returning to the homeland.”

In addition to the focus on letters as written and spoken words, the video essay also centres on the tactile nature of the letter as a precious material object embodying sometimes; ongoing friendship or even the spirit, passion and nationalism of Chile as the home territory (Recado de Chile). The import of the letter as a material object is reinforced through sound; we hear the crinkle of paper as a letter is passed from one little boy unable to read his grandfather’s handwriting to another little boy or the tap tapping of typewriter keys.

Palacios and Ramírez-Soto’s have crafted a magnificent video essay that, through the trope of the letter, connects these disparate Chilean exilic texts through shared themes of displacement, loss and longing.