El cantor

This East Germany production from 1973 is about the the life and times of Victor Jara, a popular socialist singer and songwriter from Chile who was an important supporter of the left-winged communist government of president Allende before brutal dictator Pinochet became the leader of the country in 1973 and Allende and Jara were brutally killed during the violent revolution riots.

The films was written and directed by Dean Reed (who also plays Jara), a popular communist American singer and actor who left the United States and became a citizen of the German Democratic Republic in the early seventies and did many records and films with one-sided anti-west propaganda messages.

"El Cantor" from 1978 is one of them, and it's an interesting biography of a political icon of the cold war era, but it's also too biased, naive and sometimes even ridiculous. The acting isn't also the best except for Dean's solid performance of a broken hero, and the musical scored features lots of Jara's hymns and ballads and a strange synthesized-action score. The typical tidy German "Reihenhaus" suburbs are not a really suitable background for the exotic plains and mountains of Santiago de Chile, and all in all this film is really dated, but still an interesting remain of a long forgotten country and era.

Hello, I'm also looking for a copy of this movie.

Can anyone please help?

I'm writing a book on protest art and independent media and would like to profile great protest singers who sang for workers, the poor and oppressed people of the world including Victor Jara, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Hanns Eisler among others. I think it would be great to popularize once again the work of these protest artists. Happily investigative journalist John Pilger features the music of Victor Jara in his most recent feature length documentary entitled "The War on Democracy" (http://www.johnpilger.com).

Cheers, Anita

I'm a big fan if Dean Reed and I've been looking his movie "El Cantor"- The Singer - for many years, and so far I've got no lucks. If you have the movie, I would like to buy it, or just a copy from you. I grow up in Saigon, Vietnam. In late 70's and early 80's, the Vietnam government controlled all the media, news and television. Vietnamese only could see movies from Cuba, Russia, or West Germany at that time. Dean Reed's movie was popular in West Germany, and his movie had been showed in my country, and people was in love with his image as a "hero", who fought for the poor (like us at that time). I do remember the first time I saw "El Cantor" - and I cried in the end, and Dean Reed was my hero since. I really appreciate if you can contact me and let me have a copy from of this movie from you. Thank you!