The Story of
Carmen Gloria Quintana

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1989 I learned that Carmen Gloria Quintana was coming to the Edinburgh University to give a talk about her experiences at the hands of the Pinochet's regime. Her visit was organized by Amnesty International and the Chile Committee for Human Rights. I went to the meeting with my video8 camera to film this young Chilean woman who had been detained by an army patrol in a demonstration in Santiago. What followed was to douse her body with petrol and then set Carmen alight. She survived the ordeal with 65% of her body been burned. What I saw and what I heard from Carmen that day had a huge emotional impact on me. I decided on the spot to make a video-documentary: I approached Joel Vennet, from Video in Pilton in Edinburgh, to help me to make and produced the documentary and I spoke to Andy McEntee about using the documentary in Britain to show the state of human rights in Chile under the Pinochet's regime. Andy, a Scotsman, and the Chile Committee for Human Rights' secretary and Carmen's interpreter at the University meeting supported my idea by managing to fund the project to make a good number of copies of "Carmen". The video was eventually distributed in Britain by the CCHR and shown at the Edinburgh Fringe Film Festival at the Edinburgh Filmhouse.

In the year 2006 I learned, through a BBC drama programme called "Pinochet in Suburbia", that in 1998 Andy McEntee had played a big role to get Pinochet detained in London.

Please CLICK below to watch the documentary I did with the help of Joel Benett of Video in Pilton called " Carmen" and shown at the 1989 Edinburgh Film Festival.