El Dia English

When Che Guevara was captured and killed, a wire photograph of his body was transmitted worldwide. It depicted the corpse in a room full of gleeful military men. The photograph, by Freddy Alborta, has been compared by John Berger to Mantegna’s Dead Christ and to Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Tulp. The film centers on an interview with Freddy Alborta, his recollections from October 10, 1967, the dramatic photographs taken by him on that day, the intricate sets of international headlines found during our research, as well as the rare newsreel footage of this disturbing event
El Día Que Me Quieras takes its title from a song by Carlos Gardel, an Argentine singer who disappeared at the height of his career in a plane crash in Medellín, Colombia in 1936. The song, which has remained popular in Latin America since the 1930s, tells of a love fantasy that comes true bringing about an almost biblical transformation. The words of this song and the brief voice-over text based on ‘The Witness’ by Jorge Luis Borges, suggest a mood of eulogy to the documentary material.
The film also incorporates sequences filmed in the Aymara town of Ilabaya, in the High Andes region of Bolivia, where a large group of musicians and dancers enacts a striking pageant set in the fields and the streets of the ancient town of Ilabaya. Their performance stands as a metaphorical homage to Guevara.
In addition to the music recorded on location in Ilabaya, American composer David Darling has composed a magnificent cello solo for the film.
Thirty years after Guevara’s disappearance, El Día Que Me Quieras attempts to heal the open wound of his absence. In July, 1997, after more than a year of excavations, Guevara’s remains were found by an international team of forensic archaeologists in Vallegrande, Bolivia, where he had been secretly buried. Three months later, Cuba finally buried the legendary Che Guevara in the town of Santa Clara where, in 1959, he had fought the decisive battle that made him a national hero.
El Día Que Me Quieras had its world prèmiere at the Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana, where it won The International Jury’s Coral Prize. It has also won the ‘Best Documentary’ prize in the Festival Internacional de Cine de Valdivia, Chile. The film has been included in the Rotterdam/Holland, Pesaro/Italy, Valladolid/Spain, Oslo/Norway, Leipzig/Germany, Vue Sur Les Docs/Marseille, Festival dei Popoli/Italy and Los Angeles Latino International Film Festivals, among others. It was part of the Visible Evidence Conference at San Francisco State University and also the New Documentaries Series at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

EL DÍA QUE ME QUIERAS

(The Day You’ll Love Me)
30 minutes, color, sound, 16mm. film
(also DVD, Spanish and English) 1997
DVD included in The Ghosts of Ñancahuazú
A restored high resolution version is now available (2024)

EL DÍA QUE ME QUIERAS

(The Day You’ll Love Me) 30 minutes, color, sound, 16mm. film (also DVD, Spanish and English) 1997 DVD included in The Ghosts of Ñancahuazú A restored high resolution version is now available (2024)

(The Day You’ll Love Me)
30 minutes, color, sound, 16mm. film
(also DVD, Spanish and English) 1997
DVD included in The Ghosts of Ñancahuazú
A restored high resolution version is now available (2024)