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TV Reviews : A Poetic Portrait of Salvadoran War Victims

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The bloody tragedy of the decade-long El Salvador civil war has become so painfully familiar and persistent that it now belongs with the “impossible” strifes-without-end: Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, the Middle East. Media coverage has long ago cast the Salvadoran battle with a pall of weary sameness, nightly horrors that eventually numb the viewer.

This, of course, is dangerous. To lose sight of this war would be to lose touch with the realities of Latin America. A fresh reportorial point of view would seem in order, and it has arrived with “Stories from El Salvador,” a magnificently contemplative and poetic view of the war’s victims (tonight at 10, Channels 28 and 15).

A reason for this freshness might be that “Stories” is the work of an independent British film crew, led by director/producer/cameraman Peter Chappell. Gone is the sound-bite, rush-to-deadline approach pandemic in American TV reporting. Chappell films and edits in slow, graceful rhythms, with a masterful grasp of the most intimate cinema verite techniques, and an eye fixed on three peasant couples managing to survive.

Two of them--Juana and Alejandro, and Jose and Maria Julia--eke out existences in San Salvador’s slums. None are so consumed by poverty that they have lost the ability to look past their noses: These are smart, deeply spiritual and pragmatic people. Alejandro even speaks out during a church service on human rights, knowing that talk is dangerous.

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Chappell moves to the Morazan province, center of some of the worst fighting, to observe the farm life of Concepcion and Eugenia. He speaks proudly of their self-sufficiency, a value lost in the city. He goes on stoically about the time government troops captured and tortured him for a week. (If Chappell met any poor Salvadorans without hate for the army, they’re on the cutting room floor.)

Meanwhile, there’s a family to raise, land to till, hammocks to weave. The patterns and rituals of work fill Chappell’s film with a quiet humanity; he absolutely avoids sentimentalizing the “noble peasant.” And the war only directly enters “Stories” at the end, as refugees try to return to their homeland and rebuild from bombed remains of their old shelters. A chilling closing graphic tells us that the bombing wasn’t over.

An introduction and epilogue on current developments in El Salvador was unavailable for review.

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