My colleague and I arrived in Amsterdam to cover IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival, now in it's 20th year. It was while I was looking for the press area that an unexpected encounter ensued.

Inside the University I asked a tall elderly man with glasses, who also looked lost, if he knew where the press area was. "I don't quite know...?" He replied in an American accent with a difference "But I am looking for it as well." I introduced myself, "Hi, nice to meet you my name is Ariel Dorfman." He replied.

So was my introduction to Mr Dorfman who was at the festival to share his history and his life portrayed in a documentary entitled, 'A Promise to the Dead The exile journey of Ariel Dorf-man'. Directed by Canadian director Peter Raymont and made in 2007. (Ariel Dorfman right)

Raymont is best known for his documentary about the Rwanadan Genocide, 'Shake Hands with the Devil; The Journey of Romeo Dallaire' which won the audience award for the best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.

I found Dorfman to be unassuming and down to earth. A person with a life that could not even come close to being invented by some of the great fiction writers. Dorfman was cultural advisor in Allende's Democratically elected Socialist government of Chile. The US and the CIA's dirty tricks were known for supporting coups in Latin American countries and this was no exception when in 1973 they backed the Fascist and tyrant General Augusto Pinochet bringing him to power and Dorfman was forced to go into exile. As a writer Dorfman has written numerous works of non-fiction, essays and plays. He is most renowned for his play, 'Death and the Maiden', made into a film by Roman Polanski in 1994. The non-fiction story deals with a housewife Paulina Escobar who is convinced that her neighbor Dr Miranda was the same man who tortured and raped her in the old Fascist regime that she survived. She takes him captive and her old demons are resurrected as she goes into a psychological journey into her past on a search for the truth and for justice.

Dorfman told me about a documentary that was showing that afternoon in Tuschinski cinema entitled 'Bajo Juarez, The City Devouring its Daughters' and suggested that it was worthwhile seeing. I walked with him to the cinema and we talked about his Jewish Ashkenazi roots, his family originally coming from Odessa. He was born in Argentina, but grew up in America. The left wing activism in his family runs deep, from his grandmother being interpreter for Trotsky, to Dorfman's father having to leave America during McCarthyism due to his leftist leanings. The family eventually ended up in Chile.

I saw the last screening of, 'A Promise to the Dead...' in Munt cinema. The opening scene is black and white footage of Allende supporters in the 70's marching past La Monera, the presidential palace. The streets filled with a sea of people with placards shouting, " Allende, Allende the people will defend you!" Watching the footage of this history in the making is quite an over-powering feeling, and one that leaves you with a sense of loss that what was created by this three year revolution didn't have a chance to survive longer, as this was a social experiment with the positive focus being on education over inequality. The original footage continues with Allende speaking, and then it cuts to a Time magazine cover with the face of him and the heading, "Marxist threat in the Americas." And as if in reply to that fearful US statement, the footage shows jets bombing La Monera after the democratically elected government ignored the ultimatum of having been given 48 hours to leave the building.

There was a list for those who were called to come in and defend the parliament against the hostile take over, but Dorfman wasn't called. Yet on that fateful day of September 11, 1973 he decided to go with a small hand gun to defend it and stood on the corner where the streets crossed, contemplating that point of perhaps no return. But he decided not to, and it was a decision that saved his life and that of his family's as all those that were there that day were killed after being taken prisoner, interrogated and tortured.

The bloodshed continued after Pinochet came to power, he had his own list and on it the names of anybody who didn't support his regime. Those who were taken away became known as the 'disappeared'. 3000 people were killed and 27,000 incarcerated without trials and subjected to torture and of course not counting those that managed to escape and go into exile. Years later when Dorfman asked those in charge why he was not called in that morning he was told, "Someone had to live to tell the story!"

After the documentary Dorfman who al-though was in a rush kindly agreed to an impromptu interview, and what should have been ten minutes turned into twenty. The fundamental question was how he felt about living in a country like America which was responsible for changing his whole life due to it's involvement in the Chilean coup.

n typical eloquence, style and objectivity he answered, "I arrived in the States in the 1980's and a part of me felt very strange.. .On the other hand there were two special factors: America is the land of hope and human rights and is not just the country of Nixon but of Faulkner too...I have never

judged a country by how it is, but by how it is run!" In an article published this year in the Guardian entitled, 'Vicious Circle' Dorfman speaks about Chile after the Pinochet regime, a country where "victims and tormentors" occupy the same world as if nothing had happened. And it was this reality that resulted in him writing'Death and the Maiden'. He also discusses his new play Purgatorio and returns to his past. He asks,"Why return to the questions at the heart of Death and the Maiden?" His answer, "Because in that play - as in other plays of mine, such as Widows and Reader -I was in a way letting the audience off the hook. It was an agent of the state who was torturing or 'disappearing' bodies, or censoring....The thought that it's just a matter of ridding the world of such repressive figures and everything will be all right. But there is no such comfort in Purgatorio, where both my characters are implicated in something dreadful. What is the worst thing a man can do to a woman? What is the worst thing a woman can do to a man?... They wonder, as I do, if we will be able to find a way out of the endless cycle of hatred and retribution which our species seems to be trapped."

By Mark A. Silberstein