Mensaje Magazine and Rafael Sánchez: Approaches to the Chilean University Documentary

This article seeks to delineate the active role played by the Catholic Church and its guidelines on cinematography, in the renewal of the Chilean documentary in the 50's and 60's. In particular, the work of assimilation and dissemination of this ideology, carried out by a group of Jesuit priests responsible for the writing of Mensaje magazine and its gravitation in university documentary production, promoted by Rafael Sánchez at the Film Institute of the Universidad Católica de Chile, from 1955. This paper examines these guidelines, and their possible effects in two specific areas of interest: the reflection and dissemination of the positions of the Catholic Church on the cinema in the Mensaje magazine, and in the field of cinematographic practice, expressed in the documentary production of Rafael Sánchez.