Alejandro Sieveking in Old Cats (2011) by Sebastián Silva and Pedro Peirano
Veteran Chilean actor and playwright Alejandro Sieveking has died today at age 85 in Santiago. A renowned and prolific actor, he participated in numerous films working with directors Pablo Larraín, Sebastián Silva and Alicia Scherson, among others. His 1967 theater play Three Sad Tigers / Tres tristes tigres was adapted to cinema by Raúl Ruiz, marking his debut feature film and wining the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the 1969 edition of the Locarno Film Festival. Sieveking was also a regular collaborator with legendary folk singer and theater director Víctor Jara.
Born in Rengo, Chile on September 5, 1934, he studied architecture at the Universidad de Chile, where he started acting in college plays. His interest in acting made him switch careers and he ended up studing at the Theater Institute at the same university. He met Víctor Jara in college and the established a strong friendship and a longstanding professional partnership, one as a playwright and the other as a theater director.
In 1959, Sieveking won the Municipal Prize of Santiago Theater with the play Parecido a la felicidad, directed by Jara, which successfully toured around Latin America. Other key collaboration between both artists was the theater play La remolienda, a folk comedy which became a staple of Chilean theater. In 1961 he married actress Bélgica Castro.
The Winter by Emiliano Torres
Following the 1973 coup d’etat Sieveking and his wife went into exile to Costa Rica. In San José he founded the Teatro del Ángel, as a continuation of his Chilean experience and where he worked for eleven years. In 1984 he returned to Chile and began working as a screenwriter on National Television.
Sieveking’s film debut was in the 2005 film Play, the debut feature by Alicia Scherson, winner of the Best New Narrative Director at the Tribeca Film Festival. In 2007 he acted in the comedy film Life Kills Me / La vida me mata, the debut feature by Sebastián Silva about an unlikely friendship between a grieving cinematographer and a morbidly obsessed drifter.
In 2010 Sieveking worked again with Silva, and Pedro Peirano, in the film Old Cats / Gatos viejos, also starring Sieveking’s wife. The film was a hit at the New York Film Festival and had a theatrical run at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The film follows Isadora (Castro), an octogenarian living comfortably with her husband Enrique (Sieveking) and two cats, who suddenly finds herself fighting a battle on two fronts when the onset of dementia arrives at the same time that her daughter’s attempt to scheme the landlord seems to require that Isadora sign over the lease on her Santiago apartment. Unfolding with black humor and empathy in equal measure, the film emphasizes both the confusion in Isadora’s psyche and the claustrophobia of her domestic landscape.
The Club by Pablo Larraín
In 2015, Sieveking played the role of Padre Ramírez in the acclaimed film The Club / El club by Pablo Larraín, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in a Foreign Language. The film follows a crisis counselor as he is sent by the Catholic Church to a small Chilean beach town where disgraced Priests and nuns, suspected of crimes ranging from child abuse to baby-snatching from unwed mothers, live secluded, after an incident occurs.
Other film credits by Sieveking include Fragmentos de Lucía by Jorge Yacoman (2016), The Winter / El invierno, the debut feature by Argentine filmmaker Emiliano Torres (2016), and Los perros by Marcela Said (2017) for which he received the Caleuche Prize for Best Supporting Actor. He was awarded Chile’s National Arts Prize in 2017 and was fêted with his wife at the second edition of the La Serena Film Festival.
