Montreal: Patricio Henriquez’s Images d’une dictatorship/Images of a Dictatorship is the winner of this year’s $25,000 M. Joan Chalmers Documentarian Award for Film and Video.

The one-hour film was edited from 60 hours of primarily archival materials covering 17 years of social and political repression in Chile.

Henriquez says he’ll share his cash prize with Macumba International producers Robert Cornellier and Raymonde Provencher, the film’s producers, and with veteran editor Jean-Marie Drot and Chilean cameraman Raul Cuevas.

Macumba is prepping Extremis, an international social-issues doc for Tele-Quebec, and Aupres des Fleurs, Henriquez’s new point-of-view project on a powerful indigenous women’s collective in Southern Mexico. He expects to shoot on location this fall.

The film has taken home several top prizes this year – at Hot Docs! as best political documentary, at Festival des medias nord-sud in Geneva, at the Tel Aviv International Documentary Festival, as well as the prize for best doc at the Prix Jutra.

Images of a Dictatorship was commissioned by Radio-Canada and is sold internationally by The Multimedia Group of Canada. The annual $25,000 Chalmers Award is managed by the Ontario Arts Council and honors an individual who has made an outstanding documentary.