Tomorrow night, at the University of Pittsburgh, there’ll be a screening of a classic documentary about an infamous military coup in Chile.

Patricio Guzman’s The Battle for Chile chronicles the Sept. 11, 1973, overthrow of democratically elected president Salvador Allende by the Chilean military, Chilean elites and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA’s involvement was clandestine but has since been made public.

Allende, a socialist, died defending the presidential palace, and tens of thousands of his party’s supporters were ultimately murdered or violently repressed by the country’s new leaders, including strongman Augusto Pinochet.

The Battle of Chile is actually a trilogy, mostly shot on the streets while these historic events were taking place. (In fact, Guzman and his small crew were documenting the big political changes in Chile under Allende well before the events leading to the coup.)

Tomorrow’s screening includes only part two, the stand-alone 88-minute segment covering the coup itself. It was released to great acclaim in 1976 (though it wasn’t allowed to screen in Chile until 1996).

The screening is presented by Dan Kovalik, an attorney and Pitt adjunct professor of international human rights. A brief discussion will follow.

The screening will be held at 7 p.m. in Room 109 of the Barco Law Building, on Pitt’s Oakland campus. For more information, call Kovalik at 412-562-2518.