Film Views: Colombian Director Felipe Aljure on Filmmaking as a social form.

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Click on the Pic for an article (in Spanish) on Aljure's
new film: "Colombian Dream".
Pic: Olga Paulhiac (El Espectador - Colombia)

"I'm an optimist of Cinema. I think there are positive trends happening. If you see it from a sociological perspective, I think FILM IS INEVITABLE. Structures and policies might delay national cinemas more or less in every country, but it's clear that human evolution goes through cinema because it is the most sophisticated form of human representation. So sophisticated... that it has created alternate realities to life itself. People see Brad Pitt on the screen and then they think he's so cool that they want to dress like Brad Pitt and so on. Whereas 100 years ago they would have wanted to dress like their fathers or like the farmers on the field next door. So, the planet's paradigms - the planet's lines of evolution - have gone from Real to Virtual, with the risks that such process implies, and within that evolution process, film is an inevitable medium, it has to be heeded, and any imperfection in its form, or its difficulties, are just bits and pieces... and film, as one of the lines of human evolution, has to be taken seriously, and it has to be approached with optimism, the same optimism that life deserves. Life is not without difficulties, but that doesn't make it bad."

Interviewed by Carlos Peralta - October 2005

Click here for the review (in English) of Aljure's first film "La Gente de la Universal" on Variety.com

Film Views: Colombian Director Victor Gaviria on his 2005 film "Sumas y Restas" (Addictions and Subtractions)

“I attracted producers by giving away the property of the film. My production company had 100%, but little by little we gave the shares away at lower prices than their value. I gave 10-15% of the film at much less. You end up giving away your work, and the grants you got, giving it to the financial co-producers at half price of the film’s value, and you give it away so you can finish it. Not to finish it would be even worse, a tragedy. The film is owned by other people now. It is not mine anymore. But you will see that "Sumas y Restas" is what I wanted it to be. It was a difficult subject for investors to get involved with. But that’s critical immaturity, a weak public opinion that fears contamination. Contamination means that today's flows of information are so dense that there's no time to separate the signs that appear together, everything is associated… as one cause. Investors fear that kind of association. Nobody wants to be around the subject of Cocaine. There's some kind of shame about being mixed with certain issues, but in a film the important thing is the treatment not the subject. Art is not ashamed because Art is privileged by the treatment, not by the chosen subject. A work about drug-trafficking might be crucially important for Colombia depending on how the film or the novel is treated. Those themes cannot be forbidden to Art”.

Victor Gaviria - Colombian Film Director
Interviewed by Carlos Peralta - October 2005

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Click here for the review of "Sumas y Restas" on Variety.com