Unheard Voices: Cinema of Venezuela

By: kuxa kanema

Venezuela was one of three countries that emerged from the collapse of Gran Colombia in 1830 (the others being Colombia and Ecuador). For most of the first half of the 20th century, Venezuela was ruled by generally benevolent military strongmen, who promoted the oil industry and allowed for some social reforms. Democratically elected governments have held sway since 1959. Current concerns include: an embattled president who is losing his once solid support among Venezuelans, a divided military, drug related conflicts along the Colombian border, increasing internal drug consumption, overdependence on the petroleum industry with its price fluctuations, and irresponsible mining operations that are endangering the rain forest and indigenous people.

Venezuela has a rich tradition of filmmaking starting from the early fifties to the presnt day. Below is an outline of ten key filmmakers from Venezuela, their major works and their contribution to Latin American film. Recently there has been a big move by Hugo Chavez to create a cinema which can compete with the U.S in home markets. Time will tell if this dream will come true.

Those behind Venezuela’s political revolution are keen to create a greater consciousness of the country’s history and culture, something they believe has been ignored as a result of the dominance of the US. US actor Danny Glover is planning a film with Venezuelan backing
Cinema City’s productions will all reflect the values of the changes under President Chavez. One of its future flagship films is being made by a big Hollywood name. Danny Glover, best known for his role as a cop in the Lethal Weapon series, has made it clear he supports Mr Chavez.
The feeling is mutual. The president has pledged $18m (£8.7m) to a film Glover plans to make about the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. Final discussions are still underway, but the financial backing guarantees it will all be filmed in Venezuela, with great benefits promised. “Not only does the telling of this inspirational story redress a major gap in our collective histories, but the process of making the film will do the same,” the actor-cum-producer said recently. “The positive impact will be felt in diverse communities from where cast and crew will be hired and trained.” But are all these revolutionary big screen antics just a form of propaganda? – BBC NEWS Nov 2007

Window period (1897-1931)

On January 28, 1897 the first Venezuelan film screenings were held in Maracaibo: the films subjects were the Grand Hotel Europe and boys swimming in Lake Maracaibo. It gives the direction of these films to Manuel Trujillo Durán, although there is no precise historical documentation. Since 1908, movies were filmed on behalf of the dictatorial government of General Juan Vicente Gomez, in force until 1935. The first movie was directed by Henry Zimmermann in 1916. The Lady of the Passion and Death Cayenas or Margarita Gutierrez was a parody of “La Dame aux Camelias.” Eight years later, Edgar J. Anzola and James Capriles Triumph Film created and produced The Climber, considered the first feature film made in the country. The following year, they made Love, You Are The Living. In 1927. Anzola created the National Film Laboratory (NRL) under the Ministry of Public Works (MOP), to make the official films until 1937. Amabilis Cordero began to establish himself as one of the most important names of that period: Miracles of the Divine Shepherdess (1928), The Cross of an Angel (1929) and The Tragedy of the Pilot Landaeta and love and faith to the Divine Shepherdess o shepherd of the Hills (both 1931) were his accomplishments. In 1931, he premiered with The Tragedy of School Wohnsiedler.

Sound era: home (1932-1952)

The first talkie was The Venus of Pearl, by Efrain Gomez, made in the LCN. The Skeleton Dance (1934), was an animated short film which was produced by the LCN and premiered the same year. The death of the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez caused some changes at home. In 1937, and the LCN was closed, the National Film Service (SCN) was created. The SCN was a government entity which acquired their equipment and went on to perform their same functions. Its duration was short-lived, as it died the following year. The first talkie feature was The Breaking (1938) by Antonio Maria Delgado Gomez. That same year, the writer Romulo Gallegos Avila created Studios, which produced only one feature film, Juan de la Calle, Rafael Rivero 1941. After the extinction of the studios Avila and Condor Films, were founded by Bolivar Films producer Argentine Carlos Hugo Christensen: The Devil is an Angel (1949) and The Sloop Isabel (1950) were the most notable films of the period. The latter film was awarded for the photograph of José María Beltrán at Cannes. In 1951 the Film Critics Circle Caracas (ACPC) – was created which was the first association of independent film critics.

1. Margot Benacerraf
Venezuelen cinema came to the fore when Margot made two documenataries in the fifties Reveron and Araya. She was born in Caracas in 1926 and moved to France to study cinema. On her return she made her first documentary Reveron portraying the well known painter Armando Reveron. Her second film Araya following the lives of a group of salt mine workers in the small town of the same name shot to international acclaim and shared the International Critics award at the Cannes Film Festival with Resnias’s Hiroshima Mon Amour. Araya is a landmark of third world filmmaking and has been compared to great works such as Visconti’s Terra Trema and Flaherty’s Man of Aran. Although Benacerraf has been quoted as saying Araya is “a cinematic narration based on script writing rather than a spontaneous action, a feature documentary, the opposite of Italian neorealism”. Benacerraf has failed to make other films but has continued to play an important part in Latin American film and was director of the Nacional Film Library and in 1991 alongside legendary writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez founded the Latin Fundavisual foundation which promotes Latin American audio-visual art in Venezuela.

Reveron 1952
Araya 1959

2.Alfredo Anzola
Documentary film continued to flourish in the sixties. Alfredo Anzola was a key contributor and films such as Santa Teresa helped to keep Venezuela at the forefront of Latin American cinema. In the seventies he turned to fiction film and made the popular films Wanted: Good Looking Receptionist and Messenger with His Own Motorcycle and Manuel. In 1993 Anzola made the documenatry El misterio de los ojos escarlata (‘The Mystery of the Scarlet Eyes’), which provides a rare glimpse of unseen images of Venezuela in the 1920s and 30s: footage shot by the film-maker’s father, who made documentaries and two silent feature films. Now lost, in the 1920s, then acquired a 16mm camera and filmed mostly documentary footage throughout the 30s and 40s, while working as the director of a radio station – a radio serial written and produced by Anzola père provides the title of his son’s film about him.

Santa Teresa 1969
Wanted: Good Looking Receptionist and Messenger with His Own Motorcycle 1977
Manuel 1979
Shrimp Cocktail 1983
Mystery of the Scarlet Eyes 1993
1888, the extraordinary voyage of Jules Verne 2005

3.Carlos Rebolledo
Rebolledo is another key documentary filmmaker in the 60’s and made the Dead Well in 1967. Like many filmmakers he turned to fiction film making in the seventies, when the state financed over twenty nine feature films in an ambitious attempt to make Venezuela a leader in Latin American film. In 1978 Rebolledo directed King of the Joropo about a folk law dance and its’ king Alfredo Alavarado. This type of film was popular in Venezuela but failed to interest international audeinces.

Dead Well 1967
King of the Joropo 1978

4.Ivan Feo & Antonio Llerandi
Feo and Llerandi rose to prominence with their 1978 feature film Portable Country which tells the story of three generations of a rural Venezuelan family contend with political chaos and revolution in this confusing drama. The fragmented flashbacks set the time in the late 19th century, 1925, 1933, and the late 1970s. A patriarch boards a bus for a symbolic showdown with the police to seek vengeance for the plight of his beleaguered ancestors. The film underscores the fact that every generation must overcome social and political obstacles and stand up for their rights in spite of revolution. Since then both directors have continued to work independantly and in 1986 Feo directed the notable feature Ifigenia. In 1991 he made Tosca which only grossed 6,000 dollars at the Venezuelan box office.

Portable Country 1978
Ifigenia 1986 (Feo)
Tosca 1991 (Feo)

5.Roman Chalbaud
Chalbaud is a highly respected Playwright, poet and film maker. In the 1950’s and 60’s he rose to prominence with plays such as Requiem for an eclipse (1957) and Sacred and Obscene (1961). The first film directed by Chalbaud, Adolescence of Cain (1959) was an adaptation of his first play. Since then he has directed over 20 films including The fish who smoke (1977) about a Mexican brothel, Cangejo (1982) a thriller about police corruption The Black Sheep (1987), Pandemonium (1997). The latter film explores a deprived family set in a pessimistic, post-modern and apocaliptic future in Venezuela, where the corruption is unbearable and the poverty is out of control. Chalbaud is a key cultural and artistic figure in Venezuelat and his influence in theatre and cinema is culpable.

Adolescence of Cain 1959
the Fish Who Smoke 1977
Carmen, la que contaba 16 años 1978
Cangrejo 1982
the Black Sheep 1987
Cuchillos de Fuego 1989
Flaming Knives 1992
Pandemonium 1997
El Caracazo 2005
Zamora 2008

6.Carlos Azpurua
A severe recession in the early eighties damaged Venezuela’s film industry and by the mid 1980’s only a handful of features were being made. That said some new arrivals burst onto the scene including Carlos Azpurua who has made both fiction and documenatry film. In 1990 he directed his big success Shoot To Kill about a character Mercedes who witnesses the unjust murder of her son, a working-class man, by a police captain. Refusing to accept the official version of the story – that her son was a criminal – she launches a campaign for justice. Santiago, a young journalist moved by Mercedes’s passion and determination, begins to investigate the story of the police cover-up at the risk of his own life. As the investigation develops, the film exposes the depth of Venezuela’s corruption. Azpurua films such as Amaneció de golpe which won a Goya have been highly successful, but have met with somewhat mixed critiacl reaction.

Shoot To Kill 1990
Amanceio de Golpe 1998
My Life For Sharon 2006

7.Fina Torres
Fina Torres (born October 7, 1951) is a Venezuelan film director. Born in Caracas, she became known by winning la Caméra d’Or award at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival with her directorial debut film, Oriana. She studied design, photography and journalism in Venezuela and later on film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris. She lives now in Mexico and the United States and continues to work with film projects related to Latin America as well as giving workshops in direction and script writing in Venezuela

Oriana 1985
Celestial Clockwork 1995 (france, Belgium, Spain)
Woman On Top 2000 (USA)

8.Alberto Arvelo
Arvelo is a highly respected film maker both in fiction and documentary currently working in Venezuela. His features A House With A Sea View, Cyrano Fernandez and To Play and To Fight have won numerous international awards.In Cyrano Fernandez Arvelo transplants Edmond Rostand’s swashbuckling tale of misplaced love to the cramped slums of Caracas with this tale of a smitten gangster who longs for the affections of an impossibly beautiful local girl. The film was a huge success and confirmed Arvelo as one of the leading contemporary film makers in Venezuela.

One Life and Two Trails 1997
A House With A View of the Sea 2001
To Play and To Fight 2006
Cyrano Fernandez 2007

9.Jonathan Jakubowicz
This self styled Venezuelan Tarantino may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but he has helped to put back the country on the international scene. In 2005 he directed Secuestro Express about a woman abducted and her fiance held to ransom. What might have been a tough realist drama was turned into a stylish tour de force of bad humour and excessive violence. A massive hit in and Venezuela and elsewhere, the film made its star Mia Maestro an overnight sensation who along with the director moved inevitably to Hollywood. One wonders whether Jakubowicz like so many other successful film makers will return to film making in his homeland or will just succomb to the Hollywood treadmill of cheap thrillers and bad scripts.

Secuestro Express 2005

10.Mariana Rondon
Another respected contemporary film maker whose biggest hit Postcards From Leningrad is a critical reflection on the Venezuelan guerilla movement of the 1960’s narrated from a young girl’s viewpoint and won several international awards including at the Sundance film festival.

Postcards From Leningrad 2007

OTHER IMPORTANT FILMMAKERS INCLUDE:
Jesus Enrique Guedez – Imogen de Venezuela 1968
Diego Risquez Bolívar, sinfonía tropikal 1979, Manuela Saenz, 2000
Mauricio Wallerstein When I want To Cry I Won’t Cry, 1972, The End of the Party, 1972 Chronicle of A Latin Subversive, 1975, the Management Forgives A Moment of Madness 1978, Male and Female1984, From Woman To Woman 1986.

Olegario Barrera Una abuela virgen 2007
Leonardo Henriquez Bleeder 1999, Tokyo-Paraguaipoa 1996
Oscar Lucien Un sueño en el abismo 1991, Piel 1998

Augusto Pradelli Joligud 1990
Alfredo Luga La Hora del Tigre 1985
Solveig Hoogesteijn Macu the Policeman’s Woman 1987, Santera 1994, Maroa 2005

Fernando Venturini, 3 Noches 1991
Luis Alberto Lamata, Jerico 1990
Clemente de la Cerda, I Am A Delinquent, 1976

Jose Ramon Novoa Sicario 1994
Elia Schneider A Dot and A Line, Huelepega 1999

FOREIGN FILMS SET IN VENEZUELA
Another Way Is Possible In Venezuela, Elisabetta Andreoli, Gabriele Muzio, Max Pugh, 2002, Italy, UK
Chavez: Inside the Coup, Kim Bartley, Donnacha O’Brian, 2003, Ireland, Holland, US, Finland, Germany, UK