Opinion Sur Joven

The II Latin American Short Film Festival took place in the city of Barinas, Venezuela, during August. Twenty-five short films were scheduled for the official competition, and more than eighty were screened in parallel exhibitions. The two winners of this event organized by Venezuela were Colombian. I was there, and I came back to tell you all about it.

A long story

On December 2005 I shot a short film which I named “Galápagos”. It was my thesis for the second year at the Filmmaking college, a love story between two beings; I tried to portrait the moment when, on reasons that had nothing to do with the couple, they had to go separate ways. I shot it along with a group of students; we were really into our project, but we had a very low budget and obsolete equipment.

Given our low operative capacity, the worst thing possible happened: our camera broke down on one of the busiest days and we lost the footage. We were angry and frustrated.

Months later, on March 2006, we re-shot the lost material and the results were far better that the first time. From March to November of that year I spent my time editing and post-processing the footage. We used to do it late at night, with other people’s computers or at a college mate’s photography store; we did it the best way we could.

The post-production stage is very weird. While you’re editing, you have to share your time with a material you devoted your soul to, but which you really hate as well. The raw footage isn’t even close to what we dreamed of; it doesn’t even seem to reflect all the effort we made to bring it to light. The “post” process is an infighting exercise with the lack, the absence, the reality of our production.

We made the last arrangements in the sound the last week of November and we finally submitted the short film to the university’s video library.

That’s when the second half of our match began.

Returning

There was a really long way from the moment I wrote down -lying on my bed- the first lines of my story until I completed it, re-wrote it, turned it into a project, found the people to make it along with me, shot it, post-produced it and finally finished it.

That’s a long way full of uncertainties and fears; a path that could satisfy any eager soul. But it doesn’t. Short films have a life of their own, almost like children, which, by the way, I don’t have.

From the moment the film was finished, it started to make its way through the world, to have a name of its own. On December 2006 my film was selected out of more than a hundred productions to participate in the competition of the first Short Film festival CIEVYC. It was awarded for the following categories: Best Art Direction, Best Actor, Mention for Photography, Best Screenplay and Best Short Film.

Being recognized by my teachers, my mates and colleagues was really surprising for me.

On March 2007 something I used to dream of came true, and I couldn’t believe it. “Galápagos” was selected by the video library of the Malba (Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires) to be projected in four weekly sessions throughout the whole month.

Every filmmaker dreams of seeing their material on the big screen, with the lights off and the silence that increases our attention and lets the journey begin. Not only was it an emotive moment, but it was also exciting to be right next to Hitchcock and Truffaut, at least on the catalog.

On April 2007, “Galápagos” was selected in the UNCIPAR festival, organized by the INCAA in Villa Gesell, province of Buenos Aires. I was invited to participate during the four days the competition lasted. It was a whole new experience. I got to compete in one of the most prestigious festivals in Argentina and do it at the same level as works of national and international recognition.

During all this time I’ve been moving along with my short film and, at the same time, I’ve been writing and developing new ideas. On May 2007 I was at the pre-production stage of a new short film in 16 mm and at the pre-production stage of a medium-length film. “Galápagos” had given me so much more than I had expected. Everything was really sudden and I enjoyed it a lot. So I thought things were going back to normal.

On July I got a very clear e-mail: “Galápagos” had been selected to participate in the official competition of the II Latin American Short Film Festival held in Barinas, Venezuela. All expenses were on the organizers’ account, and they paid for the rights of reproducing my film on the National Network; those are the moments when you feel truly happy.

The distribution company Amazonia Films was interested in my material. Two weeks later I was flying to Barinas, hometown of Venezuela’s current president, Hugo Chávez.

Surrealistic talks by the pool

The festival is a splendid whirl of projections, business card exchange, seminars, business card exchange, parallel projections, business card exchange and… talks by the pool.

Every day there were six-hour long projections in average, then a period of one hour and a half of official competition, a period of selection of short films from other festivals of the world (Huesca, Huelva, IMC) and open air projections in squares and sports clubs; it’s a way of democratizing culture. However, people were able to attend all projections for free.

By the end of the day, at sunset, we would gather by the pool of the hotel.

For a newcomer like me, it was exciting to be a guest and have the chance to talk about film exhibitions with a Mexican producer and, at the same time, comment on the development of an animation full-length film with the well-known Chilean animator Tomás Wells.

There were moments, some moments, when the situation would get slightly surrealistic, as if time actually stopped and we just moved along with the flow of the night, accompanied in the rhythm by some light beer. Those were the moments when the world seemed full of infinite possibilities for me; that’s just the way films work…