Luis Ospina, the emblematic Colombian director who died in 2019, not only left a legacy of more than 20 films, he also launched Mudos witnesses, his posthumous film directed with Jerónimo Atehortúa and which comes to Barcelona within the program of the Film Festival. Colombian Cinema, between December 12 and 17. And the audiovisual piece by the filmmaker who was part of the Caliwood group of artists is not the only one that will be presented at the Filmoteca de Catalunya. Ana Rosa by Catalina Villar and Camilo Torres Restrepo. The effective love of Marta Rodríguez will complete the unpublished films of the Latin American country.
The meeting with Colombian cinema will have a guest of honor for its opening. Víctor Gaviria, one of the leading voices of contemporary Latin American cinema, will open the event with the screening of The Rose Seller, on December 12. This film shows the life of Mónica (Lady Tabares), a girl who sells roses in a context of drugs and violence in the city of Medellín. The film, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen, celebrates 25 years since its premiere in 1998, the same year it was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, becoming Gaviria's second work to participate in the French festival, after Rodrigo D. No future (1990).
And there are three unreleased films that will follow the presentation of The Rose Seller. These are two documentaries and the fiction Mudos witnesses, directed by Ospina and Atehortúa. This audiovisual piece, which was already awarded as best feature film at the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, brings together historical fragments of Colombian silent cinema, and from them creates a cinematographic collage showing the impossible love story between Efraín and Alicia with parts of silent films between 1922 and 1937, such as Aura and the Violets (1924) or The First Trials of the National Talking Cinema (1937).
The female representation will be in charge of the documentaries with Ana Rosa (December 16) by the Colombian director Catalina Villar, where the filmmaker uses as a starting point the lobotomy of her pianist grandmother in the 1950s, in order to delve into the history of psychiatry in the society of that time. On the other hand, Marta Rodríguez brings an experimental documentary called Camilo Torres Restrepo. Effective love, where the director engages in a conversation about the current situation in Colombia with the priest Camilo Torres, who was a member of the National Liberation Army and one of the pioneering figures of liberation theology, who died in 1966.
In addition, the Amèrica Catalunya house will host the talk Behind the scenes: a meeting with Víctor Gaviria and Melba Escobar, on December 13 and moderated by Laura Lorenzi, coordinator of Action for Peace. In this meeting, the filmmaker and the writer will discuss the structural violence in Colombia and how cinema, culture and art can play a role as agents of social transformation.
