NEWS
DOCUPOLIS´ 05 PRESENTS THE COLUMBIAN DOCUMENTARY FILM-MAKERS MARTA RODRÍGUEZ AND FERNANDO RESTREPO
In the scope of Docupolis ´05 the Columbian Filmmakers Marta Rodríguez and Fernando Restrepo head a debate, talking about the documentary film from their own experience in their mother country Colombia. The debate will be after the screening of the documentary "Amor, mujeres y flores" (Marta Rodríguez, 52’, 1984-89, Colombia) at 5 p.m. and followed the screening of "Nunca más" (Marta Rodríguez, 56’, 1999-2001) at 7 p.m.. After the intensive cine-recovery of Marta Rodriguez the celebrated Documentary “Cabra, marcado para morrer” (110’, 1984 Brazil, premio FIPRESCI en el Festival de Cine de Berlín, 1984) by Eduardo Coutinho will be screened at 8:45 p.m.. The film subscribes itself to the tradition of the cine vérité. Coutinho will receive the award “Men of the Camera” for his cinematographic lifework at the prize presentation.
The cinema of Marta Rodríguez
”Which roll can a documentary play in a country, where an irrational
war gets worse day by day, where the word kills and saying the truth
might cost the exile?” asks Marta Rodriguez herself. The cinema
of Martha Rodríguez reflects the sociopolitocal and cultural
reality of her country Columbia, or better to say, that the Colombian
reality reflects itself, like in a mirror, in the documentaries of Marta
Rodríguez. Her mission is almost heroic: making documentaries
in a country without mediums to make them, with nor tradition nor a
school of thought (her style is born from the French school of thought
of Jean Rouch), to document a reality, that doesn´t let to catch
itself by its weaknesses, blackmails, interests and inherent fractures.
For Marta Rodríguez, the camara is not a neutral mirror, without
a window, that allows those who are oppressed by the violence of the
law (which is the law itself), to raise their voice.
“Therefore”, says Marta Rodríguez, “we have to film with a smaller team everytime, until we are almost invisible, to get to the zones of war and film how Columbia bleeds in a fight between brothers”.
The cinema-recovery of Docúpolis dedicated to Marta Rodríguez is the evident proof, that the invisibility is obvious, but it needs to be pointed out with the finger, for someone to directed his view there, it needs to be responded to a part of the reality, for that it is spoken about it and made heard. The work of Marta Rodríguez is extremely methodical: having come to invest more than five years to realise a documentary and her preconception of the camera as an organ that denunciates, up to the point to out the camera in the hands of the displaced indigene communities, so that they can express and explain themselves to the others. The work of Marta Rodríguez is a bravery without a name.
Therefore six of her films can be seen in the section “Cinema Recovery” of Docupolis ’05, from Thursday the 6th, until Sunday the 9th in the CCCB (Montalegre, 5).