On the one hand there are the old images, a grainy, analog cinema, through which workers from a salt factory parade, slaves to their condition as workers;
or poor people trying to escape from the “villas miseria” or favelas of Caracas, sectors in which Chavismo found its greatest support.
These are the films that make up the historical film series that is celebrated until March 6 at the Casa de América in Madrid, organized by the Venezuelan Embassy in Spain.
At the other extreme is today's cinema, with clean images shot with digital cameras of films starring revolt leaders who point to the Government as responsible for hyperinflation, mass emigration and rampant crime.
This is the case of
Simón
, one of the numerous productions by Venezuelan creators made abroad in the last five years and that reflect the current political and social crisis of the South American country, available in theaters and on Netflix starting March 1.
A before and after in Venezuelan cinematography reflects on the big screen the changes experienced in Venezuela.
Simón
has been seen by 120,000 people in his native country, swept the Venezuelan Film Festival with six awards, including best film, and returned Venezuela to the Goya seven years later with its nomination for best Ibero-American film (it lost to the Chilean
The Infinite Memory).
For the first time, a feature film addresses the 2017 protests against the Government of Nicolás Maduro, which left 124 dead according to the Public Ministry (164 according to the non-governmental organization Foro Penal).
Nationals and foreigners were surprised by the images of military repression and details of torture that appear in the memories of the protagonist, who faces the dilemma of requesting asylum in Miami, without the option of ever returning.
“I felt guilty that my people were being killed while I was studying film in Los Angeles,” says director Diego Vicentini, 30 years old, of which he has spent the last 15 years in the United States.
More information
Venezuelan cinema resists in the midst of ruin
The man from Caracas built the script based on interviews with student leaders who participated in the revolts, studied the Helicoide prison, where some 290 political prisoners are held and where “serious violations of human rights” occur, according to the United Nations, and collected testimonies. of former prisoners who told how they poured orange juice on them so they would be devoured by insects at night.
“With 20,000 spectators it would have already been a success, and now we are the highest-grossing film in Venezuela in the last six years,” Vicentini notes proudly.
The production team of 'Once Upon a Time in Venezuela' filming at the Congo Mirador.Sancocho Público
If the decline of Venezuela is presented as a chronological line,
Simón
would be a spiritual sequel to the documentary
Once Upon a Time in Venezuela
(2020).
The debut feature by Anabel Rodríguez (Caracas, 46 years old), premiered at Sundance and part of the official selection of the Malaga Festival, was also a pioneer in showing Chavismo's methods of corruption in the foreground, such as vote buying.
She does so through the portrait of Congo Mirador, a surreal town that floats south of Lake Maracaibo and is gradually becoming extinct due to sedimentation caused by oil.
Rodríguez made 14 trips between 2013 and 2018 to intertwine the fall of a small town led by Bolivarianism with the collapse of institutions in Venezuela.
The film ends with the historic parliamentary elections of 2015, when the opposition won a majority in the National Assembly for the first time in 16 years.
Two years later, Maduro would form a parallel National Constituent Assembly with greater legislative power;
Precisely that would lead to the 2017 demonstrations on which
Simón
is based .
“The decision to choose a remote town like Congo Mirador was a way of telling a time from a marginal position, on the sidelines of things,” says Rodríguez from Vienna, where he has lived for 12 years.
The low-income population that now repudiates Chavismo on the big screen is the same that was previously the object of Hugo Chávez's propaganda.
The lowest strata of society were always present in Venezuelan cinema, from the peripheral neighborhoods with corrugated iron roofs that are seen in films of the cycle such as
La escalinata
(1950), but now they have ceased to be the bases of Chavismo and have become one of his main critics.
One of the historical authors who filmed these settlements, mainly built by peasants migrating from the countryside, was Román Chalbaud, declared a Chavista years before his death in 2023. He was honored at the 33rd San Sebastián Festival (1985) and closes the exhibition with
Teenage Cain
.
The peripheral neighborhood where 'Adolescent Caín' takes place. National Cinematheque of Venezuela
Cinema made from abroad
Migration no longer occurs from the countryside to the city, as it happened in the 20th century, now the exodus is abroad.
Both Vicentini and Rodríguez left Venezuela for the same reason: security and economic precariousness.
Nico Manzano (Caracas, 37) and Flavio Pedota (Maracay, 34) also belong to that generation that produces films abroad.
“I never wanted to leave, but I remember that the week we lost power I was doing post-production on my film.
I told myself that this didn't even allow me to finish my movie, I have to get out of here," says Manzano.
He is the director of
Yo y las bestias
(2021), the story about a down-and-out musician in a country where he has to pay bribes to the police or listen to Maduro's voice haranguing the people every time he turns on his radio. car.
If his film (premiered at the Mar de Plata Festival, the only class A in Latin America, and available on Filmin) is an
indie
production with an implicit anti-government touch, Pedota's
Infection
(Prime Video), is a zombie film that serves as a metaphor for a Venezuela where chaos reigns and where power tries to minimize what happened.
“Zombies represent anarchy and there were moments in Venezuela of true anarchism,” he says about his film, which was at the 2019 Sitges Festival.
An image from 'I and the Beasts'.Films Austères
Infection
was never released in Venezuelan theaters.
The film could not obtain the national work certificate granted by the National Autonomous Center of Cinematography (CNAC) - an equivalent to the ICAA in Spain - and which allows, by law, it to be in theaters for at least two weeks.
“After being in a process, which usually lasts two weeks, for eight months, they told me that I could not explain the origin of the funds and that I should present my film as international.
I refused that and pointed it out as an act of censorship,” declares Pedota.
Censorship or self-censorship?
The president of the CNAC since 2021, Carlos Azpurúa, responds to the controversy to EL PAÍS: “The film, with clear and decisive political advocacy strategies, could not prove the origin of its funds.
They mounted an international campaign in which they say that the State vetoes and there is censorship: not at all!
If there had been censorship, the first would have been
Simón
, with which they created a rhetoric that it was going to be the film they were going to ban and they were left wanting.”
According to Manzano, freedom of creation in Venezuela is managed on a gray scale.
“Censorship is not applied so much by the State, it is a self-censorship of the media for fear of reprisals.
They were very careful when they interviewed me on the radio, they asked me not to mention certain words or refer to the crisis.
Many media outlets were closed [110 newspapers stopped circulating].”
The same impression has Lorena Colmenares, who screened her short
De ella La spiral rojo
in Locarno in 2023 , about an indoctrinated school in a fascist country that will receive a visit from the Great Commander.
“I was very afraid to show the short in Venezuela, especially when it came to protecting the privacy of children.
It is a story that is very critical of the Government and I did not want doors to be closed to children because of this,” the filmmaker told analitica.com from New York, where she lives.
A moment of 'Infection'. Eternal VFX
Whether projected in their homeland or on large international stages, the diaspora wants to continue telling stories of their homeland.
Convince international funds that it is a good idea to “talk about a country in crisis,” as Rodríguez points out.
Manzano concludes: “Before we were not so aware of what was ours, so patriotic.
When you go to one extreme it is bad, but the other side is also harmful: having low self-esteem as a country.
"We need more films that are not only Simón
's vision
, but many others that compose stories of a country that is never just one."
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