Filmmaker Martha Rodríguez at her home in Bogotá, in March 2023.Daniela Díaz
This is the web version of Americanas, the EL PAÍS America newsletter that addresses news and ideas with a gender perspective.
To receive it every Sunday you can subscribe
at this link
.
People close to Marta Rodríguez call her a teacher.
Those who know her have a hard time defining her, but everyone utters the word "bravery" when referring to her.
The pioneer of the documentary in Colombia began filming in the mid-seventies when the industry was in its infancy and the second wave of feminism was barely making its way.
Her mother called her crazy for wanting to study film and some of her colleagues distrusted the quality of her work for being a woman.
None of these obstacles stopped her.
Still today, at 88 years old, she spends her days doing what she loves: movies.
Her last work premiered in January:
Camilo Torres Restrepo, effective love
.
A production that comes to the country when it is trying to negotiate for the second time with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), in which Torres, the rebel priest, spent his last month of life.
The director explains that with this production she seeks to delve into the priest's legacy beyond his ephemeral guerrilla moment.
Rodríguez had a close relationship with Camilo Torres because he was his student at the National University, and thanks to him he met the Castañeda family, protagonists of his debut film, Chircarle s (1972),
which
recounts the cruel conditions of exploitation of the workers who They made bricks in the south of Bogotá.
Despite the ailments typical of the passage of time and living fighting for human rights for more than half of her life, her passion for cinema will only be stopped by death, as she herself suggests with a laugh.
The house where he has lived for more than 30 years is also the Documentary Film Foundation, created with his late cinephile accomplice and sentimental partner, Jorge Silva.
There she cares for and preserves his most notable works that are an invaluable contribution to the historical memory of the country.
Between books, gifts and prizes, in his house he has an immense photographic and film archive, where there are iconic films such as:
Love, Women and Flowers
(1988), a piece that denounced how the pesticides used in flower plantations, where they mainly worked women, made them sick and even led to their death.
O
Planas, testimonio de un ethnocide
(1972), in which she records the massacre suffered by the Guahibo indigenous community.
Ask.
How has the reception of Camilo Torres's documentary El amor efficacious
, his latest documentary,
been ?
Answer
.
It has been excellent.
We have the cinematheque full since February and we will continue in April.
People go to forums.
The documentary was in Medellín and Cali.
It really surprises us because the success has been absolute.
Soon the film goes to France.
And maybe other countries.
Q.
In the film, from its title, you emphasize the "effective love" that priest Torres proclaimed.
What is effective love for you?
R.
Effective love is always having an open heart for the one who knocks on your door and asks for your help.
Being with those who made the films, supporting a life project with them, being by their side and always accompanying them.
Q.
You have documented the conflict and the struggle for land in Colombia for years.
What do you think of the recent attempts to achieve peace in our country?
A.
Well, it's very difficult, because I lived in Cauca for many years and made several films there and dissident groups are really a very negative factor.
I, day by day, write down in my diary how many leaders are being killed and threatened.
They are many.
Every day they assassinate environmental leaders, indigenous leaders.
Q.
Can cinema be a tool to deal with violence?
R.
Yes, here it is vital to record the memory.
I have worked a lot on the subject of memory because the communities need inputs to organize themselves, to face the conflict.
I have given training workshops so that if we are not there, it is the indigenous people themselves who take the cameras.
In the training workshops with the indigenous people, the first thing we taught was how to keep the archive.
They filmed and did not know how to edit or preserve memory.
Q.
In your work, the importance you give to the struggles and the role of women is notable, why?
R.
Because in Colombia women are heroines.
Look no more in Cauca there are women who have risked their lives.
Many who have died have unfortunately been murdered, but they are women of enormous value.
Like the Nasa indigenous leader Aída Quilcué, who recently suffered an attack and is still steadfast in the fight.
She has been an example like many others.
Q.
What was it like to be a female filmmaker in the seventies?
R.
My mother, when I said that I was going to make a movie, she said that she was going to disinherit me.
Unlike today when women can go to university, study film or get scholarships, in my youth that didn't exist, it was impossible.
By saying that one was going to make a movie, they already excluded him from the family.
There were many obstacles, the first being having teams.
In Colombia there were no teams, there was no infrastructure.
And the second thing was that companies didn't risk believing in the professionalism of women.
It was quite a fight, a continuous fight.
Q.
You have said that your work is motivated by love for this homeland.
How can you love a country so much after documenting the worst forms of violence and inequality?
R.
The way to love in this country is fighting for the conditions of the people with whom I have worked to improve.
That is the question because it is very nice to talk about 'us' and that the testimonials we leave behind are very valuable, but what about those who helped us to make them?
What is going on with them?
We are there to be true companions at a critical moment, to be with them and not forget them.
Don't say goodbye
I have returned to Cauca and I love Cauca very much.
Here they come to visit me and I send them copies of the films.
We send each receipt a package with all the films.
That is the effective love of which I speak.
Q.
_
What has been the hardest and most rewarding part of the long audiovisual path you have traveled?
How long do you imagine making movies?
R.
The hardest thing has been facing a conservative family.
My mother was very conservative, very right-wing.
And facing her was a devastating fight.
The most gratifying thing is to see a work made after so many years, to preserve it, to take care of it.
I will make movies until my God gives me health, until my last days.
Q.
Do you consider yourself a feminist?
A.
Yes, a lot.
I defend and support feminist movements, although I am not an obsessive feminist.
Our recommendations of the week:
And a suggestion to finish:
🎞️ A documentary: My name is Pauli Murray.
By Noor Mahtani
Has it ever happened to you that you feel like you're late for a book/movie/song?
If you have not seen the documentary
My name is Pauli Murray
, spoiler, it will happen to you.
The story of this non-binary African-American lawyer is the story of the foundations of the racial and gender struggle in the United States.
Murray pioneered almost everything: she sued the state over bus segregation years before Rosa Parks took a white seat;
she teamed up with her classmates to force restaurants on an entire street to break segregation law and ended up becoming the best friend of the first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, after sending her several letters discussing racism in the country.
In the courts, one of the most important legacies he left behind was to demonstrate the parallels that exist between discrimination based on race and gender.
He did it, too, half a century before Kimberlé W. Crenshaw coined the theoretical term intersectionality.
Murray scholars say that it was precisely the renowned judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg who recommended that the directors of her own documentary investigate her: "I don't know how nobody has made one for Murray yet."