The collection “The notebooks of Cinema 23” returns as part of FICCI

This Sunday, March 20, in the framework of the 61st. The Cartagena International Film Festival, FICCI, will officially launch the book “Cinemas that Change the World I: Argentina and Colombia”, published in Spanish, Portuguese and English by the Cinema23 Association and the Mexican Secretariat of Culture. It was written by Julián David Correa Restrepo, who in his time was director of the Cinematheque Distrital, and is formed, as the author points out, from different stories around both countries that started from two places that transcended the walls to change their national cinemas thanks to the institutions from which they have been headquarters: the National School of Film Experimentation and Production (ENERC), a state institution that is part of INCCA, and the House of Cinema, the name by which the house that was first the headquarters of FOCINE is known, then the Cinematography Directorate of the Ministry of Culture and which today is home to Proimágenes.

Julián David Correa was part of the first team of the Colombian Ministry of Culture, a team that created the institutions that transformed Colombian cinema. He was deputy director of the Regional Centre for Books in Latin America, Spain and Portugal (CERLALC-UNESCO). He directed the Bogotá Cinematheque and restructured it: he formulated his nine strategies, created the Bogotá Film Commission and publications such as the Colombian Film Notebooks — New Epoch, among others. He designed the new Cinematheque in Bogotá and with the Ministry of Culture and Idartes managed the resources that led to its construction. He is one of the founders of the Pink Cycle. He was a selection assistant at the Oberhausen Film Festival and has been a jury member of international events such as FICCI and Berlinale. He directed the series: In Cinema See Us and No Red Carpet, among others. He was the representative of film directors in the National Council for Arts and Culture in Cinematography (CNAAC) and the film sector before the National Council of Culture (CNC). He was Director of the Cinematography Directorate of the Ministry of Culture. He won a Latin American short story award and a national screenplay award. His most recent publication in literature is Twenty Viajes (Ed. Syllable), and in cinema it is Tender bridges. Research on the situation of Colombian screenwriters (Association of Colombian Screenwriters and FDC/CNAAC). Its page is: www.geografiavirtual.com.

In a post on his Facebook account, Correa Restrepo said: “When you think about the importance of defending national cinemas, we often talk about the contribution of the audiovisual industries to the economy of countries and their undoubted importance as objects that preserve and circulate cultural heritage, but something that is sometimes forgotten is that audiovisual writings and the State instruments that defend them change the lives of individuals and specific communities. The chronicles in this book present the stories of these institutions and of those people.”

In an exclusive conversation for Infobae, the author mentioned that “(...) there are essential names in cinema and cultural management in Argentina and Colombia, such as: Pablo Rovito, Felipe Aljure, Ricardo Wullicher or Luis Ospina, for example. There are also references to Gabo and Cortázar, among many others. But there are also the stories of filmmakers who started with these programs and who are still very young like Jesús Reyes or Iván Gaona.” He commented that the process of writing the book took him a few years, although the truth is that he doesn't have the slightest idea, he always develops projects in parallel. “Like everyone else, I imagine,” he says.

For his part, Felipe Aljure, director of FICCI, said: “I think this is the most 'sui generis' story of cinema”, and the author could not agree more. “(...) It is true that it is a history of cinemas in our continent, and that in its paragraphs there are cinematographic data such as the stories of FOCINE and the Director of Cinematography of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, or the ENERC of Argentina, and which has legislative accounts, and events such as the Argentine dictatorships and the attacks of drug trafficking and other armed groups in Colombia, but there are also smells, dialogues, atmospheres and characters. This work is a story about the transformative power of cinema”.

“In 1978, Colombians created the first central government institution dedicated to the promotion of cinema. Decree 1244 founded a partnership between public entities for the execution of film policies, and for the collection of resources for cinema: the Cinematographic Development Company (Focine), a body attached to the Ministry of Communications. Between 1978 and 1992 Focine produced 45 fiction features, 84 medium-length films and 64 documentaries. Focine awarded scholarships to filmmakers, held workshops with teachers such as José Luis Borau, Michael Ballhaus, Néstor Almendros, Barbet Schroeder and Jorge Goldenberg, among others, and published books, and sponsored film festivals. At the beginning of the 1990s Focine was liquidated by President César Gaviria in line with the application of neoliberal policies throughout the continent, but the task of ending Focine began with exhibitors' default on payments, and with the extinction in 1991 of film-specific collection. known as the Overpriced. The end of Focine began with the predation of a few voracious filmmakers, with the neglect of the rulers and with the recurring clumsiness of incapable managers (19 managers had Focine in 14 years, and only two had experience or training in film themes: Isadora de Norden and María Emma Mejía). Focine was killed by a sheaf of murderers joined by drug trafficking in 1990.

Some filmmakers, such as Víctor Gaviria, recall Focine's work with gratitude: Gaviria speaks particularly well of the management of María Emma Mejía and her medium-length film competitions for television, which allowed her to make two short films that were fundamental to her filmography and in the history of national cinema: The Musicians (1986) and The inhabitants of the night (1984). Focine also financed Víctor Gaviria's debut feature: Rodrigo D, No Future (1990), the second Colombian feature to hit the Cannes International Film Festival, a film that represents an aesthetic that has had other brilliant films on the continent: dirty realism. The first Colombian film to reach the Cannes Film Festival was also a Focine production and is another great film: Condores do not bury every day (1984) by Francisco Norden” (Excerpt from the book).

The Cinema23 notebooks are a series of publications that are distributed free of charge and record reflections and ideas about cinematographic work in Latin America, Spain and Portugal, with the aim of safeguarding, exhibiting and promoting the contemporary film culture of the region that make up these countries. This collection, which feeds the documentary collection about films made in Latin America, is presented in four different formats: 1. Sketches, which proposes essays on different subjects of film and theory, 2. Memoirs, which includes records and research on the work of prominent filmmakers, 3. Screenplays, which deal with texts related to the shooting of films, mostly nominated in the Screenplay category at the Ibero-American Phoenix Film Prize, and 4. Conversations, which refers to a set of reflections of two or more people on themes and concepts related to cinematography, according to their professional experience.

Most content, when not printed, is available on its website, with the aim of presenting a tour of all the nations that are part of the association and thus share part of its audiovisual wealth. The site is intended to be used by the public to approach films made in the region, as well as its producers, including critics, disseminators, promoters and academics.

The book presentation meeting will be held at 10:00 a.m. in the Santo Domingo Room of the Spanish Cooperation Center. This Sunday, March 20 at 10:00 a.m., in the Santo Domingo Room of the Center for Spanish Cooperation.

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