If you’re in Medellin from August 25 to 29 you’ll be spoiled for choice as the city is offering free entry to a range of inspirational films and documentaries representing Colombia’s diverse culture as part of Medellin’s 12th annual Colombian Film Festival.
From Monday to Saturday, the Colombian Cinema Festival will screen, free of charge, the best of Colombia’s recent feature films and documentaries in different locations throughout the city, according to the festival’s official website.
This year’s festival is united by the theme of sound. There will be lectures and workshops dealing with aspects of sound in cinema as well as the audiovisual laboratory titled “Cinema is Possible,” in which a handful of local directors discuss their experiences of making movies in Colombia on a limited budget while their heads swim with grand ideas, according to the festival’s official website.
In the lead up to the festival, acclaimed Colombian director, Maria Gamboa, said of Colombian film making and the pitfalls of judging cinematic success by financial returns:
“If a film doesn’t make a lot of money, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t generated wealth. If it has managed to change perceptions of Colombia, then it has brought great wealth to us.”
Chronicle of the End of the World (feature film)
While in 2012 the rest of the cinematic world jumped on the “end of the world” bandwagon as the Mayan calendar drew to a close, Colombian director Mauricio Cuervo made the moving and comic “Chronicle of the End of the World.” The film, which will be screened during this week’s Colombian Cinema Festival, centers on a curmudgeonly retired professor whose wife has been killed in a bomb attack. He decides to mark the possible the end of the world by studiously working through his phone book and calling anyone who has bothered him in the past.
I Have a Bullet in My Body (documentary)
The 2014 documentary, “Tengo una bala en mi cuerpo” (“I Have a Bullet in My Body”), will be screened throughout different Medellin theaters this week. The documentary chronicles the daily struggle of those disabled by violence in Colombia, especially people living in Medellin who fight for inclusion and greater wheelchair accessibility.
Also included in this year’s program is “Jardin de amapolas” (“Garden of Poppies”), a film about a young boy and his father who have been displaced by paramilitaries and must cultivate opium in order to survive.
Sources
- Colombian Cinema Festival program
- Maria Gamboa (in a seminar attended by Colombia Reports)