Ana Isabel Bustamante\u2019s \u201cLa Asfixia\u201d has won IFF Panama\u2019s 1st Fipresci prize for fest film in the \u201cStories from Central America and the Caribbean\u201d section.<\/p>\n
The jury, constituted by Joel del R\u00edo, from Cuba, Jos\u00e9 Teodoro, from Canada, and Daniel Dom\u00ednguez, from Panama, said that they were impressed by the film\u2019s \u201cexploration of the language of cinema, diversity of perspectives and the reconstruction of Guatemala\u2019s traumatic recent history and the corporality of the desaparecidos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bustamante, cousin of fellow Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamente (\u201cIxcanal\u201d) spent six years on her personal documentary about the desaparecidos during the civil war.<\/p>\n
The pic won the Ibero-American Documentary special jury prize at Guadalajara and has also screened in Havana, Toulouse and Costa Rica.<\/p>\n
Bustamante explained that the film is a personal journey of discovery because her own father was abducted while she was still in her mother\u2019s womb and never returned.<\/p>\n
The film explores the consequence or such disappearances in the respective families. It has a very intimate tone and she provides the voiceover.<\/p>\n
The pic mixes new footage with archive material, some of which was extremely difficult to find \u2013 such as the 1978 miner\u2019s march.<\/p>\n
Bustamente moved to Madrid in 2011 and says that whenever she returns home she sees how fear and silence are still very much alive.<\/p>\n
She is now prepping a fiction film, \u201cDerby\u201d about a girl who starts a roller derby team in Spain.<\/p>\n
Guatemala has one of the most fragile film industries in Central America, and one of the region\u2019s lowest market shares for domestic films, though it has nonetheless carved out a distinctive place in the international festival circuit.<\/p>\n
The Guatemalan film professionals association, Agacine, chaired by producer Palmela Guinea, is currently lobbying for a film law and creation of a national film institute.<\/p>\n
Guatemalan filmmakers have to rely on setting up international co-productions or move to neighboring countries \u2013 the case of Julio Hernandez Cordon (\u201cI Promise You Anarchy\u201d) who works primarily in Mexico.<\/p>\n
Jayro Bustamente is attending IFF Panama with his most recent film, \u201cTremors,\u201d about an upper middle-class family who seek gay conversion therapy for their married son.<\/p>\n
A Guatemala-France-Luxembourg co-production, \u201cTremors\u201d is sold by Film Factory Ent. and has been licensed to multiple territories, including France, Belgium, Italy and Turkey.<\/p>\n
Bustamente is now prepping his third feature, \u201cLa Llorona\u201d (The Weeping Woman) which returns to the jungle setting of \u201cIxcanal.\u201d The pic stars the female leads from \u201cIxcanal\u201d \u2013 Maria Tel\u00f3n and Maria Mercedes Coroy \u2013 and the leads from \u201cTremors\u201d \u2013 Ayla-Elea Hurtad and Sabrina de la Hoz.<\/p>\n
Mixing genres, and with a hefty dose of magic realism, the pic focuses on the Civil War period that devastated Guatemala.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about what wars mean for women and the role of women in wars, which underpin phallocratic systems,\u201d said Bustamente.<\/p>\n
The helmer also observed that the three biggest insults used in Guatemalan society are to be indigenous, homosexual or communist, and in his films he has confronted all three issues.<\/p>\n
He says that in \u201cTremors\u201d the male lead, when he reveals that he is homosexual, is suddenly seen as an inferior mortal, closer to being a woman.<\/p>\n
For Bustamante, \u201cLa Llorona\u201d will be even more polemical because many of the military officials involved in the Civil War are still in power.<\/p>\n
Guatemala is an extremely conservative country and Bustamente\u2019s films have generated significant controversy. One of his biggest challenges has been to get his films shown to a wider audience. He achieved this with \u201cIxcanul\u201d that was shown on public TV in 2017, with the third highest rating of the week. The pic was also shown on Netflix in the U-S. and he thinks that \u201cTremors\u201d will also play on Netflix.<\/p>\n
To counteract the lack of screens in the country, Bustamente has set up the Ixcanul Foundation which is now reconverting a 2-screen cinema \u2013 the Cine Capri \u2013 in Guatemala City\u2019s historic center and has also negotiated with ten Pentecostal churches to screen arthouse films.<\/p>\n
Ana\u00efs Taracena\u2019s \u201cThe Silence of the Mole,\u201d screening in the Primera Mirada roughcut sidebar, is a complex documentary anchored in the period of political repression in Guatemala City during the Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n
The filmmaker began the project with a $4,000 grant from Mexico\u2019s Imcine and then received a further $10,000 from SCAM and CNC in France. She also received a small grant from Guatemala\u2019s Ministry of Culture.<\/p>\n
The documentary revolves around a journalist who infiltrated the government during this period, and how silence and fear continues to prevail in the present.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe film isn\u2019t so much about memories of the past, but how memories haunt the present,\u201d explains the helmer.<\/p>\n
Venice Queer Lion winner \u201cJos\u00e9\u201d is directed by Li Cheng<\/strong>, who was born in China and moved to the U.S. 20 years ago, and is co-written by Cheng and George F. Roberson.<\/p>\n Since Venice it has played in 33 festivals in 20 countries and has just had its theatrical release in Poland. The making of the film is an adventure in its own right.<\/p>\n Cheng and Roberson, despairing at the prospect of Trump\u2019s election in 2016, both decided to sell their houses in 2016 in order to make a film in Latin America.<\/p>\n They toured 12 countries before finally choosing Guatemala.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m fascinated by Latin culture,\u201d explains Cheng. \u201cIn terms of family life it seems very close to Chinese culture, but when it comes to love and passion, it\u2019s very different. Here you see people hugging and kissing for hours on park benches. That never happens in China.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to focus on the indigenous populations who suffered tremendous violence during the U.S.-sponsored Civil War, including genocide, organized rapes and looting,\u201d says Roberson.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were made to feel ashamed of who they are. This film is about human dignity. Stories like this need to be told. We wanted it to be disruptive. We want people to be uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n