Venezuela
American Documentary Showcase: Venezuela
November 13–21, 2011
Filmmaker: Anthony Weeks
Delegate Expert: Michael Gonzales
Cities: Caracas, Valera, Mérida, Barquisimeto
Delegate Report
By Michael Gonzales 
Nov. 11–12: Caracas
Upon my arrival in Caracas, Venezuela, I learned that President Hugo Chavez had made up his own time zone: a 30-minute difference from that of the neighboring countries—in part in opposition to the United States, but in reality, to have Venezuelans leave for work and school after sunrise and come home before sundown.
When filmmaker Anthony Weeks and I met for breakfast, we quickly realized we would make a good team: We were both filmmakers, and we shared a love for film education. While we were at the hotel, we reviewed the week’s plans.
November 13–14: Valera
We departed the next morning for an eight-hour drive to Valera accompanied by our embassy driver, Cesar Brocha; Beatriz Freire, from the Cultural Affairs Programs division; and Cultural Affairs Attaché Sally Hodgson. Beatriz and Sally were amazing. On our long journey they gave us a very good sense of the lay of the land, including the political hurdles they have had to overcome along the way.
For example, the Venezuelan laws change often, typically from day to day. President Chavez is a moving target not only to the international community but also to his own people. He hosts radio programs every day, implementing new laws and spouting his philosophical rhetoric. However, he has not sufficiently addressed such major issues as infrastructure maintenance and commercial travel within Venezuela. One reason we had to make such a long road trip was that the national airlines are unreliable. We could have flown to Valera, but we would have had to wait at the airport for nearly as long as it had taken us to drive there.
With students and faculty in the school of audiovisual studies at Universidad Valle de Momboy, Valera, Trujillo State, Venezuela
Despite these inefficiencies, Venezuela is an oil-rich country; remarkably, you can fill up your tank for less than the price of a candy bar!
Upon our arrival in Valera, we met Hermann Pargas, assistant rector of the University Valle del Momboy, which boasts a student body of 10,000 strong. Because of its charter under a Catholic alliance of schools, the university is able to maintain its autonomy from the Venezuelan government’s efforts to nationalize education at all levels.
That night on the way to our hotel we encountered a three-and-a-half-hour setback: a mudslide blocked the only mountain road to our hotel.
The next day, we met with students and faculty in the library of the administration building of the Universidad de Valle del Momboy, where we watched a feature-length animated work by an 11-year-old boy named Luis. The film was very crude but very creative. Unfortunately, Luis did not know how to sync up audio, so he narrated his film and performed the sound effects!
Mike Gonzales and Anthony Weeks, with Luis (a young filmmaker who showed an impressive animated video), at Universidad Valle de Momboy, Valera, Trujillo State, Venezuela
We screened Anthony’s film Imaginary Circumstances, as well as The First Kid to Learn English from Mexico. The first thing I noticed in the latter film was that the title was translated incorrectly: The Spanish subtitle said “The First Kid to Speak English in Mexico.” No one said anything about it, but I mentioned the mistake to Beatriz and Sally.
There were approximately 45 participants in the morning session, and we did a question-and-answer session after each film. Anthony and I were amazed at how engaged these students were. They asked great questions, and we could tell they really wanted to learn about filmmaking. In the afternoon, we saw No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo and Vilmos and A Village Called Versailles.
November 15–18: Mérida
After a quick buffet breakfast at the hotel, we continued in the van through the Andes on our way to Mérida. After a few hours we stopped at the highest point in Venezuela, El Collado del Condor (The Hill of the Condor). Two hours later we arrived in Mérida, a culturally rich community.
The next day, we visited Universidad de los Andes (ULA). In our first session, which was held in a lecture room in the humanities building, we addressed a group of 40 students, discussing American documentaries, my teaching career and Anthony’s film background. The documentary film instructor, Belimar Roman, showed her film Cuatro Litros Por Tonel, which focuses on a cooperative in the Andes that meets every Wednesday to produce its own natural fertilizer as a better alternative to the chemically enhanced fertilizer the farmers have to buy commercially. The enterprise fails when the cooperative cannot raise the funds to buy a truck to haul the fertilizer.
In the afternoon we watched Imaginary Circumstances and The First Kid to Learn English from Mexico. The latter film, about a young Mexican-American boy who shoulders the immigrant dreams of his parents, inspired many interesting questions from the audience: How did the filmmaker gain access to Pedro and his family? Why did the filmmaker include scenes showing Pedro throwing a cat around like a pillow and grabbing it by the tail? I noted that I thought the male teacher in the film was patient with Pedro, who had attention deficit disorder; Anthony thought perhaps not. This film was an excellent choice because the students could relate to both the Latino subject and the theme of immigration to the United States.
Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela. Anthony Weeks, Mike Gonzales, and the students and faculty of audiovisual studies at ULA
The next morning we screened Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo and Freeway Philharmonic, to a larger group of students. The discussion afterwards was excellent. They asked us many questions, including: How did the maker of Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo gain access inside the prison? How did the filmmakers of both films determine who would be the main characters? One student felt that Freeway Philharmonic could have featured fewer participants, since a couple of them kept saying the same thing over and over again.
That afternoon, we screened five student films from the documentary class at ULA. William Melian presented his film Lineas Borradas (Blurred Lines), in which he juxtaposed very graphic images, taken from YouTube, of Jews being slaughtered in World War II concentration camps with Israeli soldiers today brutally killing Palestinians. Melian was trying to illustrate the blurred lines with respect to territory and sovereignty, and the blurred parallels between the Holocaust and Israeli-Palestinian relations. Although I didn’t agree with what he was trying to convey, his project was ambitious for a first-time doc short.
Fernando Moroso’s film was much more self-reflexive. It featured him, sometimes wearing a mask and asking, “Who am I?” Despite the crude filmmaking craft, the work had two very strong moments: one, in which he states, “I am afraid to forget,” and the other when he says, “I want to live my life like the movies. I am an actor on a stage.”
Anthony and Andrés, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela. November 18, 2011, after the screening of "Imaginary Circumstances", a film by Anthony about actors with disabilities in Hollywood. Andrés directs a foundation in Mérida for people with disabilities
Maria Redondo’s film was the most brutal. She juxtaposed images of war with video game titles superimposed every time a shot was fired with the words, “YOU WIN.” She said she wanted to challenge herself to see if she could make a film she didn’t want to watch herself. She also wanted to show the rational and the irrational. She maintained that she didn’t understand violence—nor did she want to understand it.
Camilo Pamparoni’s film Pirata is about a missing homeless man named Ernesto, who left behind a journal of his life. Ernesto is actually featured in the film and shares some of his own personal experiences with Pamparoni, but then reveals he has been writing a book, sort of a philosophical diary, which he proceeds to read on camera. In the end we discover that Ernesto is missing and to date has not been found. This is an ambitious but beautiful way of telling a story. If Pamparoni continues, he will become a great filmmaker.
Rommel Moreno’s film Detras Del Escenario (Behind the Scenes) captures his band preparing for a live concert and a recording session. Moreno had good close-ups, but needed to work more on framing.
The next morning—our final day in Mérida—while the students watched A Village Called Versailles, faculty members escorted Anthony and I to the Media Arts building at ULA, which housed film classrooms, editing bays and the equipment room. The school is primarily using old iMacs and Final Cut Pro version 2, although they have a couple of new Macs with FCP version 6 for more advanced projects. They also have a production SUV.
We returned to the screening and led a Q&A afterwards. The students understood the social struggle of the Vietnamese community in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and gave the film high marks.
The students loved No Subtitles Necessary: Lazlo and Vilmos, which prompted one audience member to exclaim, “That film makes me want to go out and make movies.” The teacher, Belimar Roman, appreciated the film because it showed two rebel cinematographers who worked in Hollywood but made movies more in the guerilla style filmmaking that she is used to. She added that Lazlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmund inspired her to continue making films.
Anthony taking a break in Mérida State, Venezuela
In the afternoon, we screened two films, La Quinceañera and Imaginary Circumstances. La Quinceañera is a 40-minute documentary I happened to have with me. In Spanish with English subtitles, the film tells the story of a Mexican girl celebrating her 15th birthday—her quinceañera, which, in most Latino cultures, commemorates the transition from girlhood to womanhood. The response to this film was terrific. The post-screening discussion was very lively; the students wanted to know more about access to the family, the ritual of the quinceañera and the story of a single parent trying to raise five girls without their father, who had left her for other women.
Our last screening was Imaginary Circumstances, about actors struggling to find work, despite their physical disabilities. One of the audience members was a man who was physically disabled; at the end of the film, he got up from his seat and reached across the table to shake Anthony’s hand. It was a very touching moment—and a perfect way to end our trip to Mérida.
November 19–21: Mérida, Barquisimeto, Caracas
Before we departed Mérida, Anthony and I met with the local press and discussed the American Documentary Showcase. When I was asked what I thought about the ULA students, I replied that I appreciated their seriousness as filmmakers and that I was amazed at the high-quality work they were creating with such limited equipment.
The drive from Mérida to Barquisimeto was supposed to be five hours, but, due to rainy weather, it took 11 hours.
Closing Thoughts:
Anthony did a wonderful job representing his film and the United States in general. Even though he said his Spanish is limited, it was good enough to get the point across and Beatriz was more than happy to fill in and translate some of the more difficult questions. Overall, I got the impression the students were very appreciative that we came so far to be with them in Valera and Mérida.
Beatriz and Sally were very helpful and flexible in planning our presentations. They trusted that what we were doing was not going to go off track. I did give one filmmaker a copy of Chris Vogler’s outline in Spanish regarding his book The Writer’s Journey. He said it was very helpful and wished we could do some seminars on screenwriting.
It would have been helpful to get more behind-the-scenes information from the Showcase filmmakers about their films, given that audiences were curious about how long it took to make the given film, how the filmmaker gained access to his/her subjects, how the filmmaker chose the topic, etc. We weren’t able to answer those questions adequately.
This was an amazing trip. It was interesting to visit a country where we had to be reminded, “Those things we don’t speak of”—at least not openly. We are so used to speaking freely in the United States.
Nonetheless, the students at ULA have some political power. ULA owns a radio and TV station that seems to support truly democratic elections. Next year, 2012, is the presidential election. ULA hosted a debate among the opposition candidates, but Chavez prevented the debate from airing. In response, the students staged a public demonstration, making news throughout Latin America.
I am very grateful to have been asked to be a part of this trip. Our hosts, Sally and Beatriz, were the best, and Anthony Weeks is a perfect travelling companion, thoughtful filmmaker, and now a good friend.