La Pieza Ensayo -con Eduardo Carvajal-, 2008
The Reahearsal Piece -with Eduardo Carvajal-, 2008
Instalación de 3 canales / 3 channel video installation
00:06:02
00:05:26
00:02:23
.
A partir de los archivos de castings y ensayos que se hicieron en 1979 para la película Aquel 19, dirigida por Carlos Mayolo, -director del movimiento Caliwood- Eduardo Carvajal (quien era el encargado de la cámara y los casting) y yo reconstruimos ciertas escenas de la película.
.
.
.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
.
.
.
Based on the files of castings and rehearsals made for the 1979 movie Aquel 19 (That 19), directed by Carlos Mayolo, main director of the so called “Caliwood” movement, Eduardo Carvajal (in charge of the camera and the castings) and I reconstructed somo scenes from the movie.
.
.
.
////////////////////////////////
.
.
.
Ana María Millán inserts her perspective, which can be both critical and playful, into the narrative space of film and video. She is interested in amateur cultural production for the possibilities that unfold in its imperfections, its connection to local and marginal groups, and its tense relationship with the official.
For La pieza ensayo Millán reconstructed recordings of casting and rehearsals made for Carlos Mayolo’s Aquel 19 in 1985. Mayolo was one of the main directors of the so-called “Caliwood” movement, a group of young filmmakers who emerged in the early 1970s in a country that lacked a film industry. They responded to the counter-culture spirit that prevailed in a country affected by violence and drug trafficking, and were dedicated to filming and telling stories based on the environment that surrounded them. Aquel 19, a 25 minute short film produced for regional television audiences, is a love story that takes place in 1965 in a neighborhood in Cali named Obrero. Two teenagers, Alberto and Rosa, express their love for one another and work to circumvent Rosa’s protective father who sees Alberto as a delinquent.
La pieza ensayo was made in collaboration with Eduardo Carvajal, who was the photographer of the Cali generation. Carvajal provided the audition and rehearsal tapes Millán reconstructed to make this three channel installation. In reworking the material, Millán addresses the themes of sexuality, violence, and exclusion in the original film. The sequential cuts of the two women who act as Rosa present very different portrayals of the character, demonstrating the subjectivity of interpretation.
Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy
.
.
.
////////////////////////////////
.
.
.
In La pieza ensayo (The Rehearsal Piece) 2008, Ana María Millán and Eduardo Carvajal have re-edited original casting and rehearsal footage from the 1985 short film Aquel 19, an adolescent love story that ends in suicide and that takes place in Cali, Colombia against the backdrop of the first national victory of the local football team América de Cali, a significant source of regional pride for a city marked by conflict and violence. The film’s director, Carlos Mayolo (1945-2007), is an iconic figure in Colombia, perhaps best known for his 1978 collaboration with Luis Ospina, Agarrando Pueblo, a mock documentary that provided a devastating critique of amateur films that exploited and packaged poverty to meet the increased demand for third world cinema by European film festivals and television.
Millán rather straightforward appropriation of Mayolo’s unused footage (made available to her by Carvajal, Mayolo’s longtime cinematographer) attempts to recuperate a cultural legacy that is still significant for her own generation while subtly drawing attention to the precarious and marginal conditions of its production. She chose to work with this particular film because the narrative is so emblematic of the excessively masculine culture of Cali at that time, in which the filmmaker and his crew were firmly enmeshed.
Ana María Millán, 1975, lives between London, Berlin and Cali, Colombia. Ana María Millán works with film and video to explore discourses of exclusion. She is a founding member of Helena Producciones, an artist collective responsible for the biennial Performance Festival of Cali.
Eduardo Carvajal, 1949, lives in Cali. Since the early 1970s, Eduardo Carvajal has worked as a cinematographer on countless Colombian films, including Campesinos (Jorge Silva y Martha Rodríguez) 1975; Agarrando pueblo (Luis Ospina y Carlos Mayolo) 1978; La Vendedora de rosas, (Víctor Gaviria) 1996; and La Vírgen de los sicarios (Barbet Schroeder) 1999.
Michèle Faguet
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
