/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/FILM-VENEZUELA: The Political Gaze of Director Chalbaud

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Andrés Cañizález

CARACAS, Jan 15 2002 (IPS) - The films of Román Chalbaud have pulsated alongside Venezuelan history for more than four decades, and this tight relationship between art and reality has now been set down in a book that highlights the best of this prolific filmmaker.

Alfonso Molina, a publicist and critic, wrote “Cine, democracia y melodrama: El cine de Román Chalbaud” (Film, Democracy and Melodrama: The Films of Román Chalbaud) after pouring through documents and conducting several interviews with Chalbaud, 70, whose first film “Caín adolescente” (Adolescent Cain), dates to 1959.

That film reached the big screen just one year after the fall of Venezuela’s last dictatorship, that of Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952- 1958), while Chalbaud’s latest work, “Pandemónium”, premiered in 1997, one year before the electoral victory of Hugo Chávez, who continues to shake up the country’s political system.

“In many ways, Chalbaud has been a privileged witness to the changes that have had an impact on Venezuelan society,” said Molina.

The author commented that if someone truly wishes to understand the socio-political culture of this South American nation, watching the 17 feature-length films by Chalbaud is a must.

He admits, however, that the prolific work of the director has not enjoyed a great deal of popularity.

“People are still unable to recognise that in his works is the Venezuela of the 20th century. He is a highly respected man, but popular recognition of his talent has yet to be achieved,” said the writer.

Molina stressed that, “for many countries, including our own, it is very difficult to take a look in the mirror, particularly when the reality is harsh.”

“The Mexican filmmaker Jaime Humberto Hermosillo once told me that the middle class in his country thinks his films are ugly, because he portrays an ugly reality, from the aesthetic point of view,” he said.

According to film critic Juan Antonio González, “there are several points of coincidence” between Chalbaud’s films and Venezuelan history in the second half of the 20th century.

In that relationship, “at times the country issues an invitation to discuss matters that cannot be postponed and realities that cannot be ignored, but at times the artist, a visionary, gets ahead of the processes and their consequences,” González explained.

Molina’s book, with a prologue by fellow film critic Rodolfo Izaguirre, former president of the National Film Library, was co- published by the Athenaeum of Caracas, the Previsora Foundation and Planeta publishing group.

Molina dug into a broad array of documents, viewed Chalbaud’s films several more times and conducted hours and hours of interviews with the elderly filmmaker.

Some members of the media see the book as a sort of epilogue to the director’s movie-making career, because Chalbaud has not had a new film in the last four years. But he reveals in the book’s interviews that he is quietly working on two projects that may be released as soon as this year.

Molina’s study provides a tour of Chalbaud’s films. “La quema de Judas” (The Burning of Judas, 1974) and “Sagrado y obsceno” (Sacred and Obscene, 1976) portray the building and strengthening of the Venezuelan democracy, with a nod to the lessons learned from the guerrilla struggle of the 1960s.

In “El pez que fuma” (The Smoking Fish, 1977), Chalbaud takes up the ostentatious period of the “nouveax riches”, the Venezuelan oil boom of the 1970s. This is his most popular film and is among the Venezuelan-made movies that has been most seen by the public.

In a departure from the socio-political scene, the films “Cangrejo I” and “Cangrejo II” (Crab I and II), filmed in 1982 and 1986, respectively, are about police corruption.

The two films, which Molina says form part of Venezuela’s police- related narrative, were based on a book by former police commissary Fermín Mármol León.

Molina points out that in “La oveja negra” (Black Sheep, 1987), Chalbaud comes to “the defence of the snubbed”, with a look at groups that are marginalized from the larger society.

Lastly, “Pandemónium” served as a foreboding of the changes that would affect the country as a result of the erosion of the political system, changes that came to fruition three years ago under President Chávez, a figure who burst onto the public scene in 1992 with a failed coup attempt.

Molina says that the main focus of his book is “to place the film director within his social, political, economic and cultural context, which in the case of Chalbaud is a very firm road.”