At the age of twenty-four, Víctor Gaviria had his first experience in audiovisuals with Looking for Tréboles (1979), a short film about blind children. The one born in Medellín was pursuing a degree in psychology, which he abandoned after winning the Subterráneo Festival with his short film. That award began a successful career that has now exceeded 40 years. “This was a Saturday and on Monday I was already buying film books. I decided to make films in an absurd way. I hadn’t studied and didn’t know anything. I was in an environment where no one made movies. We were like the first group that went from watching movies to trying to do it,” the Colombian director, who is celebrating 25 years since the release of The Rose Seller (1998), a film that took him to Cannes for the second time, tells La Vanguardia.
The Rose Seller is one of the most successful films in the history of Colombian cinema and its plot leaves no one indifferent. The plot follows Mónica (Lady Tabares), a girl from Medellín who lives among drugs, poverty and violence, while she sells roses. This film, which shows the plight of street children in the style of neorealism – made in Colombia – was responsible for opening the Colombian film exhibition in Barcelona on December 12 at the Filmoteca de Catalunya. “For me, it’s as if they were saying that current cinema is linked to my film,” says Gaviria. “There were a lot of people. The function was practically full. There were many Colombians who came to see it and live the experience of having it restored, remastered and on a giant screen,” he adds.
The director’s consecration came at the beginning of the 90s, with Rodrigo D. No Future (1990), his first feature film. The film debuted at the Cannes festival and showed a method and style that has characterized his career as a director, with a strong inclination to narrate social exclusion, and the use of natural actors in his films. “The 80s led me to make short films and I learned which actors I needed, how to handle them and how to write the script. In some way, a methodology was defined that became evident in Rodrigo D. No Future, the first feature film I made,” comments the poet, who is also a poet. “There I started with a social cinema, from which I never left even though I am interested in all types of cinema. I have always worked with films that have to do with social exclusion,” he adds.
For Gaviria, the best way to represent social exclusion are natural actors, who are also part of the construction of the script. They don’t just play a character. Part of their lives is in what they represent. “Slowly, through trial and error, I come to the conclusion that the actors I need have to belong to the universe the film is about,” says the filmmaker who also managed the Medellín Film Festival for 12 years. “That leads me to the fact that, when I make Rodrigo D. No Future, I look for actors from the neighborhoods and from them I write the script. I look for actors who are good narrators of their lives and things. One has to know their world, the result of the film depends on it. If you know them well, you can describe their world and direct them like actors,” adds the director, who has also directed the feature films Sumas y subtas (2004) and La mujer del animal (2016).
This has also meant that some of those who have depicted violence in their films have been victims beyond fiction. The dedication of Rodrigo D. No Future makes it clear: “Dedicated to the memory of John Galvis, Jackson Gallegos, Leonardo Sánchez and Francisco Marín, actors who succumbed before turning 20 to the absurd violence of Medellín, so that their images may live on.” “at least the normal term of a person.”
And in a context like this, for this director, cinema should not remain alien. “I believe that as a filmmaker you can change society to the extent that you make a film that impacts the viewer and that communicates certain contents and values. The Rose Seller is a film that has changed the mentality of the country. The reality that is seen and the people that are seen through the film, that look changes you as a viewer,” says the experienced director.
Now Víctor Gaviria has his mind set on Sosiego, his new project, which he hopes to start filming at the end of 2024. “The story is about an excluded neighborhood family, about a woman who has spent her entire life trying to get out of poverty with their children. They are older and the paths they have taken are a failure. The path of weapons, prostitution and drugs. It is a bit of that story, what she talks about with her children and how she seeks to solve that problem without a solution,” she comments on her future film, which follows the trend of narrating exclusion in images.
