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CHASQUI PERUVIAN MAIL Year 8, Number 16 Cultural Bulletin of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs October, 2010 [The Green Wall]. 1970. [The Green Wall]. La Muralla Verde La Muralla Verde THE FILMS OF ARMANDO ROBLES GODOY/ A PANORAMA OF PERUVIAN CIMENA/ CÉSAR CALVO: PASSION AND THE WRITTEN WORD / CHICHA, A HERITAGE BEVERAGE/ JORGE CHAVEZ, THE CONQUEST OF THE ALPS HOMAGE THE IMPOSSIBLE FILMS OF ARMANDO ROBLES GODoy Andrés Mego* The case of Armando Robles Godoy is an exceptional one in the agitated panorama of Peruvian filmmaking. Cultural promoter, writer, and adventurer Robles Godoy films exclusively to explore his own artistic preoccupations. ew on the Peruvian cultural scene are familiar with the Ffilms of our most legendary Magazine. director: Armando Robles Godoy, who is to this day consulted when Caretas some new cultural policy is unveiled, or when changes to laws supporting the seventh art are proposed- laws which were applied in the past due in Photo: Archive, large part to Robles’ initiative. Many of the filmmakers currently involved in the art were students of Robles Godoy in one or another of the many workshops he taught. It was in these workshops that they learned to work with the “mysterious language,” Ro- bles’ term for cinematic expression. Unfortunately, until fairly recently it was virtually impossible to see his films, with sporadic screenings confined to specialty theaters and the like. At eighty-seven years of age, having given up on undertaking another cinematographic project, Robles Godoy continues to work on his first artistic discipline: literature, which he had never left aside, and from which his best films have been crea- Armando Robles Godoy (New York, 1923 - Lima, 2010). ted. “I have an amount of material that even Balzac would be ashamed of,” he said on one occasion. While mediocrity emanating from the and triumphantly as the winners of the main plot was the journey of a young critics reclaim his films (or, Odría dictatorship’s home base in literary awards. He started to make young upper class man who, in order rather, cinematic criticism is reclai- Lima, Robles Godoy commenced an a name for himself as a writer, and to recieve an inheritance, had to med) and proclaim La muralla verde adventurous chapter of his life as a his estrangement from Lima became spend two years travelling the width [The Green Wall] to be the greatest settler in the Amazon jungle along an obstacle. A few years later, he and breadth of Peru, learning how film in the history of Peruvian film- the Huallaga River. According to the was appointed director of the enter- Peruvians earned a living. Robles making, Robles Godoy can do no director himself, both events were tainment section of La Prensa, and Godoy does not seem too worried more than laugh and reply, “But Pe- experiences which finally acquired reserved all film reviews for himself. about the loss of the film, but it must ruvian filmmaking means nothing!” real meaning when transformed into At that time, in the early 1960’s, have been a magnificent learning ex- Within this insignificance, the films literary, and later, cinematographic there was no Peruvian cinema as perience, in which he was even able of Robles Godoy are the closest Pe- inspiration; but he had no way to such. The government had created to deepen his understanding during ruvian cinema has come to “cinema know this at the time. the Filmadora Peruana S. A. corpo- post-production in Buenos Aires. d’auteur,” films that pursue no goal Robles Godoy is indeed the Peruvian ration, which in practice only produ- beyond that of expressing the artistic filmmaker who has won the most ced light melodramas in cooperation The Amazon and the Mysterious concerns of their director, regardless literary awards, and vice-versa. with Mexican filmmakers, backed up Language of what anyone else thinks. During the eight years he spent in by the star system in both countries. Having learned technical skills ob- the Amazon with his wife and her In this context, a friend from abroad tained in shooting Ganarás el pan. The writer who learned to make brother’s family, he divided his time asked Robles Godoy to spearhead the Robles Godoy began to develop films between toiling away at agricultural filming of a documentary on labor in his own manner of self expression Robles Godoy repeats, at times, To tasks on his plot of farmland and Peru. Despite his purely theoretical using cinematographic language. remember is to discover what really writing. He wrote the short story knowledge of filmmaking, Robles He soon discovered that the written happened.” During his childhood, and novel that would later become Godoy left La Prensa to embark on word –particularly a text with a high which he spent in New York, he his best films, En la selva no hay this new adventure. Not a single esthetic value—was an obstacle or a discovered cinema at his father—the estrellas [There are No Stars in the surviving copy of Ganarás el pan limiting factor compared to the im- composer Daniel Alomía Robles’— Jungle] and La muralla verde, res- [You shall earn your bread] (1964), measurable expressive power of film. side, the latter often translating pectively. He also sent articles to be has been found, but it is known that The language of filmmaking, accor- the dialogue for him. Years later, published in La Prensa newspaper, it had a certain amount of success at ding to Robles Godoy, is more akin tired of the authoritarianism and and texts that returned instantly the box office and that the thread of to music than to literature. Rather, CHASQUI 2 Robles feels that film is the articula- of visual metaphors, and made with tion of elements, the decodification a masterful handling of the resources of which does not correspond to of expression native to cinema. previously established meanings, as From this moment on, the diffi- happens in verbal language. The rea- culty in finding financing for new ding of a film is not conclusive, but films, particularly those without rather highly subjective, and escapes Photo: Archive Conacine. commercial possibilities, forced even the intentions of its authors. Robles Godoy to take a long break This fascination with this “mystery” from filmmaking. It took until 1987 is present throughout his work, for him to be able to undertake which is why his critics consider him another full-length film, filmed on to be “modern,” pointing to ambi- 16 millimeter film, as the result of a tions similar to those that pursued workshop he taught at the University Antonioni or Resnais in European of Lima. Sonata soledad [Soledad film, and also the reason for which Sonata] is more hermetic than his audiences never connected with his previous films (or more open, if you films, finding them too distant from will, since its meaning is less precise On location for the filming of En la selva no hay estrellas (1967), which won second prize Hollywood’s narrative style. at the Vth Moscow film festival. than his earlier works), made up of Robles’ next film, En la selva no hay three parts, or movements, which estrellas (1966), was lost for thirty- propose a specific interaction with nine years. Luckily, after years of the music. Though the first of the fruitless searching, Robles Godoy fragments has an underlying personal finally located a copy of the film in Magazine. element, and Robles Godoy himself 2005 in Moscow, where it had been appears on screen, as a whole it pro- shown on television at some point. Caretas jects itself as a calculated exercise in It was then brought back for a brief experimentation, distant, and even screening at the Cinematógrafo de self-indulgent. Barranco theater. Several years later, Robles directed The idea behind En la selva no hay Photo: Archive, the first full-length Peruvian film estrellas was based on a rumor that its shot on digital video: Imposible amor director heard during his stay in the [Impossible Love] (2000) which is Amazon. A man goes deep into the also his last work. He again proposes jungle in search of an old lady who parallel stories based on the impos- has spent years hoarding the gold sibility of loving. Unfortunately, the that the members of an indigenous film was screened for a very short community she befriended extracts time, and was harshly criticized as from the river. Once he has stolen being poor in terms of technical the gold, and stolen his ingenious quality. guide, the man tries to return home, That his last films have been met at which point the fragments of his La muralla verde (1970). with incomprehension is without past are interspersed. We see him as importance, and is even to be ex- a hit man in the Andes, and a ma- pected, given that Robles Godoy nipulative lover in Lima. His goal is at international film festivals as no also presents Peru as a nation split is a director who has become more to get rich at any cost and move up Peruvian film ever had before. La in two, between two irreconcilable irreverent with each passing year. He in society, an ambition that led to muralla verde furthered its director’s geographic spaces. has always resisted creating fleeting, this journey. ambitions to create a film unconven- Though criticized as excessively easily digested art, art created only The sound treatment in this film is tional in form, and at the same time stylized, La muralla verde is one of to distract the public, and he has also based on real-life experience. transmitted a personal experience, the most original works in Peruvian achieved this goal.