Filmographies - films at UST by Country: Colombia

Maria, a thirteen-year-old guerrilla soldier, is given the mission to bring a commander's newborn baby to safety in a neighboring town. But nobody knows the secret that she is pregnant with her own baby. Despite the prohibitions against it, Maria decides to keep the baby and is forced run away. A vision of the devastating results of Colombia's armed conflict through the eyes of a young female soldier finding the strength to look for a new life.

As the American youth embraces hippie culture in the 1970s, marijuana bonanza hits Colombia, quickly turning farmers into seasoned businessmen. In the Guajira desert, an indigenous Wayuu family takes a leading role in this new venture and comes to enjoy the perks of both wealth and power. But when greed, passion, and honor collide, a fratricidal war ensues that will put their lives, their culture and their ancestral traditions at risk.

Three short films with magical realist elements, based on shorts stories by Gabriel García Márquez. In the 1st, El espejo de dos lunas, a young woman who is about to wed the son of a prominent family discovers that she can see through time in her bedroom mirror, and embarks on a steamy romance with an unusual soldier. In the 2nd, Ladrón de Sábado, a lonely woman whose husband is away far too often finds herself strangely attracted to the bandit who breaks into her mansion. In the 3rd, Contigo en la distancia, a story unfolds about an ill-fated love.

The film centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who over the course of 40 years build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes) who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.

In 1945, in the Train Station of Bogota, Colombia, a dead girl is found in a trunk. The case is assigned to Detective Mariano Corzo, and he has to deal with the yellow journalist Hi̤plito Mosquera meanwhile he solves the mystery case, besides nobody knows who the girl is, or who put she in the trunk either. The things turn worst when Mosquera says in a newspaper that the trunk is pink, when it is actually brown and wooden. With the help of the bar tender Martina Quijano, Corzo will find an answer for the question: Who killed the girl and why?

The colonel goes each Friday to the post office to see if his long-awaited pension has come through. He knows it will not; so does his wife who is still grieving over the death of their son the year before. The colonel has a mission: to elevate the grim routine of poverty and failure to a high mass of defiance. He does that by showing that a heart that has been broken still beats with vengeance. Based on Garcia Marquez book.

Karen has left her husband Mario after ten years of marriage. She needs a fresh start to find out who she is and who she could be, despite her husband's proclamation that she can do absolutely nothing. She walks out into Bogotá with no job, no friends, and hardly any money, but catches a break when she meets a hairdresser named Patricia at a flophouse. With her new friend by her side, Karen takes her first steps towards independence and self-discovery.

On a mountain in Colombia, paramilitary forces have Marxist rebels cornered against a high ridge without food. In search of a way out, the guerrillas ask an old friend (a missionary they had held hostage and released some 20 years ago) for the number of a humanitarian priest in hopes of finding someone to bring food to the mountain. The missionary mistakes the priest's name for the head paramilitary leader and inadvertently gives the guerrilla commanders the wrong number. Through a humorous confusion, two sworn enemies end up face to face in an emotional encounter that unveils the very core of Colombia's conflict and the journey each one must take to finally find peace in a lifetime of war.

War memories invade Alicia's mind like a ceaseless storm. Uprooted by the armed conflict, she tries to reshape her life in La Sirga, a dilapidated hostel on the shores of a great lake in the highlands of the Andes. There, on a swampy and murky beach, she will try to settle down until her fears and the threat of war resurface again.

After abandoning his family seventeen years ago, an elderly farmer, Alfonso, returns home to care for his ailing son. He discovers the landscape once familiar to him has been ravaged by toxic smoke and resembles a wasteland. While reconciling his past, Alfonso must save his family from this life-threatening situation.

13 year-old Mónica and her friends live on the streets of Medellín, Colombia, surviving by selling roses to couples in nightclubs and sniffing glue to escape their desperation and loneliness. Set in the two days before Christmas, the film is a modernization of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, starring a non-professional cast of Medellín street children.

An older writer, Fernando, returns to his hometown, Medellin, Colombia. There he falls in love with 16-year-old assassin, Alexis. After Alexis is killed, Fernando hunts for his killer in the Medellin slums and falls in love with Wilmar, a boy who resembles Alexis. Based on Fernando Vallejo's book.

Young Manuel lives with his farmer parents in the remote, mountainous region of the Colombian countryside. While the adults in their lives try to avoid both the armed military and the guerrilla rebels fighting each other in the area, Manuel and his friend Julián are obsessed with playing soccer any chance they get. Shortly after his birthday, the new ball Manuel received as a gift gets kicked off to a minefield, and he and his friends will do everything in their power to recover their prized belonging.

In a small town in Colombia in the 1950s three eight-year-olds attempt to make themselves invisible by following the directions in a book of black magic. Fifty years later one of these children tells the story of their adventures.

For most of his life, Ignacio Carrillo travelled the villages of northern Colombia, playing traditional songs on his accordion, a legendary instrument said to have once belonged to the devil. He eventually married and settled in a small town, leaving the nomadic life behind. But after the traumatic death of his wife, he vows to never play the accursed accordion again, and embarks on one last journey to return the instrument to its rightful owner. He is followed by a spirited teenager determined to become his apprentice, but Ignacio tries to discourage him from following in his footsteps.

Florentino is a poetry-writing telegraph operator who lives in a Central American city. He spots the graceful Fermina while making his rounds, and finds himself in love. While Florentino's mother encourages the courtship, Fermina's father absolutely forbids it. Years pass, and the well-born Dr. Urbino treats Fermina for a case of cholera. When Urbino proposes, Fermina accepts. A distraught Florentino decides to wait. With the help of his uncle, he amasses wealth of his own. All the while, he drifts from woman to woman, never really finding what he is looking for in a woman. After five decades of waiting, he gets a second chance to win Fermina's heart.

Marasmo is set in present day Columbia. Luz Angelica, a young woman on a bus ride to Barranquilla discovers Ismael, a handsome police sergeant with a second agenda, traveling undercover on a contract to hunt a guerrilla that has killed the wife of a small drug lord. Far away, Lupercio, the vicious guerrilla and Ernestico, the last idealist commander of the Revolution, are confronted by opposite views. When the power struggle explodes, it sets in motion the elements for a violent conclusion. Ismael's bus is eventually ambushed by guerrillas and his identity is revealed.

Maria, a poor Colombian teenager, is desperate to leave a soul-crushing job. She accepts an offer to transport packets of heroin - which she swallows - to the United States. The ruthless world of drug trafficking proves to be more than she bargained for.

A retelling of Sophocles' ancient Greek tale, set in modern-day Columbia. A local mayor is sent to a small town in the Andes to negotiate peace among guerrilla revolutionaries, paramilitary groups, peasants, and the Colombian army. While there he begins a relationship with the widow of a war lord which inturn brings about his downfall.

When Mama Santos declares, 'Something bad is going to happen' in Presagio, it becomes a bad omen rather than a mere statement. Her provincial town quickly transforms from a close-knit village into a virtual ghost town. Few people in can find work; guilt and hatred permeate the community with devastating results. As Mama Santos watches one resident after another vacate the premises, her self-fulfilling prophecy comes full circle.

A shockingly accurate and timely portrayal of the reckless existence of youths in one of the most exciting and dangerous cities in Latin America - Medellin, Colombia, in 1988. Backed with a frenetic punk rock soundtrack, the film centers around Rodrigo, a would-be drummer, and his friends who are trapped in the violence and drugs which define their turbulent lifestyle.

It develops in Colombia. Tired of his family's stifling poverty, a young boy named Jairo gets involved with the world of crime when street kids coerce him to take part in a robbery. He takes on a job as a hired assassin---a "sicario"---for a local drug lord. He becomes an expert killer, and is soon immersed in a world where anyone can kill and die for money. However, when Jairo decides he's had enough, he quickly learns that there is no such thing as an easy way out.

Born in 1932 into the abject poverty of Medellín, Colombia, Fernando Botero is now considered the most famous living artist in the world and also the wealthiest. This film follows him to his tropical home, then to his studio and repository. This is not an art critique of his work--this is Botero's personal story, told in his own words.

In this interview with Silvia Lemus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses his life and work from a highly personal plane.

In early 2005, yet another massacre of peasants from the San José de Apartadó peace community leaves two families dead. The Colombian government uses this event as a pretext to setup a 150 men police force in the main village of the community. The citizens, afraid of finding themselves in the middle of the fighting between police and guerrilla, decide to abandon their houses and build a new village on some of the community's own land. The killings continue, and the peasants accuse the military of most of them. Their status as a peace community is not recognized, yet they continue their peaceful resistance.

"Surrounded by the Amazon rainforest, the twin cities of Leticia and Tabatinga and the village of Santa Rosa constitute a triple border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Beautifully photographed and researched, Lands explores the social and ecological impact of territorial limits, commerce and modernity on the lives of the local and indigenous population.Situated side by side, on the same riverbank of the Solimoes, Tabatinga and Letica (capital of the Amazonas state in Colombia) share close economic ties and are connected by a single promenade. A pole with two flags marks the point where Amizade Avenue (Brazil) becomes Internacional Avenue (Colombia). Both cities are home to many Peruvian immigrants and Colombian desplazados fleeing the Farc guerrilla armed conflicts. Directly across the river, at a few minutes distance by boat, is the Peru and teh village of Santa Rosa. Cut-off from the economic centers of their respective countries by the forest and the distance, this frontier region is characterized by the constant transit of people and exchange of goods, the incessant sound of motorcycles and radios, the mixture of traditional and technological knowledge and the coexistence of different cultures and ethnicities"--Container.

La Sierra is a barrio in Medellin, Colombia, the cocaine capital of the world. Here lives are defined by drugs, guns and violence. A state of perpetual urban warfare exists, with paramilitary gangs, leftist guerrillas and the US-sponsored Colombian military battling continually for power and control. This film portrays three of La Sierra’s inhabitants: 22-year-old paramilitary leader Edison, a self-professed killer and father of six children by six women; gang soldier Jesus, ready for death at any moment; and Cielo, only 17 and already a mother with a boyfriend in prison… La Sierra reveals not only startling moments of violence and its aftermath, but also those of tenderness and faith which give the community hope for survival.

Bogota, November 6, 1985. 35 heavily armed members of the M-19 guerrilla movement storm the Palace of Justice, home to Colombia's Supreme Court, and symbol of its judicial system. Hundreds of people are taken hostage, including almost all of Colombia's Supreme Court judges. The guerrillas have a clear demand- they want the President put on trial. Not surprisingly the government refuses to negotiate, and for the next 27 hours the country is transfixed, as the military opens fire on the building, and Bogota's central plaza is transformed into a brutal and bloody battleground. When the dust settles, the majestic Palace is a smoldering shell, and close to a hundred people are dead, including many employees of the courts, 34 of the 35 M-19 guerrillas, and almost all of the country's Supreme Court judges. Twelve others are unaccounted for- their bodies cannot be found in the debris. Many believe they have been 'disappeared'- removed from the building by government forces, accused of aiding the M-19, tortured, and then killed. 25 years later, Colonel Plazas Vega, one of the leaders of the military operation, has been charged with the disappearances. The Colonel protests his innocence, outraged that so many years after the event he is being made a scapegoat. The Siege follows the story of the day of the Siege of the Palace of Justice, and tracks the courtroom drama of Colonel Plazas Vega's trial 25 years later. In the course of the highly charged trial the lawyers, prosecutors, and the judge all wear bulletproof vests, and start traveling with armed guards, in fear for their lives. The case has captured the attention of the Colombian public, and both practically and symbolically it has become a touchstone for the integrity of justice in Colombia.

Sanpachando (San Pacho es pa'l que lo goce) explores the afro-ethnic, religious, and cultural meaning of a festival honoring Saint Francis of Assisi. Through music, dancing and first hand accounts, the documentary vividly encapsulates aspects of the social, religious, and political foundations that hold the festival together. It examines both its material and symbolic expressions. Musical montage, local commentary and interviews weave a narrative of survival, told from the perspective of a robust afro-cultural identity. Located in Quibdó, Chocó, (a city on the northern part of the Colombian Pacific coast) this community reveals a history of marginalization and resilience that contests its own segregation and exploitation. In this sense, Sanpachando offers a different vision of what it means to be and to feel Colombian.

Discusses the life of Simon Bolivar, including family, education, military career, and his role in the freedom of the South American colonies. Also reviews the history of the colonies under Spanish rule, such as explorations, conquests, social and economic aspects as well as the culture of the people.

The duration and scope of the 19th century Latin American wars for independence dwarf all other conflicts in the New World up until that time. This program enhanced by period paintings, engravings, maps, and documents from The John Carter Brown Library's Bromsen collection and other esteemed collections of Latin Americana tells the remarkable life story of Simon Bolivar, founder of Bolivia and liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru from Spanish colonial rule. Although his dream of Latin American unity was not realized in his lifetime, Bolivar's passion for independence lives on.

"Caught between rebel guerrillas and the Colombian army, the indigenous Nasa people fight to reclaim the ancestral land that was stolen from them while also fending off new threats of violence encroaching on their community. In a country where the people have known little bur war, the Nasa leader Lucho Acosta knows that violence will only breed more of the same. He must fight for the rights of his people in a peaceful manner. Stolen Land... follows Acosta as he takes the Nasa's fight from the streets of their villages to the halls of government, giving us an intimate look inside this peaceful and caring traditional community. Facing nearly insurmountable odds, Acosta and his beliefs are tested to their core. The last time an agreement was reached, nearly 20 years ago, the result was a massacre. The stakes are high and the future of the Nasa hangs in the balance."--Container.

Two million displaced persons, 35,000 murders per year, 70,000 mines scattered all over the country, a kidnapping every ten minutes: Colombia is the theatre of one of the most tragic wars of our time. In Welcome to Colombia, filmmaker Catalina Villar travels across her country - through territory held by guerrillas, paramilitaries and government forces - during the course of Colombia's 2002 presidential election. Everywhere she finds people who are tired of the fighting and the blaming, and who simply want peace. Although Villar herself shows little sympathy for the guerrillas, she also offers a counterpoint to sensational propaganda that obscures the fact that the vast majority of the killings in the civil war are perpetrated, not by guerrillas, but by paramilitaries.

In Colombia's war-torn indigenous villages, three brave women use nonviolent resistance to defend their peoples' survival. Warfare between the guerrillas, paramilitary groups and armed forces imperils Colombia's 102 aboriginal groups, dozens of which face extinction because of the violence. Despite being trapped in a protracted predicament financed by the drug trade, native women in Colombia are resourcefully leading and creating transformation imbued with hope. We Women Warriors (Tejiendo Sabiduría) bears witness to neglected human rights catastrophes and interweaves character-driven stories about female empowerment, unshakable courage, and faith in the endurance of indigenous culture. Doris is a young Awa tribal leader who takes charge to protect a group of internal refugees fleeing combat between the army and the guerillas. While speaking at a U.N. press conference in Colombia's capital, she learns that five people from her village were slain by masked men. Ludis is a spunky Kankuamo widow, and mother of three, who is framed and imprisoned on false charges of rebellion. After a year, Ludis is released from prison. She returns to her village and forms a weaving collective with other female victims of the systematic murders perpetrated by paramilitary bands. Flor Ilva is the first woman entrusted to lead her 300-year-old Nasa taribal government. She faces a crisis caused by police barracks that endanger civilians by placing them in the rebels' line of fire. After the army kills an 11-year-old boy, Flor Ilva spearheads a peaceful movement to dismantle the barracks.