Utama by Alejandro Loayza Grisi
By Alonso Aguilar
Whenever a nation’s filmography is seen as an almost unipersonal endeavor, it soon becomes clear that something has been lost to the outside viewer. No matter how relatively small the cinematic output may seem, the intricacies behind a country’s filmography simply can’t be all summarized in a single creative vision.
For many years, most cinephiles’ approximation to Bolivian cinema began and ended with the figure of Jorge Sanjinés. It’s true that Sanjinés’ role in the development of a Bolivian cinematic identity can’t be understated, but the nation’s audiovisual history was already robust when the combative trends of the 60s came along with New Bolivian Cinema.
The history of cinema in Bolivia goes all the way back to the 19th century and the medium’s early and formative years, when its arrival was seen as closer to a roadshow attraction than as a mainstay in the local culture. By 1905, however, La Paz had seen an important presence of exhibitions, and by the 1910s even boasted its own roster of documentary filmmakers with the likes of J. Goytisolo, Luis Castillo and the crew behind Condor Mayku Films.
Works like La Gloria de la Raza (1926) explored the decline and neglect of Tiahuanaco culture in the country, while Corazón Aymara (1925) and Wara Wara (1930) were part of a multidisciplinary intellectual-and-artistic movement within the country that saw the promotion of Bolivian indigenous customs and folklore during the 1920s and 30s, up until the Guerra del Chaco with Paraguay held everyone’s attention for most of the latter decade.
With emerging voices during the 40s, like Jorge Ruiz, Augusto Roca and Alberto Perrín, Bolivian cinema grew its already important documentary tradition, laying the groundwork for what has been one of the most committed and socially minded filmmaking traditions in Latin American cinema.
Blood of the Condor by Jorge Sanjinés
After the 1952 National Revolution, the Instituto Cinematográfico Boliviano was created as an effort to promote Bolivian cinema, with hundreds of documentaries and newsreels coming out of its 16-year history. Simultaneously, the aforementioned Sanjinés and documentarian Antonio Eguino returned to Bolivia after their studies abroad, coinciding in what will eventually be known as El Grupo Ukama (named after Sanjinés’ feature length debut, which also happened to be the country’s first film in the Aymara language).
Grupo Ukamau’s most renowned work, and for many one of the highlights of the Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano craze, was Blood of the Condor / Yawar Maliku (1969), a Quechua film that embraced corrosive audiovisual techniques for its indictment of the Peace Corps’ atrocious acts against Bolivia's indigenous population. Despite the 1973 military coup and the inevitable slowing down of politically inclined cinema, Blood of the Condor opened the door for new generations of adventurous filmmakers from the country, an emergence that led to the creation of the Cinemateca Boliviana by 1976.
By the late 1970s and 1980s, figures like Jorge Guerrara Villalba, Miguel Ángel Illanes, Danielle Caillet and the Cuellar Urizar brothers all had a couple of important releases under their name, safeguarding and expanding Bolivia’s socially conscious and politically charged audiovisual ecosystem. From the neglected customs of indigenous groups, to incisive looks at the nation’s history, every decision was part of an active effort to recontextualize iconography and national memory towards a more inclusive and non-hierarchical lens.
With the 1991 instauration of a Cinematic Law (after a long and drawn out process that lasted 15 years), Bolivian cinema looked to secure funding and strengthen the infrastructure of the audiovisual niche, but the implementation of the law has not been as effective as initially hoped.
With no official avenues to rely on, Bolivian filmmakers of the digital era once again worked from the margins, taking the marked emphasis on indigenous inclusion and representation that has molded the nation’s cinematography, both aesthetically and thematically, and adding a layer of economic accessibility with cheaper productions and a more vigorous independent scene. Notable directors that came along from the mid-90s and 2000s include the likes of Juan Carlos Valdivia, Eduardo López, Rodrigo Bellott, and Alejandro Pereyra.
El Gran Movimiento by Kiro Russo
The dusk of the 2010s arrived with a glimmer of hope, as a new law titled Ley del Cine y Arte Audiovisual Boliviano was issued. With local filmmakers given an important say on the conditions established, a particular emphasis was given to financing mechanisms and the creation of a fund for the promotion of audiovisual art in Bolivia. Recent critical standouts like Kiro Russo’s El Gran Movimiento and Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama can be traced back to this landmark moment in the nation’s cinematographic development, but as tends to be the case with Latin American arts and culture, enthusiasm was short-lived.
As opposing political forces switched back and forth after 2018, commitment to the law quickly diluted, and what was initially thought to be the advent of a prosperous age for Bolivian cinema is now remembered as a mere flash in the pan. However, with Utama and El Gran Movimiento there’s been renewed interest in Bolivia’s cinematic output in arthouse and festival circles.
Not only are these aesthetically sound films oozing with the idiosyncrasies of new and exciting voices like Russo and Loayza Grisi, but also updated approximations to some of the ever-present topics of the nation’s discursive ecosystem. While indigenous life and autochthonous cosmovisions are at the core of both these narratives, their depictions transcend the ethnographical and agitative takes that have been well represented in the country’s filmography.
With their own particular visual, aural and structural subversions and juxtapositions, both works are clearly grounded in a storied tradition, yet their lyrical flourishes and formal inventiveness set them apart, and present new avenues for Bolivia’s emergent generations of filmmakers.
With the acclaim and ample trajectory of these films, a stellar opportunity for wider visibility of one of Latin America’s most distinctive filmic traditions rises, and hopefully, it also represents a new step towards wider scrutiny of the unresolved topics that have incited Bolivian cinema’s centenary protest ethos.
References:
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc54.2012/tibbits-cordova/text.html
https://www.latamkcl.co.uk/elcortao/the-emergence-of-indigenous-cinema-in-bolivia-the-ethnographic-gaze-of-jorge-sanjins-and-the-ukamau-group
https://www.academia.edu/36569606/The_Road_as_a_National_Chronotope_in_Bolivian_Cinema
https://www.academia.edu/964813/The_Bolivia_issue_of_ReVista_the_Harvard_Review_of_Latin_America
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Alonso Aguilar is a cultural journalist from San José, Costa Rica. He does editorial labor in Krinégrafo: Cine y Crítica and his writings have featured in Mubi Notebook, Bandcamp Daily, Film International, photogénie, Cinema Year Zero, Costa Rica Festival Internacional de Cine, La Nación and Revista Correspondencias.
