Venezuelan filmmaker and playwright Román Chalbaud died last Tuesday at the age of 91 in Caracas, following a four-month period of serious health issues. He was the most prolific Venezuelan filmmaker having directed 23 feature films, and he was best known internationally for his 1977 film The Smoking Fish / El pez que fuma, considered one of the best Venezuelan films of all-time.
Chalbaud was born on October 10, 1931 in Mérida, Venezuela, and moved to the capital of Caracas at age six. He studied at the Teatro Experimental in Caracas, and then studied directing with Lee Strasberg in New York City. He worked as assistant director to Mexican filmmaker Víctor Urruchúa on his titles Six Months of Life / Seis meses de vida (1951) and Light in the High Plains / Luz en el páramo (1953), which premiered in the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1955, Chalbaud became the artistic director of Televisora Nacional, post that he held for three years, before becoming director of the National Theatre of Venezuela in 1958. In 1959, he premiered his debut feature film Adolescence of Cain / Caín adolescente, based on his homonymous stage play, about a widow who moves to the slums of Caracas with her son. For the rest of the decade, Chalbaud worked between theater and television.
In the mid-seventies, Chalbaud and a group of Venezuelan filmmakers created the production company Gente de Cine C.A., which produced his following films: La quema de Judas (1974), Sacred and Obscene / Sagrado y obsceno (1975), and The Smoking Fish (1977), and marked a Golden Age of Venezuelan cinema.
Starring Miguel Ángel Landa, Orlando Urdaneta, Hilda Vera, Haydée Balza, and Claudio Brook, The Smoking Fish follows a handsome young man is released from jail and goes to “El Pez que Fuma,” a bordello in the outskirts of Caracas. La Garza, its middle-aged owner, hires the young man as handy man, but soon he takes the place of the administrator, who is also La Garza’s lover.
The Smoking Fish became the first Venezuelan candidate to the Academy Awards in the Best Motion Picture in a Foreign Language competition and was awarded with the Best Film Award at the Cartagena Film Festival. It was also included in the 1994 exhibition series ‘Venezuela: Forty Years of Cinema, 1950 - 1990’ at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Chalbaud was named President of the Asociación Nacional de Autores Cinematográficos (National Association of Cinema Auteurs) — ANAC in 1978, and later server as Executive Director of the Fundación Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela (National Foundation of Venezuelan Cinema) for two years.
Other film credits by Chalbaud include Bodas de papel (1979), Cangrejo (1982), La oveja negra (1987), El corazón de las tinieblas (1990), Pandemonium, the Hell's Capital City (1997), El caracazo (2005), and Days of Power / Días de poder (2017).
He was awarded the National Theatre Award of Venezuela in 1984, and the National Film Award of Venezuela in 1990. In 1985, the San Sebastián Film Festival presented a retrospective of his work, and we also served as a member of the jury in the 1990 edition of the Spanish festival. After the news of his passing, the National Theatre of Venezuela was re-named after Chalbaud.
