Marta Rodriguez
“Documentary filmmaking: Memories of an Ethnocide”
Born in Bogota in 1933, while in university Rodriguez studied with the guerrilla priest Camilo Torres, who used to send his students to work with the children of a poor suburb in Bogota. The dramatic reality and conditions of his community deeply impressed Marta, and for that reason she decided to go to France in 1961 to study ethnology and film. In Paris, she studied with the French documentary filmmaker Jean Rouch; there she learned about the Cinéma Vérité movement, and she became very involved in the group led by Jean Rouch, Joris Ivens and Edgar Morin. In 1965 she returned to Colombia and became especially more than the depicting the realities and conditions of poverty, become interested in the indigenous communities. Rodriguez has made over 15 documentary films, and today is working on a series of documentaries about the Ethnocide of aboriginals in Colombia from 1970.
Major Films:
- Chircales (1966)
- Live Memory (1992/1993)
- Witnesses of an Ethnocide: Memories of Resistance (2011)
Official Website
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Chircales (1966)
Rodriguez mentions that she just could not film and sit down to edit the material; she writes that following the Cinema Verité principles and the teachings by Jean Rouch, she searched for a methodology that depicts the Colombian reality, and, in concrete, for the chircaleros in Bogota. As Francois Zourabichvili mentions about Vertov, Rodriguez with Chircales wanted to show the interaction at a distance, within Colombia, of the most varied principles of people, industries and government.
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Live Memory (1992-1993)
After the experience with Chircales, Rodriguez moved to the theme that would stay for her life: the ethnocide of indigenous communities by the Colombian government. Inspired on the Soviet inspired film groups from France in the 1960´s (-i.e- Medvedkin Group), Marta Rodriguez not only she made cinéma verité films on the aboriginals, but in 1991 she designed a documentary film workshop to teach the indigenous people and communities to use digital and analog film equipment and to start producing their own film productions. Live Memory is one of the films shot by First Nations.
Trailer
Trailer
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Witnesses of an Ethnocide: Memories of Resistance (2011)
“While in university In 1958, I went to visit a woman that had survived from a massacre. The woman had lost her husband, parents, siblings and children. It was never cleared who had committed the massacres: one of the 8 left-guerrillas of the time, the new extreme right-paramilitary forces, the drug dealers, or the government. After seeing her, I decided to devote my life to make films on the ethnocide in Colombia.” Rodriguez after 40 years of filming has decided to work on a series of documentary films that have as team the ethnocide and that have as aesthetic the found footage. Just like Esfir Shub in 1927, Marta has decided to use the film stock of the 40 years of shooting to make a film about past and present. Marta Rodriguez Witnesses of an Ethnocide: Memories of Resistance released in 2011 the first of the series of documentaries that will deal with indigenous communities as well as with the Afro-Colombian communities
Trailer
Trailer