Vendors at a market in La Paz, in an image from the film “The Great Movement.” Beauty Salon (Courtesy)
For many contemporary artists, the modernity of the city was a theme and a challenge. Urban symphonies were a film genre between documentary and experimental cinema that reached its peak in the silent film era of the 1920s and 1930s. These films documented the daily routine of a city from dawn to dusk and focused on the daily lives of its residents, beginning with the tragedy and comedy that the cities represented for them. They became visual poems that were simultaneously chronicles and personal expressions of life in the capitals.
Inspired by films such as Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927) by Walter Ruttman; Rain (1929), by Joris Ivens; or “The Man with the Camera” (1929) by Dziga Vértov, which shows a surrealist Russia with an emphasis on machinery and architecture, Bolivian filmmaker Kiro Russo used this genre and some of its references for his second feature film entitled “The Great Movement ” rescued. to depict the city of La Paz, seat of the Bolivian government – located at 3,600 meters above sea level and protected by the Andes -, dissecting it and presenting it as a monstrous and mystical figure through stories and experiences of some of its residents.
Poster for the film “The Big Move”. Beauty Salon (Courtesy)
The film, winner of the Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti section in 2021 and four awards at the Havana Festival in 2022 – including Best Feature Film and Best Director – is set in Bolivia. Currently playing Elder (Julio César Ticona) goes on a week-long walk in La Paz with his young mining friends to demand his job be reinstated. However, he suddenly falls ill, causing frequent attacks of suffocation and difficulty breathing, after finding work at a local market .As his condition worsens, he seeks help from the elderly Mama Pancha, who sends him to Max (Max Bautista Uchasara), a homeless witch, hermit and clown who might be able to bring him back to life.
After the success he achieved with his feature film debut “Viejo Calavera” (2016), Russo initially viewed his second project as more classic fiction, but various events surrounding the creation process led him to realize that his style of creation was not that was the traditional method of “developing a narrative and finding a way to film it”, but rather following a more documentary process where the characters and events lead to the film. In this way, a film was created in dialogue with the visual art of artists such as Arturo Borda or the letters of Jaime Saenz as well as the film Chuquiago by Antonio Eguino, all of which had a very great relationship with the representation of La Paz.
According to Russo, you could say that the film is, in a way, a dissection of a body, and even when filming like that, this methodology allows you to see different characters from a certain distance, allowing you to appreciate them in a different way. “The characters have a narrative arc, but at the same time they allow themselves to deviate from it every now and then, leaving you with only the city as the protagonist and its very special elements, such as the topography, the posters, the peeling walls.” . “I saw it almost as a skin of the city, as part of certain elements that I wanted to portray as protagonists,” says the director.
Aerial view of La Paz, in a frame from the film. Beauty Salon (Courtesy)
The production of “The Great Movement” also faced technical challenges, as it was shot entirely in Super 16 millimeter format, which gives a true cinematic visualization to the material obtained, but also requires precision and, as a hypersensitive material, does not allow for manufacturing errors. For this reason, it was not so easy to set a part of this film during the social conflicts of 2019 that led to the downfall of Evo Morales.
“They tell me a lot, why does it look like an old movie? I make this decision from a political perspective and also as a film activist. We also coincided with the coup. We were filming and people thought we were making fake news. They wanted to take away our equipment in the middle of filming. They filmed us, they insulted us. As a director, it was also very complex to know what happened historically in our country and we have to follow a line, a script that was written,” adds Russo.
While the challenge on “Viejo Calavera” was shooting in the darkness of the mine, on “The Great Movement,” according to Russo, it was maintaining the naturalness of the actors, most of whom had no experience in front of the camera. The North and the map to move around the city was Max Bautista Uchasara, who plays the hermit witch, who in real life is a man of many professions, from shepherd to aparapita (someone who carries goods in the markets) and now also… an actor. His charisma and rebellion towards life made him an “uncontrollable” character in cinematic terms.
A still from the film “The Great Movement.” Beauty Salon (Courtesy)
“At some point he didn’t want to be there anymore and couldn’t be himself in front of the cameras. I feel very committed to the characters I work with. It had to be him, yes or yes. He was the seed of the film and the project was for him. In this respect, I had to assume this for the shooting and rethink the film. “Fortunately, Julio César Ticona came for the story of the miner Elder and it became a story about two characters interacting,” says the director.
The acting part as part of the narrative was crucial for Russo, as with subtlety and effort he managed to capture moments of absolute naturalness. “If you watch the film again, you realize that in many cases people don’t know that it is being filmed, and for that I managed to create climates because I believe that cinema is a great witness to an era “I’m most proud of the Great Movement,” he concludes.
The great movement can be seen on the billboards of the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City from this Friday and also at the Cine Tonalá from October 18th. For the rest of the continent, the film can be purchased or rented on Prime Video.
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