How the ‘gay, Indigenous, resistant’ Guatemalan film 闯辞蝉茅 came together
Image: Lead actors in "JOSE", (left) Monolo Herrera and Enrique Salanic. Scene from the movie. (supplied)
闯辞蝉茅 recently won Venice Film Festival鈥檚 Queer Lion award, and soon plays the Mardi Gras Film Festival. Director Li Cheng and producer George F Robson sat down with Robert McGrath for their first extended interview.
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On first take, 闯辞蝉茅 is an gay love story set in teeming Guatemala City鈥攏ovel enough.
However, as 闯辞蝉茅 unfolds, it reveals more about the lived experiences of millions in Latin America.
Metaphorically, 闯辞蝉茅 is located in the middle of the swirling confluences currently coursing their way through the hemisphere.
闯辞蝉茅鈥檚 world is impacted by drug cartels and criminal gangs; limited opportunities and hyper competition; corruption and ineffectual administrations; overcrowding and chaotic urbanisation.
Any wonder there are human caravans heading to walls that don鈥檛 exist, while devotional religion maintains its reassuring grip on the popular imagination鈥攊f only to make the unbearable bearable.
As producer of the film, George F Robson knows too well.
鈥淩ealities are made harsher by being poor, non-white, and gay… and having few opportunities,鈥� he says.
鈥淔inding a love relationship amongst all that, can be an impossible dream.鈥�
The story itself is fiction. It鈥檚 an amalgam of personal stories collected by George and director Li Cheng from interviews with young people across twenty of Latin America’s largest cities.
Robson and Cheng consistently sought answers to three essential questions: Who are you closest to in your life? What is your most unforgettable memory? Have you been in love?
The individual vignettes they sourced flowed into their representative, fictionalised screenplay.
The film was realised with a fully Guatemalan production crew and features first time actors Enrique Salanic and Manolo Herrera.
The story follows two young men as they stumble, almost inadvertently, into love.
As their relationship progresses, they are buffeted by the social, economic, and religious imperatives in their lives.
The simplicity of the relationship is the quiet centre of their complex world.
The story unfolds with a subtle observer鈥檚 eye. Its film language draws on the post-war, Italian neo-realists, and particularly the work of murdered gay director, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
His films presented dignifying visions of ordinary people.
鈥淧asolini is definitely at work in 闯辞蝉茅鈥�鈥� Robson says.
鈥淗e was ahead of the curve.鈥�
If 闯辞蝉茅 was set around a languidly dappled pool, forsaken in the fading light of a failing Tuscan summer, it might be a heartwarming coming-of-age, gay love story.
But 闯辞蝉茅 is real; achingly real.
It hovers close to the documental, sifting through the layers and complexities of everyday life.
In teeming Guatemala City, sidewalks are a luxury, and muggings and the occasional little earthquake are unremarkable. Surely this is cin茅ma-v茅rit茅.
闯辞蝉茅 also intrudes deeply and somewhat uncomfortably into the very personal. Yet it’s an appropriate treatment, given the lack of truly private space.
But, beyond the focused lens broils a darkening macrocosm that gives 闯辞蝉茅 its contextual texture.
In not so-far-away Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro must rank as the most threatening, foul-mouthed 鈥渓eader鈥� in the world today鈥攁nd he has some competition.
As President, his once-ignored rants, must now be considered as state-sanctioned hate speech.
He has famously said he would 鈥�…rather have a son who is an addict than a son who is gay鈥� and that he is 鈥減roud to be homophobic鈥�.
He sees the Amazon Basin as 鈥渁 child with chickenpox… every dot you see is an Indigenous reservation鈥�.
But Brazil is a huge and diverse society, with a history of mass movements, ready to defend the rights of women, Indigenous people, and sexual minorities.
Around them, a nascent 鈥榬esistance鈥� appears to be coalescing.
Immediately after Venice, 闯辞蝉茅 featured at the continent’s largest film festival, in the sprawling megalopolis of Sao Paulo.
There, the imperceptible intricacies and stoic forbearances of the film’s gay and Indigenous subjects seemed to confound the blabberous barbs of any Balsonaro-fueled bigotries.
After its showing, the film site, Artecines, splashed the headline, 鈥�闯辞蝉茅: O amor em forma de resistencia” (or “Jose: love as form of resistance”).
Meanwhile, following 闯辞蝉茅鈥檚 success in Venice, Guatemala’s relatively liberal national newspaper, Prensa Libre, ran a double-page story with the headline, 鈥�闯辞蝉茅 es una carta de amor para el pa铆s鈥�; (or 鈥�闯辞蝉茅 is a love letter to the country鈥�).
贬辞飞别惫别谤,听闯辞蝉茅聽is yet to come out in Guatemala.
“There is concern for the safety of the actors,” Cheng explains.
Guatemala鈥檚 systemic and institutional problems are ongoing. The government recently expelled a UN-backed anti-corruption commission, just as it began digging too close to the President and his family.
Can 闯辞蝉茅 be part of a resistance in Guatemala?
Cheng鈥檚 thoughts? 鈥淚 hope so鈥�.
闯辞蝉茅聽will screen at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival聽on Sunday 17 March. For tickets visit:聽
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