Video

Hamlet Unbound				Manati Portrait of a third-world happy town

Hamlet is the Colombian-born adopted son of the recently dead owner of ELSINOR INC., a multinational company that exploits mines of coal in South America. More				The documentary maker introduces us to the social work of Jaime Santander SJ, an agrarian leader and reformer who in the 1960s changed the socioeconomic conditions of Manati, a small town of the Colombian Caribbean coast.... More
Ilhas do Porto				Military Teachers

This documentary is a portrait of a dozen men and women who lived in the crowded and unhealthy industrial courts of Oporto, an odd architectural legacy of the Portuguese industrial revolution. Through a series of intimate conversations, shot at daylight, and with one or two crew members (I shot several interviews myself), 'Ilhas do Porto' has become one of the most controversial documentary screened in Portugal in 2001. Albeit its sociological connotations, this documentary is overall a warm portrait of the lives, hopes and frustrations of a dozen of Portuguese men and women on the turn of the 21st century. 'Ilhas do Porto' was entirely funded by ICAM (Instituto do cinema audiovisual and multimedia - Audiovisual Portuguese Institute), which at the beginning of 1999 awarded us with a production grant. Although the production of the documentary was originally scheduled by the end of 1999, my producers postponed it until spring 2000, when I was no longer living in Portugal. Although they tried to persuade me to sell my rights as director of the documentary and as an ICAM fellow, I decided to go ahead with the project, travelling continuously between Manchester and Oporto. In a tour de force, and taking advantage of one of the driest springs that the city of Porto has ever had, I shot 'Ilhas do Porto' along four months, in only ten weekend days. As I moved to England for good, I single-handed edited the documentary in two home-VCRs in Manchester, which I later hand-delivered with an editing script to my self-assigned bench editors Luis Proença S.J. and Chris Wilson. 'Ilhas do Porto' was world-wide broadcast by RTP (Radio Televisão Portuguesa - Portuguese Radio and Television) in 2001 and 2002.				Even in the current Colombian armed conflict, dozens of high-school graduates have the possibility of accomplishing their obligatory military service as primary school teachers of Nueva Era. 'Military Teachers' narrates the school project of Norberto Tarazona Rojas, a police lieutenant struggling to keep Nueva Era running, the only primary school available to the children of Olas II, one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Bucaramanga, a Colombian city with a population of 1 million. The misery of Olas II is such that the first priority of the school is to feed its pupils. Although some funds are provided by the local government and several charity institutions, parents must pay the weekly equivalent of 1 dollar per student - a difficult task for those who own nothing. As a result many parents are obliged to take their children from the school. Without education the most fortunate kids would get menial jobs, whereas the majority of them will fall in the abysms of beggary, criminality and prostitution. Nueva Era is periodically run in a government house built besides a running sewage; about three years ago classes were suspended due to certain bureaucratic disagreement. Wanting to eliminate such source of uncertainty, lieutenant Norberto Tarazona is trying to raise funds in order to buy a lot for Nueva Era.
Read the editing script
French Spirits				The Thinker who Used to Read Fiction

'French Spirits' is a poignant portrait of the last days of Ulysse Jannin (1921 - 2005), a French farmer who survived the Second World War to become the most famous distiller of spirits in La Veze, a small town of Franche-Comté located near the city of Besançon. Though a series of convivial meetings, Ulysse emerges as a patriarch who is regularly visited by the families of his 5 children, his 15 grandchildren and his 3 great grandchildren. A sharp critic of the governmental policies on game and industrial farming, Ulysse appears as a staunch defender of traditional values and religion, but also as a practical man, able to understand the liberal ways of the new generations. At 84 Ulysse insists in running his own farm, an enterprise that wouldn't be possible without the assistance of Colette, his 80-year-old charming and hard-working wife.				A self-reflexive video, 'The Thinker who used to read fiction' introduces viewers to the life of US philosopher Chuck Dyke, as well as to his ideas on controversial topics such as American politics, adolescence, ecology, higher education and the general purpose of philosophy in 1990s America. A documentary on philosophy, boldly tailored according to the melodramatic discourse of the Media. Dyke's elaborated concepts are juxtaposed to those improvised by several men and women from around the world: documentary-makers, actors and passserbies who in spite of their ignorance on C. Dyke's philosophy, are eager to discuss and distort his discourse according to their own impressions and pre-conceived ideas. Shot between 1996 and 1997, 'The Thinker who used to read fiction' was partly financed by PIFVA (Philadelphia Film and Video Association).

Diary of Loneliness				Whispers in the Library

14 of March of 1996.- Too feeble to live, or too strong to die...				This video is a Direct Cinema exercise on the daily life of the Library of Wynnefield. The interaction between children, librarians and volunteers reveals the Library of Wynnefiled not only as a place for reading or research, but also as an institution of control, where children are kept away from the streets of Philadelphia. 'Whispers in the library' analyzes why most American libraries have become children institutions in recent years: poverty, criminality and a lack of understanding of the educational needs of teenagers. Children want to communicate, to argue, to laugh, to express themselves. The relation between children and librarians are based on an ideal premise: "library visitors read, librarians provide them with books". In reality children see themselves forced to come to the library, an imposition that encourages them to challenge the librarians' regulations. Slowly, but inevitably, conflict arises as authority is challenged. A quiet library sieged by whispers, unable to refrain the vitality of youth.
Photography