According to Ecuadorian moviemaker Tania Hermida, who is competing with the fiction feature film “The Invention of Species” (La Invención de las Especies), many times this search for financing forces us to “format the projects so that they can fit into the folder of our funds.”
In the current context, it is very difficult to get money for films, especially when it is a fiction production that requires a large team of people, she told a press conference.
“The Invention of Species” is my third fiction feature film, I have presented all of them at the Havana festival, and this film took me 10 years: it was a marathon to raise funds to be able to shoot it, recalled Hermida, a graduate from the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños, a very prestigious institution in Cuba and the world.
It also took ten year of work for Colombian filmmaker Jennifer Uribe, who is competing for the Coral with her feature film “La Piel en Primavera”(Skin in Spring), to finish her motion picture, from the time the idea was born until its premiere. These were years of learning and maturing the film. “Skin in Spring” is my first film and for me it was a very natural process, she emphasized.
In 2014, I started writing the story, in 2019, I managed to win a fund that Colombia grants for the production of first films and the shooting began in Medellín in 2021 and it was very difficult due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Uribe said.
Mexican filmmaker Nicolás Pereda, in turn, brings a more intimate production to the Havana Film Festival, his feature film “Lázaro de Noche” (Lazaro at Night). I have been working with the same actors for about 20 years, we are friends and together we have made several productions, which do not require so much financing, he explained.
However, these are more intimate movies, with a low budget, filmed largely in sequence shots and the locations are usually the protagonists’ own homes, said Pereda, who acts in his films as a kind of “one-man band” who writes the scripts, directs the actors, takes the cameras…
The International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, one of the most important cultural events in the region, will grant the famous Coral awards on Friday, while the screening of the films will extend until December 15.
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