MARTA RODRIGUEZ

The third Plataforma Chocó took place in November and December 2011 with the renowned Colombian anthropologist and pioneering documentary film maker Marta Rodriguez. Since the early 1960's Rodríguez has documented political and social movements within Colombia's African and indigenous peoples, agricultural workers, student bodies and unions. For Plataforma Chocó, Rodriguez returned to Chocó after a long absence to present a series of cinematic open-forums with isolated communities of the Gulf de Tribugá.

The forums included material gathered over decades and compiled by their foundation Cine Documental / Investigación Social. In addition to their own documentaries, other material from indigenous and Latin American film-makers was screened. Simultaneously Rodríguez researched the Cantadoras - women who sing following the death of a member of the community.

“My experience through this time in Chocó has reinstated the suffering caused to indigenous groups by the lack of support for their basic needs. There is racism and rejection here; when they ask for hospital assistance they are told that the staff are on strike.”

Marta Rodriguez, Dec 2011

“As each Plataforma Chocó project has different goals and challenges, I am happy with the decisions that Más Arte Más Acción took to ensure we could stay so close to the Afro-Colombian and Emberá communities.”

Fernando Restrepo, Dec 2011

Retorno al Pacifico (memorias)16 min

Background

Marta Rodríguez (born 1933) has never been merely an anthropologist or merely a documentary filmmaker. From her first film, CHIRCALES (THE BRICKMAKERS, 1966-72), to her present work, Rodríguez has always shown herself to be a politically committed, independent anthropological filmmaker who uses documentary to analyze the living and working conditions and the world view of peasants, native peoples, and workers in her native Colombia. The subjects themselves actively participate in the filmmaking process by critiquing the documentarist's depiction of their world as the film is being made. Her documentaries typically take several years to produce because of budgetary limitations and the anthropological research required. Rodríguez' work is not completed when the postproduction process is over.

Since she is an engaged filmmaker par excellence, she attends to questions of distribution and exhibition so that the documentary is turned back to its subjects, who can then debate the film and better analyze their own situations. Rodríguez, then, like the other members of the New Latin American Cinema movement that arose in the mid-1950s, views cinema as a powerful means to analyze socioeconomic and political reality and as a stimulus to the "lower" classes and marginal groups to better understand and/or to transform their politics and their lives.

Extract: Conversation with Marta Rodríguez by Dennis West and Joan M. West Jump Cut, no. 38, June 1993, pp. 39-44 http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC38folder/MartaRodriguezInt.html