FILM-PERU: ‘Red Ink’ a Look Inside the Tabloid Press

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Nov 7 2000 (IPS) - The Peruvian film ‘Tinta roja’ (Red Ink) gives audiences a unique glimpse into the world of the tabloid press and how its journalists deal with the ethical problems associated with their work.

‘Tinta roja,’ based on a novel by Chilean author Alberto Fuguet and directed by Peru’s Francisco Lombardi, is now on its way to Cuba in search of additional prizes after its star, Gianfranco Brero, won the best male actor award at the prestigious San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain last September.

Brero, who plays Saúl Faúndez, a cynical police reporter at a sensationalist newspaper, will join his fellow actors and director Lombardi in Havana for the Latin American Film Festival, held there every December.

The matter of the sensationalist press has taken on greater importance in Peru of late for its role in the political crisis triggered here by return to the country of Vladimiro Montesinos, who until recently was the intelligence chief of the Alberto Fujimori government, and is considered by many to be the real power behind the scenes.

“In the last few years, Peru has witnessed the expansive growth of this type of journalism, to the point that it has become a political and social phenomenon,” commented Juan Gargurevich, a professor at the Catholic University and author of a study on the issue.

“To nearly the same degree that the serious press reduces its circulation, the tabloid press grows, written for those who don’t want to read. In addition to their irresponsible reporting is the fact that their audience only reads the headlines,” Gargurevich added.

“The hook of the sensationalist press is the gossip and stories about the intimate lives of actors or sports figures, and the way it handles crime stories,” he pointed out.

Despite this, “it is impossible to create punitive regulation to prevent the excesses of the sensationalist press because it would be an attack on journalistic freedoms,” said Gargurevich, “and the cure would be worse than the disease.”

“Journalism can be the most noble of professions or the most vile of activities,” according to an aphorism attributed to Alejandro Miroquesada, one of the patriarchs of Peruvian journalism.

This moral disjunction is what confronts journalism student Alfonso Fernández, played by Peruvian actor Giovanni Ciccia in ‘Tinta roja,’ as he begins his practical training as a reporter at ‘El Clamor’ newspaper.

There he meets Faúndez, an ageing editor of the crime section who becomes the mentor for the aspiring young reporter in the cynical trade of squeezing dirt from the misfortune of others.

Other typical personalities from the newspaper environment parade through the film, such as the nearly mute photographer, the insensitive chief editor, the talkative and surrealistic driver and exhibitionist police officers.

The previous film by Lombardi, Peru’s best-known director, was ‘Pantaleón y las visitadoras,’ based on the novel of the same name by Mario Vargas Llosa. It has won numerous international awards and is a success among Spain’s audiences, as well as in Peru and other Latin American countries.

“‘Tinta Roja’ was a project I had before ‘Pantaleón.’ I was attracted to the idea of doing a story about the underworld of the tabloid press,” Lombardi said.

He explained that this time he took a different approach with the camera and editing, “because the theme called for it – and it was a satisfying experience to make a free, searching film”.

Unlike ‘Pantaleón,’ which uses humour to highlight the absurdities of military bureaucracy, an issue that a large portion of the movie-going public undoubtedly identifies with, ‘Tinta roja’ stepped on the toes of one sector of the press.

“In San Sebastian, some film critics felt insulted in their journalistic role. They were a little upset that I entered their world and that the portrayal wasn’t kind. But my vision was not to contrast good and evil and highlight the positive things of a world that is hard, difficult and dark,” says Lombardi.

“I wanted to portray the story of the typical personalities that work in the sensationalist press. I have tried to get close to the initiation rites of the young man who arrives at a newspaper and has a callused old journalist as his teacher.”

Lombardi clarifies that, “despite the theme of the story, I have not tried to produce an ethical reflection, because that is up to each one of the viewers, who must take up the question of sensationalist journalism and freedom of the press according to their own critical conscience”.

Actor Ciccia, meanwhile, tells of how he composed the character of the apprentice reporter by spending a few weeks as part of a team of crime reporters at a Lima newspaper.

“But I learned most from the words that Fuguet put in the mouth of Faúndez, my teacher, which reveals the excellent research he did,” commented Ciccia.

“In ‘Tinta Roja’ there is no message that can be summarised in one sentence. The fiction portrayed by the film holds the same complexity as real life,” concludes Lombardi.