/ARTS WEEKLY/ FILM-VENEZUELA: Macbeth Rides the Andes

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, May 27 2003 (IPS) - The film "Sangrador", Shakespeare’s Macbeth reincarnate in the Andean landscapes of Venezuela, is launching the national film season after years in which locally-made movies have barely made a showing on the country’s big screens.

"Sangrador" (Bleeder), a 90-minute feature filmed in black and white, has made the international tour of film festivals, making an impact in Tokyo, Venice, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Kolkata and Argentina’s Mar del Plata.

This film version of the play by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is the third for director Leonardo Henríquez, who made a name for himself with "Tierna es la noche" (Tender Is the Night, 1990) and "Tokio-Paraguiapoa" (1996).

Henríquez took his production team to the Andes of southwest Venezuela to film "Sangrador". Most of the actors came from the Rajatabla theatre troupe, the country’s leading Shakespearian company.

In the film, the story of Macbeth takes place in the early 20th century and the lead is the chief of a group of bandits, Maximiliano, played by Daniel Alvarado. Lady Macbeth, known here as Mileidi (pronounced like "m’lady"), is played by Karina Gómez.

The screenplay is the work of Henríquez himself, while Cesary Jaworski was in charge of camera and photography, Diego Rísquez responsible for art direction and Stefano Gramito for sound.

"Although the premise for making this film was to identify the aesthetic aspects of Macbeth, there were also aims of recuperating, vindicating and learning from Shakespeare’s perfect dramaturgy and confronting the challenge of translating it to Andean space and time," Henríquez said in an interview with IPS.

The director also wanted to see how far he could go "with a playwright so distant, so rooted in his era" and tear down the borders of language and historic complexities.

The story of Macbeth, said Henríquez, lends itself perfectly to a Latin American adaptation. "I think this desperate madman, this madman who commits blunders because of his quest for power, is capable of moving audiences."

With "Sangrador", the director inaugurates a trilogy, which continues with "El infierno perfecto" (The Inferno), by France’s Voltaire (1694-1778) and "The Country of the Blind", by England’s H.G. Wells (1866-1946).

The idea, says Henríquez, is to counter the fact that "Latin American film, and especially Venezuelan film, has suffered an overdose of reality" in the past three decades.

The premiere of "Sangrador", postponed several times since last year, follows the debut of just two Venezuelan films in 2002: "Borrón y cuenta nueva", by Henrique Lazo, and "La pluma del arcángel", by Luis Manzo.

"Una casa con vista al mar" (House with Sea View), by Alberto Arvelo, is the fourth film in the works, but it has yet to be shown in Venezuela despite making the rounds to several international film festivals.

The dearth of Venezuelan premieres is due primarily to the lack of financing, because almost all films made in this country rely on government backing, critic Simón Villamizar explained to IPS.

It is the exception to obtain enough funds from other sources to complete and distribute a film, he said.

When the Venezuelan state was flush with revenues from the oil boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, 10 to 15 feature films were made each year. But the local movie market is very small and very few films pay for themselves at the box office.

"The problem with Venezuelan film has always been sound quality. Directors therefore send their films abroad to complete the soundtrack, but that costs a lot of money. And by the time they reach that stage the funds from the National Cinematography Centre have run out," explained Villamizar.

With the financial situation as it is, "Venezuelan film is not an industry, it is a handicraft," commented the critic.

What makes "Sangrador" particularly attractive, however, is its setting, filmed in Mérida state, some 600 km southwest of Caracas, which established itself as the scenario of the Venezuelan industry since the founding of the film school there in 1968.

Macbeth is not just a classic of the stage, but also of the big screen, with acclaimed film versions of the play directed by such noteworthies as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski.