. . . . . . . . . Evaluation of an Experience

I occasionally hear about other filmmakers who, years later and in relatively distant countries, have developed an approach similar to the one we evolved at the Escuela Documental de Santa Fe. A relatively recent example would be the work of the Colombian documentarist Marta Rodriguez and Jorge Silva. If our experiences parallel each other, the links need not be direct ones. I believe that, on the one hand, the need to confront one's national reality and, on the other,
the scarcity of resources endemic to politically committed filmmaking in Latin America, mean the basically unrelated experiences converge in necessity. Our efforts in Santa Fe grew out of real and vital necessity. Ours was a pilot experience that later took wings throughout the continent, not because of the creative impulse of a single individual but because of the needs and imperatives of a social, political, and historical reality that was bound to find many spokespeople.

There are basically two kinds of filmmakers: one invents an imaginary reality;
the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, analyze it, criticize it, judge it, and, finally, translate it into film. In the latter time, that is, by history and geography. The New Latin American Cinema movement, as it has evolved and spread over the length and breadth of Latin America during the past twenty years, has somehow justified those of us who decided so many years ago to seek out our own national reality and try to communicate it. Not to invent it, but to re-invent it: to interpret and transform it.

This First International Festival of New Latin American Cinema here in Havana has given us the opportunity to survey and evaluate the work of the past decade. We stand now on a summit from which we can also make out some of the contours that lie ahead. I believe that the time is ripe for renewal because the only true revolution is a permanent revolution.

From: Burton, Julianne. Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, (1986): 2-11. [Used with permission]