Ciro Guerra Director of Los Viajes del Viento

There is an important gap between La sombra del caminante and this new feature. What do you think are the constant features (if any) that you have kept from your fist experience as a filmmaker? I think both films are opposite but only in the superficial aspects: One is 100% urban, the other is 100% rural, one is black and white, the other in colour, one was shot in video, the other in Super 35mm, the first one was done without a penny, the new one had a large budget … But in what really matters, the two films have much in common. It’s the same voice that tells the story.

Where could you place Los viajes del viento in the context of recent film projects in Colombia? And if we talk about the rest of the region, do you think it is possible to imagine a new wave of Latin American cinema? I think films in Colombia are at a crossroads, in which you have only two options: to make light comedies or to talk about the national tragedy. We envisioned this movie as a search for another option, an option that allows us to explore this country in a deeper way, and all the extraordinary things that you can find there. I think it’s terrible that this is the first movie to be filmed in the Alta Guajira. It will be great if in the future other filmmakers could film La Guajira, Chocó or the Amazon river, the Orinoco river… This is an undiscovered country, there are thousands stories to tell and I do not mean only the geographical landscape, but a spiritual landscape, a human landscape. And I think that’s one way to enrich Colombian cinema. It is something that has occurred in many Latin American countries, but in Colombia is just starting.

Your film has strong visual qualities, which is rare in Latin American cinema. How was your work in terms of photography and art direction? 90% of the film was shot with natural daylight. Only the night scenes had artificial lighting, for obvious reasons. We wanted to be faithful to how we perceived the light from the Caribbean area, which is beautiful, alive and full of nuances that could be lost by including artificial lighting. So Paulo Perez, the director of photography, used very complex assemblies made with mirrors to gain all the natural light we could. From the beginning we knew that the movie would be filmed in widescreen 2.35:1. The visual concept of the film was to capture music as an expression of man’s relationship with nature. We did not want to do a tourist postcard, and we worked a lot on the script to give more poignancy to the human drama.

What were your references (in literature and film) for Los Viajes del Viento? I was inspired a lot by John Ford’s films, I wanted this movie to look like a crepuscular western, but with Caribbean light. I took a lot of references from Terrence Malick films, his way of filming the relationship between man and nature was my inspiration. Also Kurosawa, particularly Dersu Uzala and Ran, his use of widescreen is fascinating.

What shall we expect from you in the future? It all depends on how Los Viajes del Viento goes down with people. For Latin American filmmakers, to make a picture is a matter of life and death. We risk everything in our projects, although we know, the future is uncertain. I make each film as if it were the last one.

Enrique Vivar