Any migratory movement brings with it misunderstandings, cultural differences and uprootings; If there is a language barrier, the problems multiply. But what happens when those who emigrate have physiques worthy of being admired, even if it is with the coldness and distance of a sculpture?
That is, more or lessthe starter motor The Canona short film in which the Chilean Martín Seeger (Santiago de Chile, 1983) narrates the drama of the Haitian immigrants who arrived in his country in 2010, when the devastating earthquake occurred that left tens of thousands of dead and whose consequences The Caribbean nation still lives today.
“In Chile we had never had an Afro-descendant population; So, a kind of fascination was generated, in parallel with a kind of discrimination. You saw Haitian workers in construction doing precarious jobs that Chileans did not want to do; but, at the same time, with impressive bodies and physiques,” Seeger explains to EFE in Buenos Aires, where he presented his short film within the framework of the Independent Film Festival (Bafici).
The director, whose idea came from a story by the Venezuelan writer Leoncio Martínez, which he adapted to this drama within Chilean society, adds that “extreme marginality” is generated by the language barrier, which generated numerous adaptation problems. .
The protagonist is Jean, a Haitian migrant in Chile, an exemplary worker and model of classical beauty in an art school. He is also a perfect body for medicine, as he represents all the classical values of the academy. But in the anonymity and silence imposed by the lack of knowledge of the language he is a canon of marginality.
“The character does not understand Spanish to understand what the Academy is talking about regarding its aesthetic proportionality, the anatomical archetype that it represents,” says Seeger, who chooses a “distant and cold” staging to generate “a kind of contrast between tragedy and a certain black humor”, which escapes “the traditional emotion of empathy” in a case like this.
In this way, “the short tries to find an intermediate tone between discomfort and drama” and avoids, according to its creator, “making a judgment about what is good and what is bad.”
Inspired by the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki and the Swedish Roy Andersson for this narrative, Seeger looked for a Haitian immigrant to play his protagonist – who does not speak throughout the film – and found him in Camilus Berdouay, who went through situations similar to those reflected. onscreen.
“He identified a lot with the short. Apart from being handsome, giant, muscular, at the same time he works as a laborer, he has a lot of heavy lifting. “He suffered from this permanent admiration of the body and absolute oblivion of its reality,” asserts the creator of Piotr: A bad translationa feature film with which he was presented at the Bafici 2010 and which was shown at the Málaga Festival (Spain) 2011.
Of the 1.6 million foreigners residing in Chile, some 190,000 are Haitians – the fourth most populated community, after Venezuela, Peru and Colombia. But “failing to fit in” with their culture, Seeger says, many began searching for better conditions in other countries. Therefore, beyond Europe being a goal “that gives exposure,” he hopes that his short film will follow these migrants and make “a Latin American route.”
After going through an edition of Bafici marked by cuts in the cultural allocation of Javier Milei’s Executive, the Chilean filmmaker recognizes that the situation “is a tragedy” for the art world, because “Argentina has always been a very bright focus of policies publics that have allowed not only the industry to develop, but also an exploration of audiovisual language in an incredible way and that has had an impact throughout the world.”
He considers that this “impacts the entire region,” since “it is more difficult for Chile to aspire or set Argentina as a goal if it no longer exists,” says Seeger, who trusts that the Government of Gabriel Boric will increase the budget contribution. national dedicated to culture in Chile.