DOCUMENTARIES

DESCRIPTION

ALEJANDRO

Alejandro

Guillermo Escalón
El Salvador 1994, 110 minutes, 16mm
Productions B’alba and Productions Illimitées
(in Spanish with English subtitles)

Dreams and realities of a pioneer of Salvadoran cinema. A critical salute.

"To simply dream of making films in El Salvador is already an absurdity! However..."

Alejandro Cotto is 63 years old, and the local youth of his village of Suchitoto, in El Salvador, a country emerging from the nightmare of civil war - celebrate his birthday.

Alejandro is a strange person. He is, and he feels that he can be, a great film director. Yet he only produced a few films in his life. He is a symbol of these many Third World artists who, faced with the impossibility of creating, invent a world of fantasy to escape from depression and sadness. Alejandro tells us about the highs and lows of his career, but also about his village, the war, his dreams. After all, it's necessary to be a great dreamer, to think one can make the 'classics of cinema' in a remote Central American village.

Through excerpts of his film work, we discover the wide variety of his interests, from extreme poverty in city slums to the fairy-tale kingdoms he imagines in his village. The grandiose beauty of Cotto's images are matched by his baroque, mannerist way of speaking.

At the same time, the film is a reflection of the history of cinema in El Salvador.

GUILLERMO ESCALON - Salvadoran born in Venezuela in 1950. Directed “La Zona Intertidal”, 16mm, 20 mins. 1980; “La Decisión de Vencer”, 16mm, 56 mins. 1981; “Carta de Morazán”, 16mm, 56 mins. 1982; “Tiempo de Audacia”, 16mm, 1983 (award-winning films at Bilbao, Oberhausen, Havanah, Leipzig and Moscow). From 1984 to 1997, director and cinematographer on several foreign documentaries.