Like all emergent national cinemas, the Panamanian needs a set of foundational and comprehensive works, requires critics and historians to demarcate miracles and hierarchies, requires cultural and institutional support to stimulate the existence of works that define something as intangible as the "Panamanian", and illustrate what it means to inhabit the isthmus and the possible cinematographic responses to the eternal questions of who we are and where we are going. "La estación seca" (The Dry Season), which was shot between 2006 and 2008, and recently premiered in festivals, gives a decisive and surprising response to many different aesthetic and conceptual summaries, for it is a key movie as idiosyncratic portrait, gentle and symbolic docu-fiction experiment, and cinéma vérité set many light years apart of the televised pro-government strabismus, a love letter to what deserves to be saved in a country, as in many other territories in this 21st century, where the drought of opportunities for youth, art and beauty has prolonged too long.
It is possible that the above statement seems excessive to some viewers, perhaps confused by the native, almost folkloric machismo that the film exposes, or the colloquialism and relaxed tone of a funny "work in progress." Some may even be blinded by the meticulous self-referentiality of the three protagonists and their mentor (José Ángel Canto, Wladímir Uliantzeff and Edgar Soberón Torchia play alter egos very close to their personal biographies) and think that it is a little more than a joke between friends. It is probable that some may get dizzy by the doubtful nomadism of some of its young protagonists, but "The Dry Season" talks about beauty and its peremptory erosion; it speaks about young persons full of talent, strength and potential that find no space to participate in the construction of the nation and the design of the future. And, in the final analysis, the film also discusses the inability of our countries (Latin American, underdeveloped Third World) to accumulate experiences, stand on our feet and walk firmly with a defined course in cultural, artistic and also economic and political terms.
So, the title "The Dry Season" epitomizes the will of the filmmakers (director, screenwriter, photographer and editor) to capture snapshots of a reality in a trance. Although it should be noted that, luckily, the political and social questions are not thrown like slaps to the viewer, but they are subtly intercalated in a narrative built from the experiences and dialogues of these three young people: a recently graduated filmmaker, a tour guide and his sister, who was a surf champion and now is unemployed, seduced, pregnant and abandoned. Besides these, there are three characters that contribute to the conceptual density of the project: first, there is Omar, the mentor who shares a house with the other protagonists and who seems to represent a sort of gnoseological guide that young people need, although not even they know; the character played by Edgar Soberón embodies the intellectual coherence, the wisdom that is known to be threatened by the proximity of death and, therefore, has the disposition to tell the truth because he feels like it, openly, honestly, without any taboos.
There is also the indigenous Iguandili, a friend of Omar, who confers a curious historical-anthropological background to the film, and Tita, the grandmother of the young filmmaker, who is a painter and therefore justifies being the only character surrounded by colorful elements in the whole movie, conceived in black and white. She does not say a single word throughout 55 minutes of footage, constantly absorbed in her paintings, in the contemplation of the ugliness and disintegration of the environment. For her persistence and expressive silences, for her breakup with contingency and because of the suggestive colors that enhance her presence in the frame, the grandmother could represent nothing less than the beauty and freedom that we all inherit, these two conditions that disregard opportunistic sanity, accounts and contracts, and that only ask to breathe and kindly cohabitate with us. The characters of the grandmother and Omar are complementary, just as freedom and knowledge are complemented by beauty.
Now that Panamanian growing industry is focused on taking advantage of the Law of Cinema and state funds for audiovisual promotion, it is time to recognize the foundational and illuminating character of "The Dry Season", an honest, pleasant and beautiful film, that is able to update the cinema of this nation, reconciling the obsessions of modernity (attention to the social and political context, great stories of national relevance, breakup with tradition based on the principles of originality and novelty) with the imperatives of post-postmodernism, in terms of hedonism and atomization, adventitious rhizome and inclusive relativity.
The director, co-writer, producer and actor José Ángel Canto, together with co-writer, executive producer and also actor Édgar Soberón Torchia, and the leading actor and co-writer Wladímir Uliantzeff display the lucidity and enthusiasm of the pioneers when it comes to offering a definite vision of the world that asks existential questions and plays with the chronicle of the absurd. The three of them, helped by Jeico Castro Ferrari's beautiful cinematography and Aldo Rey Valderrama's just film editing for the fragmented story, rediscovered the art of filling each shot significantly, always taking into account the visual possibilities of the medium and the indelible intention to relate faces and landscapes, psychologies and contexts, so that "The Dry Season" becomes nothing more and nothing less than a cornerstone of Panamanian visual memory, since the national reality is seen through its most characteristic images.
It is possible that the above statement seems excessive to some viewers, perhaps confused by the native, almost folkloric machismo that the film exposes, or the colloquialism and relaxed tone of a funny "work in progress." Some may even be blinded by the meticulous self-referentiality of the three protagonists and their mentor (José Ángel Canto, Wladímir Uliantzeff and Edgar Soberón Torchia play alter egos very close to their personal biographies) and think that it is a little more than a joke between friends. It is probable that some may get dizzy by the doubtful nomadism of some of its young protagonists, but "The Dry Season" talks about beauty and its peremptory erosion; it speaks about young persons full of talent, strength and potential that find no space to participate in the construction of the nation and the design of the future. And, in the final analysis, the film also discusses the inability of our countries (Latin American, underdeveloped Third World) to accumulate experiences, stand on our feet and walk firmly with a defined course in cultural, artistic and also economic and political terms.
So, the title "The Dry Season" epitomizes the will of the filmmakers (director, screenwriter, photographer and editor) to capture snapshots of a reality in a trance. Although it should be noted that, luckily, the political and social questions are not thrown like slaps to the viewer, but they are subtly intercalated in a narrative built from the experiences and dialogues of these three young people: a recently graduated filmmaker, a tour guide and his sister, who was a surf champion and now is unemployed, seduced, pregnant and abandoned. Besides these, there are three characters that contribute to the conceptual density of the project: first, there is Omar, the mentor who shares a house with the other protagonists and who seems to represent a sort of gnoseological guide that young people need, although not even they know; the character played by Edgar Soberón embodies the intellectual coherence, the wisdom that is known to be threatened by the proximity of death and, therefore, has the disposition to tell the truth because he feels like it, openly, honestly, without any taboos.
There is also the indigenous Iguandili, a friend of Omar, who confers a curious historical-anthropological background to the film, and Tita, the grandmother of the young filmmaker, who is a painter and therefore justifies being the only character surrounded by colorful elements in the whole movie, conceived in black and white. She does not say a single word throughout 55 minutes of footage, constantly absorbed in her paintings, in the contemplation of the ugliness and disintegration of the environment. For her persistence and expressive silences, for her breakup with contingency and because of the suggestive colors that enhance her presence in the frame, the grandmother could represent nothing less than the beauty and freedom that we all inherit, these two conditions that disregard opportunistic sanity, accounts and contracts, and that only ask to breathe and kindly cohabitate with us. The characters of the grandmother and Omar are complementary, just as freedom and knowledge are complemented by beauty.
Now that Panamanian growing industry is focused on taking advantage of the Law of Cinema and state funds for audiovisual promotion, it is time to recognize the foundational and illuminating character of "The Dry Season", an honest, pleasant and beautiful film, that is able to update the cinema of this nation, reconciling the obsessions of modernity (attention to the social and political context, great stories of national relevance, breakup with tradition based on the principles of originality and novelty) with the imperatives of post-postmodernism, in terms of hedonism and atomization, adventitious rhizome and inclusive relativity.
The director, co-writer, producer and actor José Ángel Canto, together with co-writer, executive producer and also actor Édgar Soberón Torchia, and the leading actor and co-writer Wladímir Uliantzeff display the lucidity and enthusiasm of the pioneers when it comes to offering a definite vision of the world that asks existential questions and plays with the chronicle of the absurd. The three of them, helped by Jeico Castro Ferrari's beautiful cinematography and Aldo Rey Valderrama's just film editing for the fragmented story, rediscovered the art of filling each shot significantly, always taking into account the visual possibilities of the medium and the indelible intention to relate faces and landscapes, psychologies and contexts, so that "The Dry Season" becomes nothing more and nothing less than a cornerstone of Panamanian visual memory, since the national reality is seen through its most characteristic images.