Innocence lost

Sebastián Parra R: 'This film is an invitation for a dialogue about the lost innocence in Latin America to spread' Photo: Courtesy of POFF

Sebastián Parra R’s debut, Seed Of The Desert is set in a near-future Colombia, where youngsters run gasoline to get by and where the teenager Chelina (Maria Ibarra Peña) has just discovered she is pregnant by her boyfriend Caviche (Sebastian Damian). It’s not a situation that bodes well, thanks to the threat posed by her violent father. In a bid to get the money for an abortion the pair agree to make a dangerous gasoline run for gang leader Callo-Callo (Andres Agreshot) - who is even younger than they are. The film, which premiered at Tallinn Film Festival , has shades of the Mad Max films about it, but although there’s a fable element to the film, Parra R says he drew on what he had seen around him when writing it.

“I was in the south of La Guajira. And when I was at school with my family friends, I was aware they had something that I didn't have - more open eyes.”

He explains, for example, that they were aware a classmate was pregnant when he hadn’t realised. He says: “That made me aware they weren’t innocent. Children younger than me were already doing things that older people would do.”

He adds: “As I grew up I went to recess with my classmates and I saw friends talk about how they had abortions or how girls, 13-year-olds, said they had relationships with men between 26 and 30, and that was the fashion at that time - to have a motorcycle to go to school to pick up children, and it is like a culture.

Sebastián Parra R Photo: Courtesy of POFF

“And for me that was super shocking because, well, my knowledge of what it was like to be a child was to be simply innocent and that didn't happen. I started to grow up and I started to investigate and I realised that it is much worse than I thought. So that motivated me to tell that collection of stories from friends and family, to talk about the loss of innocence and talk about how that no longer exists, or at least in these places it doesn't.”

When it came to references, the director says that the first was Luis Buñuel’s tale of juvenile delinquency, The Lost And The Damned (Los Olvidados).

He explains: “Mainly because of the philosophical aspect of wanting to bring to the screen all those faces or people who are from the place and who suffer those things.When I saw his first film, I regretted two things: first, seeing it at home and not in a cinema, and second, seeing it with, let's say, a closed heart, and I say so closed because I had already written the script.

“I saw that film and I said, ‘Okay. He already told something similar to what I want to tell because, as you can see, literally a child who dreams about going to war, but when he does he realises that everything is not as he imagined and in a matter of two narrative weeks the child loses his innocence and looks exactly like an 80-year-old man.”

He adds that he had a third “philosophical inspiration” was a text by Brazilian director Glabuer Rocha called Estética del hambre (The Aesthetics Of Hunger).

He explains: “This is a political artistic manifesto, which in a few words talks about the fact that wherever there is a Latin American artist who wants to talk about his surroundings,telling his pains without any fear of being judged and without any need to change or modify it for an external view, there will be a seed of New Latin American Cinema. What we want to do with our film is to be an inspiration for more voices with stories, much better and infinitely more talented directors, who are doing very different things. In other words, this film is an invitation for a dialogue about the lost innocence in Latin America to spread.”

The director cast local non-professional actors from the region, looking at 2,000 profiles to select those he wanted. He also adds that he wanted to retain a documentary note to the action.

“All of them are people from the region, who know these scourges and who have lived these things. Do they know the scourges that things have lived? Let's say, they are aware that the story we want to tell hurts them, but at the same time, let's say, they can represent it.”

Speaking about the young star Agreshot - who plays gang leader Callo-Callo - he says: “His references for how to be a human being come from television. His reference was Michael Jackson, but he was also Pablo Escobar from soap operas. So I was like, ‘Okay, how can a person who is so contaminated by what comes from television, be like that?’ And it is because it is a shell to protect himself from that reality in which there is no innocence and well, it was really very conflicting because a story arrives that you write and imagine filming and then it really happens. They were very strong emotional blows, because there comes a point where the fiction that one writes is a reality. You need a commitment that you don’t have with bigger stories.”

Parra R adds that though the film is set in an unnamed Latin American country, it could be anywhere. “It is precisely what my grandfather, who was like a storyteller, told my father, who was a documentary maker - when I told them that I wanted to make films, they told me to think about it locally, because the stories that your backyard tells are universal.”

In terms of the budget, Parra R makes a virtue of his limitations, bringing the camera tight to his characters and relying on the audience’s imaginations to make the leap. Parra R talks about his mento, Greek director Spiros Stathoulopoulos, who encouraged a group of young filmmakers to make a feature called Anthropos.

He says: “He gave us 10 obstacles, saying ‘I want you to make a film in which each one tells a segment of human life with the following abstractions: 1. Sequence shot (long takes); 2. Natural light. 3. No dialogue; 4. No music; 5…’ Let's say that it was a series of obstacles that motivated creativity. What happens”

Sebastián Parra R: 'The intention to leave little gaps between moments for the audience to fill in and give it your own shape' Photo: Courtesy of POFF

He adds: “Our story is a love story of a couple who is facing a trip and they have problems. That's super basic. What happens? The camera is a witness to what is happening and the film is an invitation to come with us and see what happens. Come with us to listen and imagine things. The literal violence that he father exercises against her isn’t shown. It's also why, in this film there’s not a single kiss shown between the protagonists. Mainly that’s because we don’t have to see it but also we took the decision to tell this movie like this so that we accompany the couple on their trip as if we were a third passenger who is in the car.

“That is to say, if the camera is in the car it stays in the car and does not come out. We want to go out to see what is happening, yes, but we keep you like a passenger. So that’s a kind of philosophical obstruction we wanted to put in the film.

“That was our intention from the beginning. We have such a big space to show things, let's give ourselves permission to show the things that matter most in a small way, imagine what can happen, for example, two feet stop moving, something happened. So that was the intention to leave little gaps between moments for the audience to fill in and give it your own shape. To give it, with all due respect, their own evil, their own prejudice, their own imagination, not always benevolent.”

Parra R intends to continue making films in “exactly this same universe” but with other characters and different problems. He says the intention is that the conversation about the loss of innocence in LAtin America “will extend”.

His next film, whose working title is Glaucoma, is “still a love story, but no longer between a couple, but between an old man and his grandson and seeing how within this place all these problems occur. It’s about love but injured love, a different love within these places”.

So it is exactly the same love. But a hurt love, a different love within these places. So that is what I can tell you a little about the next film? Thank you very much.