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EspañolActress Patricia Velasquez: Working in My Land, Venezuela, Is a Vital Need
WASHINGTON – Venezuelan actress Patricia Velasquez, who has made her career in the United States and lives in Los Angeles, feels it “a vital need” to make films in her own country, as she did with her last movie “Cenizas Eternas” (Eternal Ashes), which premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival.
“So many things are happening in our countries that I feel we must portray their idiosyncrasies, and movies are a great mode of expression,” Velasquez said on Saturday from Montreal, where Friday night her latest film premiered during the 35th Montreal World Film Festival.
“Cenizas Eternas” by Margarita Cadenas tells the story of Ana, a well-to-do Venezuelan who, in the 1950s, has an accident in the Amazon region. She survives, but her family and friends give her up for dead.
Ana must learn to live in an Indian community, until years later, when her daughter goes to the Amazon to look for her mother whom she could never lay to rest.
“My indigenous ancestry helped me understand all the spirituality of these communities, who live very close to us but whom we hardly know,” Velasquez said.
“It’s a movie that with be well liked in Venezuela because it speaks of our lands and our people. I also believe it will be successful in Europe, because they like movies like this and there is also a lot of interest in subjects related to indigenous peoples,” the actress said.
The film, which will premiere in Venezuela on Nov. 11, went over well with the Montreal audience Friday in its world premiere.
“All the movie-goers stayed for the questions-and-answers session, not one person left the theater, and that’s a very good sign,” Velasquez said.
The actress has two film projects scheduled for next year, one of them with her compatriot, the director Fina Torres.
The Montreal World Film Festival will show 383 movies from more than 70 countries, 50 of them from Spain and Latin America, to reclaim again this year its role as the springboard of independent films.
