Jorge Sanjinés
Encyclopedia
Jorge Sanjinés is a Bolivian film director and screenwriter. He founded the production group Groupo Ukamau. He won the ALBA Prize for Arts in 2009.

Film career

Jorge Sanjinés is known for his Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 agenda, bringing highly political films of a revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...

ary aesthetic to peasant and working-class audiences in the Andean
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...

 highlands. The films that characterized the 'New Latin American Cinema' or Third Cinema
Third Cinema
Third Cinema is a Latin American film movement that started in the 1960s-70s which decries neocolonialism, the capitalist system, and the Hollywood model of cinema as mere entertainment to make money...

 provided an alternative to First (Capitalist) Cinema, making the social collective act as the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

s of these films rather than an individual hero.

The 1969 film Yawar Mallku by Sanjinés reveals the story of the undisclosed sterilization of Andean Indian women by a "Progress Corps" (standing in for the American Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...

) clinic. This film is thought to have led to the expulsion of the Peace Corps from Bolivia in an act of anti-imperialist cultural nationalism
Cultural nationalism
Cultural nationalism is a form of nationalism in which the nation is defined by a shared culture. It is an intermediate position between ethnic nationalism on one hand and liberal nationalism on the other....

 by the indigenous people.

After showings of Yawar Mallku, Sanjinés learned that many peasants had criticism about the difficulty of his films due to the use of flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...

 for narration, as his film-making was greatly influenced by European art cinema
Art film
An art film is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience...

, and about the lack of attention to denouncing the causes of the indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

' issues. He took this into account when making his next film, called El coraje del pueblo (The Courage of the People), in 1971. El coraje del pueblo worked with untrained actors, many of them peasants themselves. This marked the beginning of a stage in Sanjinés's career characterized by filming "with the people."

His next film, El enemigo principal (1973) explores the effects of U.S. imperialism through the relationship between wealthy landowners and the indigenous peasant population.

Jorge Sanjinés worked under strained film-making conditions, with limited funding, few production facilities, and little Bolivian movie tradition to draw upon. Although well-known, Sanjinés is controversial due to the leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 political nature of his films.

Feature films

  • Ukamau, or And So It Is (1966)
  • Yawar Mallku, or Blood of the Condor (1969)
  • El coraje del pueblo, or The Courage of the People (1971)
  • Jatum auka (1973)
  • El enemigo principal, or The Principal Enemy (1973)
  • Fuera de aquí, or Get out of Here! (1976)
  • Llocsi caimanta (1977)
  • Las banderas del amanecer (1983)
  • La nación clandestina (1989)
  • Para recibir el canto de los pájaros (1995)
  • Los hijos del último jardín (2004)
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