Movie-Making Without Borders

Walter Salles, in 1996 a little-known young director from Brazil, was scrounging to raise money to begin filming a small movie about an orphan and a bitter older woman who become unlikely friends. The script was in Portuguese, but he figured he would send it to the Sundance Institute anyway; maybe somebody would read it and help him get his modest little movie off the ground.

Somebody at Sundance did help--translating his script to English, giving him a $300,000 start-up prize and continuing support from the institute’s screenplay advisors. Two years later, his “Central Station” was nominated for best foreign-language film at the Academy Awards. It grossed $5.6 million in U.S. theaters, not at all bad for a low-budget foreign movie.

“Can you imagine pitching this story? ‘This is about an old, bad-tempered woman and this boy who seeks desperately to find his father . . . ‘ to these MBAs [in charge of studio production] who don’t even know where South America is?” Salles asked. “You can imagine my reaction [to receiving the award], especially since I am of a certain pessimistic nature.”

But Salles is not the only Latin American filmmaker the institute has helped.

More famous for putting American independent film on the mainstream map, the Sundance festival has also become a crucial place for Latino filmmakers to present their movies. Beyond the annual festival, the institute holds producer conferences and screenwriting workshops and provides cash grants for filmmakers throughout Latin America, helping to nurture their native film industries and to discover new talent.

“They’ve been very instrumental in some projects and in launching the careers of several filmmakers,” said Marlene Dermer, co-founder of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. “The Sundance label is like a Good Housekeeping label, and it has helped these filmmakers go further.”

Peruse the list of commercial and critically successful films from Latin America over the last five years, and the influence of the Sundance Institute becomes obvious:

* Mexican director Antonio Serrano finished writing his first feature, “Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas” (Sex, Shame and Tears), at the 1995 Sundance Latin American workshop. Last year, “Sexo” became the highest-grossing Mexican film of all time; it is to be released in U.S. theaters next month.

* Novelist Maria Amparo Escandon wrote the script for “Santitos” at the 1995 workshop. The film was presented at the 1998 festival, where it won the Latin American cinema award. “Santitos” is to open Jan. 29 in U.S. theaters.

* “Strawberry and Chocolate,” the critically acclaimed Cuban film by the late director Tomas Gutierrez Alea, screened at the 1993 Sundance festival and was later “sponsored” by institute President Robert Redford to increase its visibility in the U.S.

There are many other examples ranging from documentaries to feature films from Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay that have been made with the support of the Sundance Institute.

This year, the festival will screen seven Latin American films, including “Herod’s Law” (“La Ley de Herodes”), which caused an uproar last year in Mexico when its theatrical release was derailed, some say, because of content. “Herod’s Law” is a dark comedy directed by Luis Estrada that chronicles the corruption and deceit of Mexico’s ruling party, the PRI, through the eyes of one of its functionaries in the late 1940s. The title is a play on the Mexican equivalent of Murphy’s Law, which says that everything that can go wrong, will.

Despite its emphasis on American movies, Sundance is an important North American venue for Latin American filmmakers. In 1988, long before Latino fever hit the U.S. market, Redford invited Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and director Gutierrez Alea to participate in festival panels.

Other festivals, like Cannes and Telluride, may have a more international focus, but the institute’s Latin American programs are unparalleled.

Sundance “is a good place to have the movies shown but not [necessarily] a good place to do business,” said Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which distributed “Central Station.” “What Sundance is trying to do is to give filmmakers with independent visions the tools to make their movies. . . . Their workshops are wonderful.”

In the late 1980s, when Redford traveled to Cuba for the Havana Film Festival, a common refrain among Latin American filmmakers was the need to develop the craft of screenwriting and producing. A few years later, Redford launched the Latin American Project.

The Sundance Institute also has programs for filmmakers in Japan and Europe, but the Latin American Project is the most developed and the longest running.

Partly funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Latin American Project began in Mexico six years ago. The program includes screenwriting workshops, which have expanded to Brazil. In addition, the institute is sponsoring conferences in South America, partly funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, at which would-be producers learn the art of raising money to make films.

Last year, the institute began an annual documentary workshop session in partnership with Cuba’s International Film School. The institute will also expand its Native American filmmaker workshop to include native people from South America and the Caribbean.

“We are hoping the workshops will serve as a bridge connecting U.S. Native Americans to the other Native Americans from the south,” said Patricia Boero, head of the institute’s Latin American Project.

Although the institute allocates $150,000 to its Latin American Project, each country is responsible for the local costs of the workshops and the conferences. This has spawned an independent financing movement in countries like Mexico and Brazil, where, traditionally, filmmakers relied completely on government backing.

The idea behind the Latin American writer’s workshops is not to impose an American view of movie-making. Rather, they allow novice writers to talk one-on-one with veteran filmmakers about writing movies.

“We are always very clear that the primary audience is their home market,” Boero said. “We want them to be authentic voices in their native language. ‘Central Station’ is a good example of that. It was a Brazilian movie with a universal theme.”

Sundance Institute sponsorship gives weight to the filmmakers back home when they are seeking financing and distribution. Generally speaking, native movies receive roughly 10% of screen time in their home countries because they are, like films everywhere, competing with Hollywood blockbusters, according to Boero.

And, as the saying goes, no one is a prophet in his or her own land.

“When it comes to these new voices, sometimes they need recognition abroad to get recognition at home,” Boero said.

When films like “Central Station,” “Santitos” and “Sexo” make money, it is easier to raise money for other productions. The success of these movies has in part helped spawn a rebirth of Latin American film, which for years had suffered from financial and creative setbacks.

The networking at Sundance has also helped form partnerships between American and Latin American filmmakers.

Director Tony Drazen (“Hurly Burly” and “Zebrahead”) attended the 1998 workshop in Brazil. At the seminar he met Marcos Bernstein, co-writer of “Central Station,” and the two are now working on a movie together.

Alexander Payne (“Election”) and Amparo Escandon became good friends at last year’s workshop in Brazil. Now Payne is an advisor to Escandon on her second screenplay, “Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co.,” which is to begin shooting in the fall.

Americans who attend say the workshops broaden their creative perspective.

American actor-director Vondie Curtis Hall said the Brazil workshop he attended last year influenced his writing for his next film, “It’s Deeper Than You Think,” in which he injected more metaphors and allegories--staples of Latin literature and film--than ever before.

“I really learned to think outside of the Hollywood box, narrative,” he said.

Payne was encouraged to find that “filmmakers are all so similar. I mean, we are all from the same spaceship; you just parachute in from different countries.”