From tomorrow until the 6th of March, Casa de América and the Embassy of Venezuela, in collaboration with the National Cinematheque of Venezuela, present the cycle Cine Patrimonial Venezolano, made up of five feature films and two short films, which mark the development of Venezuelan cinema since its beginnings.
This exhibition provides an opportunity to delve into the roots of the Venezuelan film industry, and reflects the influence of 20th century Mexican and Argentinean cinema. But, fundamentally, it reveals to the spectator how, through different themes and narrative proposals, there is a search for the elaboration of an aesthetic discourse of its own from the singularity of the local and at the same time the universal at the same time.
The selection of the films has been comidaried by the filmmaker John Petrizzelli, who will be in charge of presenting them on Wednesday the 7th, the date on which the cycle will be inaugurated. Petrizzelli is a journalist, screenwriter and film director with over thirty years of experience in the film industry. He has written and directed fiction films and documentaries that have won several international awards. He has also written the prose books Logical Black (1978), Stories for the Possibilities of Muscle (2017) and The Conjuring of the Thistles (2020).
The opening tomorrow at 7pm will be attended by Luis Prados, Director of Programming at Casa de América; Coromoto Godoy Calderón, Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and John Petrizzelli, filmmaker and curator of the cycle. The films programmed for this cycle, which will be screened at 7 p.m., are: Wednesday 7 February, A famous specialist pulling teeth at the Gran Hotel Europa (1897); Boys bathing in the Maracaibo lagoon (1897). La Venus de nácar (1932); Wednesday 14 February, La escalinata (1950); La balandra Isabel llegó esta tarde (1950); Wednesday 28 February, Araya (1959), and Wednesday 6 March, Caín adolescente (1959).
The screenings will take place in the Sala Iberia and admission is free until full capacity is reached (60 people on the 7th and 90 people on the rest of the days). Tickets will be distributed at the Information Point one hour before the screening begins.
