Pablo Álvarez Mesa
LA LAGUNA DEL SOLDADO / THE SOLDIER’S LAGOON
Colombia, Canada 2024, 76’
Retracing Simón Bolívar’s journey of 200 years ago, this profoundly sad 16mm film traverses the páramo region, an inhospitable and mythical landscape high in the Eastern Colombian Cordillera, which ‘the Liberator’ crossed with his army in a daring military strategy. Embracing the páramo’s subtle but expressive natural rhythms, the film poetically explores intersecting socio-historical legacies of Bolívar’s Liberation Campaign and environmental perspectives of the páramo’s unique wetland ecosystem (“We can't speak of the environment without including colonial violence. Historical violence,” says one character.) Alvarez-Mesa interweaves political events and the environments that host and participate in them revealing the current socio-political tensions embedded in the territory, al the while generating an almost hallucinatory, hypnotic movie.
Pablo Alvarez-Mesa (Colombia 1980) is a filmmaker, cinematographer and editor working mainly in nonfiction whose films have played and earned awards at international film festivals including Berlinale, IFFR, Viennale, MoMA, Visions du Reel, and RIDM. Pablo is Sundance Doc Fund grantee, an affiliate member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University, and a Berlinale Talents, Banff Centre for the Arts and Canadian Film Centre alumnus. La Laguna del Soldado is the second in a three-part series (following Bicentenario) to explore Simón Bolívar’s journey during the Liberation Campaign of Colombia in 1819.
Director, Producer, Editing, Cinematography
Pablo Álvarez Mesa
Sound recording, Production Assistant
Erin Elizabeth Ryan
Sound Editing
Alex Lane
Pablo Álvarez Mesa
Sound Mix
Alex Lane
Percussion
Stefan Schneider
Recording Engineer
Michael Feuerstack
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