Ola Uruguay Real Estate and Investments

In June, Uruguay’s two leading newspapers each published an article about a new film being made by young Uruguayan filmmaker, Juma Fodde. Recently, I interviewed Juma Fodde for Ola Uruguay.

SB – Hello Juma. Can you tell us a bit about yourself? How old are you? Where were you born and raised? And what’s your family background?

JF – I am twenty-eight. I was born in Montevideo, was moved to Canada for a year, then back to Montevideo where I spent my childhood until I was eighteen. At that time I moved to Canada again and spent four years there. In 2004, I moved back to Uruguay and I’ve been living here since.

I come from a working class home, where the arts were given an important place. My father is a retired plumber with a vast knowledge and interest in history and politics, and my mother had many jobs, yet always flirted with theater, painting, music, art restoration, etc. So those things were always part of our conversations at dinner, and my interest in them was always stimulated.

SB – How did you become interested in filmmaking?

JF – I come from the visual arts. When I was a kid I was good at drawing and I did it all the time. Perhaps it’s different now, but in the ‘80s and ‘90s in Uruguay, if you had a visual arts sensibility the obvious career choice was architecture, so that’s what I thought I wanted to do.

Then I got into the world of comics! What appealed to me was the association between drawings and narrative. But I needed something more; I needed music and acting, so I became interested in animation. Then, because I thought it could add something to my training in animation, I applied for a one-year scholarship in a little film school that offered a basic course in video and film. That’s when I finally understood that movies were made by people and that making movies was something I could do. After that it was all about cinema.

Yet, the love of film was always there. It was in naïve pictures of film sets (with the director, the lights, the cameramen; the whole deal!) that I’d draw when I was five or six years old. It was in the joy with which I’d catch every behind-the-scenes show (rare in those days) that would run on TV. It was nurtured on my grandfather’s lap where I would sit for hours watching one Saturday afternoon movie after another.

SB – I saw your first film. Can you tell us about it?

JF - The film you saw was not my first film; it was my fifth short film. I made my first film in Canada when I was 19 and it was called Nathan’s Muse.

The one you saw is called Los Señalados de Dios (God’s Branded Ones) and it’s an adaptation/fusion of two short stories by Horacio Quiroga (one of Uruguay’s greatest fiction writers). It tells the story of a man who, after being bitten by the deadly yarará snake, sails on his boat looking for help, until he is rescued by the Alves family—a family torn apart by disease and deep-running grudges, that will reveal for him the tragedy of its progeny.

It cost about US$1,500. It was shown in festivals in Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, Cuba, Belgium, and Italy. It won best actor for Sergio Gorfain in Florianopolis Audiovisual Mercosul (Brasil), best production in Montevideo’s Fantastic and Horror Film Festival, and it spent one week among Corto Web’s online film contest’s top ten, through the audience vote.

SB – Your new film is called Splendorous Garden Of The Heart. Can you tell us about the inspiration for this film and give a brief synopsis?

JF – It sprang from the desire to make a movie that could be shot and edited quickly and for no money and that would, in the end, leave me with a feature film under my belt without having to go through the whole process of looking for funds and sitting around waiting for some jury in Europe to give us their blessing (blessing meaning money in this case).

With this movie I’m trying to dig into and expose part of what happens in my subconscious as a young man facing imminent fatherhood—the fears, the anxieties, the worst case scenarios—and turn it into a nightmarish story of a rich and handsome advertising executive whose perfect life begins to fall apart when he comes into contact with a homeless woman who provides him with a powerful hallucinogenic beverage. Things become worse when he kidnaps and takes home the woman’s son, the horrible creature who produced the key element for this beverage. It is a romance picture that gradually becomes a horror picture.

SB – How’s the production going and when will it be completed?

JF – We began shooting on June 12^th and we want to have it all finished by the end of October, just in time for Halloween.

SB – What do you do with it then?

JF – It’ll be touring festivals for a while and hopefully will be in theaters in 2011.

SB – Tell us about the film industry in Uruguay.

JF – Nowadays getting into the business means borrowing a camera and shooting. Boom! You’re a filmmaker. Now, the trick is making a living as a filmmaker. I don’t know how difficult it is, I’ll tell you in a few months. I don’t know if any Uruguayan filmmaker can say he earns his bread exclusively by making movies.

The industry has been growing in quantity and quality, and fortunately, lately, in variety. The future looks promising. I feared our cinema was beginning to repeat and imitate itself, but fortunately that seems to be changing; there are many films scheduled for release that are different styles and genres, different visions.

SB – What do you see as your future as a filmmaker?

JF – I’m trying, I’m learning not to be concerned too much. It’s a waste of energy. Filmmaking can be grueling and destructive if you don’t enjoy every minute of your present.

SB – Thank you, Juma. Good luck with the rest of the work and we look forward to seeing the finished film.