Cinélatino: Marta Rodriguez and Camilo Torres, the reunion

Poster of the film by Marta Rodriguez and Fernando Restrepo. The documentary depicts an imaginary dialogue between Camilo Torres and Marta Rodriguez on political engagement, the role of the Church, armed struggle and its legitimacy. © https://martarodriguez.com.co/

Text by: Isabelle Le Gonidec

6 min

The Rencontres Cinélatino de Toulouse launched their 35th edition this weekend. And if there was a festival that had to host the latest film by the inevitable Colombian documentary filmmaker Marta Rodriguez, it is this one. The film brings the director into dialogue with Camilo Torres, assassinated in 1966, questioning political commitment, the use of violence and the role of the Church. It weaves a history of Colombia since the 1950s and takes stock of social struggles until the major demonstrations of 2021.

Advertising

Read more

From our special envoy in Toulouse,

Camillo Torres is still an iconic figure of social struggles in Colombia and throughout Latin America. It was in Europe, in Belgium where he studied sociology, that Camilo Torres became friends with the movement of worker-priests. He is the pupil of François Houtart, a figure of alterglobalism and one of the instigators of the movement of other Davos which will give birth to the first alterglobalist forum of Porto Alegre. Back in Colombia, Camilo Torres founded, with others, the first faculty of sociology in Latin America in Bogotá, where Marta Rodriguez also studied. She had already told us the importance of her meeting with the worker-priest and sociologist. In 1966, considering that there was no possible legal way in Colombia to oppose the political and social violence of the government, Camilo Torres joined the ELN guerrillas. He was killed during his first armed engagement and his body was never found.

Marta Rodriguez and Fernando Restrepo's film is built on alternating sequences from archive or newsreels – we recognize Chircales, Marta Rodriguez and Jorge Silva's first documentary on the brickmakers of Bogotá – and an imagined dialogue between Marta and "Camilo". Many photos and press clippings of the Frente Unido movement, intended to rally the left, of which Camilo Torres participated in the creation, also illustrate the point.

"Camilo Torres Restrepo, el amor eficaz", a doucmentary by Marta Rodriguez and Fernando Restrepo, presented at the Rencontres Cinélatino in Toulouse. On Marta's desk, photos and press clippings illustrate the life of the committed priest. © Cinelatino 2023

Filmed in front of the camera, often in black and white, Marta questions "Camilo", a presence imagined in voice-over, about her commitment to the people – but what is the people?, she asks – and about her choice to engage in armed struggle. Is this the only "effective love", the only way to make a concrete commitment to the poorest?

► Read also: Marta Rodriguez, "effective love", at the Forum des images

«

I took a direction I didn't master Camilo confesses. "Haven't you been too utopian?" asks Marta, recalling the euphoria aroused by the Cuban revolution in the 1960s in the Latin American left. Behind her, a poster like "wanted" in American westerns: we seek Jesus Christ, for subversion and conspiracy against the established order. Physical characteristic: dressed poorly... An image that clashes with those of Pope Paul VI's trip to Colombia in 1968. Let us not waste time discussing whether the soul is immortal, when hunger is mortal, proclaimed Camilo Torres. Or: "He who is not a revolutionary is in a state of mortal sin," he joked.

Is violence legitimate?

But what good is this sacrifice of your life if the violence has not stopped in Colombia, insists Marta. It is necessary to think about the limits of violent action to obtain political change, says the director who accuses Camilo of having abandoned the Frente Unido for armed struggle. "You were with the 'chircales' (brickmakers) handling the shovel when I met you," she reminds him. But books and analyses of sociology are not enough to reverse the situation, replies Camilo Torres.

The documentary "Les Briquetiers" on child labour in Colombia is the first film by Marta Rodriguez and Jorge Silva. DR

Other people committed to his side are summoned. The film features images of Eduardo Umaña Luna, a sociologist and intellectual figure whose book La violencia en Colombia (1962) is often invoked. His son, a lawyer and rights defender, was murdered in 1998. We also hear Mario Calderon, former priest, talk about his commitment in the field, and on the second part of the split image, we attend his funeral. Mario Calderon was also assassinated by paramilitaries in 1997.

Is the choice of weapons by the guerrillas to defend the poorest legitimate? Javier Giraldo M, Jesuit and member of the Historical Commission of the Conflict, invokes St. Thomas Aquinas who theorized the legitimate use of violence when all other options to improve the lot of the population were exhausted. But drug trafficking has corrupted the ideals of guerrilla warfare as it has corrupted the entire Colombian society: what is the point of studying to have a decent life if drug trafficking can make you a millionaire? Similarly, the peace agreement negotiated between the FARC and the Santos government is an illusion, regrets Javier Giraldo M. It has not resolved any of the knots of the Colombian conflict: the issues of land, democracy, drugs and victims have not been resolved.

But the commitment and teaching of Camilo Torres did not die with him in 1966. Others, priests and laity, have raised the gauntlet and his legacy is claimed in many communities, such as the peace community of San José de Apartado, near the Panamanian border. Its struggle is also that of social leaders who still fall under the bullets of narcos or paramilitary groups, as recalled by these images of a march for peace organized in 2019 in Bogota. Or the major demonstrations of 2021, harshly repressed.

► Read also: In Cali, a "people's court" makes its recommendations after the riots of 2021

Was Camilo Torres a shooting star or a star that continues to shine and whose thought and commitment irrigate, still feed the political reflection in Colombia? For Marta Rodriguez, who has walked alongside him and defines herself as a "camillist", the answer is clearly yes. Moreover, this dialogue is also a way of questioning her own work and the trace that her cinematographic work, alongside Jorge Silva and Fernando Restrepo, will leave. I walk humbly in your footsteps, she admits.

► The Rencontres Cinélatino website

The 35th edition of the Cinélatino festival in Toulouse runs from March 24 to April 2, 2023. © Cinelatino 2023

Newsletter Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

Read on on the same topics:

• Colombia
• Cinema
• Culture
• France
• Religion
• Our selection