Sanjinés, Jorge

(1936– )

   Bolivian filmmaker, screenwriter, and theorist. A noted practitioner of the nuevo cine latinoamericano (New Latin American cinema) along with Glauber Rocha of Brazil, Miguel Littín of Chile, and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea of Cuba, among others. Jorge Sanjinés is perhaps Bolivia’s best-known film director. As a teenager, he accompanied his father into political exile in Peru, where he developed a passion for film. In an interview, the filmmaker remembered with “infinite nostalgia my days as a cinema buff and impertinent spectator in the beautiful city of Lima” in the 1950s. A few years later, between 1957 and 1960, he would study film at the Universidad Católica in neighboring Chile. His first steps as a filmmaker back in La Paz brought him into contact with Óscar Soria, Antonio Eguino, and other young Bolivians with whom he would found Grupo Ukamau, a radical film collective. Soria and Eguino would collaborate in Sanjinés’s first film, Ukamau / ¡Así es! (1966). The first movie filmed in Bolivia with a bilingual Aymara and Spanish soundtrack, it tells the story of the murder and rape of an indigenous woman and of her husband’s revenge. The movie, made under the auspices of the Instituto Cinematográfico Boliviano, of which Sanjinés was then director, was controversial and reportedly led to Sanjinés’s firing. Ukamu is hailed as a visionary example of the politically committed cinema for which its director would soon be known throughout Latin America.

   Sanjinés’s collaboration with his colleagues of Grupo Ukamau-named after the film—would result in other memorable films in which Óscar Soria would also collaborate in the script and Antonio Eguino would be director of photography. Among these are Yawar Malku / La sangre del condor (1969, Yawar Malku / The Blood of the Condor) and El coraje del pueblo (1971, The Courage of the People, distributed in the United States as The Night of San Juan). The former, filmed in Quechua and Spanish, detailed the exploitation of the indigenous people of Bolivia, symbolized by a campaign to sterilize indigenous women without their consent, a campaign conducted under the guise of maternity clinics operated by the Peace Corps. The film was the first in a series of “dramatic reenactments” the director would deploy to critical acclaim, as was his next film, El coraje del pueblo, the first Bolivian exposé of an incident that first attracted the director’s attention as a small blurb in a La Paz newspaper and that would be known as the Massacre of San Juan. Using nonactors—survivors of the attack by army troops on striking miners in the mining camp Siglo XX in 1967—Sanjinés charged the Bolivian government with a campaign of intimidation and murder that culminated in the incident of 24 June 1967. The political activist Domitila Barrios de Chungara would also describe the incident in her testimonial narrative. Following the coup of General Hugo Banzer Suárez in 1971, Sanjinés went into exile in Peru and would not return to Bolivia until 1979. El coraje del pueblo would not be shown in Bolivia until 1978. A few years after his return from exile, Sanjinés filmed the documentary Las banderas del amanecer (codirected with Beatriz Palacios). It details the tumultuous years that saw the end of the Banzer Suárez regime.

   A lifelong Marxist, Sanjinés has been hailed for his use of film as a way to counter historical amnesia in his country. Influenced by the Italian neorealist films, as exemplified by his casting of nonactors, and the Soviet tradition of filmmaking, most notably in his work with the Grupo Ukamau, Sanjinés is also a respected film theorist. His book, Teoría y práctica de un cine junto al pueblo (1978, translated rather awkwardly in 1989 as Theory and Practice of a Cinema with People) details the collective’s approach to filmmaking. At a time and place where filmmakers were beset with production difficulties and economic pitfalls, Sanjinés is distinguished by the uniquely Latin American perspective he brought to his films, particularly in his exploration of Bolivia’s indigenous identity and his transcending the obstacles that beset many of his colleagues. He has been the recipient of many international awards and the Premio Nacional de Cultura (National Prize of Culture) of Bolivia. In January 2009 Jorge Sanjinés was designated a trustee of the Fundación Cultural del Banco Central (Cultural Foundation of the Central Bank), the leading body responsible for all museums and archives in Bolivia.