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Title: The Art and Politics of Bolivian Cinema by Jose Sanchez-H ISBN: 0-8108-3625-4 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield (Non NBN) Pub. Date: 28 August, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $55.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Surviving camera
Comment: Especially interested in the forgotten work of ethnographic filmmaker Jorge Ruiz, I came across this book. Jorge Ruiz can be considered 'the father of Bolivian cinema'. Even the work of internationally acclaimed Bolivian featurefilm director Jorge Sanjines, another master of Bolivian cinema, is rooted in Ruiz' work. The book puts life and work of Jorge Ruiz in context with time and place. Jorge Ruiz directed several ethnographic films. All of them are made in the tradtion of John Grierson, Robert Flaherty, Williard van Dyke, Jean Rouch and Dutch directors Herman van der Horst, Bert Haanstra and Joris Ivens. Carefully composed and lighted images. Strongly crafted out of a natural need to use film as a tool. To make the storytelling function and speak for itself to an audience. Jorge Ruiz, who studied engineering, came to filmmaking in the era of agricultural reforms. His filmcraft emerged from the need to communicate agricultural techniques to farmers. Shaped over the years by the experience of making many fims, he developped himselves into a real cinema-master. He explored his senstivity to the world, inhabited by people. His poetic observations of human life. His skillfull mastery over storytelling and cinematographic techniques. All born, as the book states, out of a need to free himself from surpression. Both as human being and as filmmaker, artist, poet. And in the great tradition of John Grierson and Robert Flaherty he freed the audience from the complete monopoly and total exploitation by narrow minded commercial cinema. Resulting in wonderfull films that speak for their selves.

The truth of the matter is that Bolivian society has not changed a bit since then. Corruption is still part of every day life and Bolivian cinema is allmost nonfunctioning. It is in this context, of political frustrations and headwind, that the works from the Bolivian filmmakers, and to my opinion, foremost that of Jorge Ruiz, grew and remains. Out of a strong need from cinema-audience: that for a clear, honest, visual storytelling. Possibly these filmmakers have been unable to change the world. But they did what they could and a filmmaker should do. Make films. Portray human beings in their natural environment. The films show a highly developped sensitivety of the eye and mind. An awareness for the story of life.

Now Guillermo Ruiz is stepping in the footsteps of his father Jorge. Making a career as a cinematographer. Trained by his father and educated in the USA by Oswald Morris and Vilmos Zsigmund. He worked for, among others, Jorge Sanjines. The seed of tradition has found new forms to grow and survive. A wonderfully crafted book.

Rating: 5
Summary: Variety International Film Guide 2001
Comment: Three unusual areas of film history at last receive their due. The Art and Politics of Bolivian Cinema, by Jose Sanchez-H. (Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland) places this Latin American nation's films in a historical and sociological context, and features interviews with some of the leading directors, above all Sanjines.

Rating: 5
Summary: The Art and Politics of Bolivian Cinema
Comment: "...a valuable contribution to the still slim bibliography on Bolivian Cinema...a vivid and total mosaic of the history of Bolivian Cinema."-From the introduction by Jorge Ruiz, Bolivian Filmmaker

Other Reviews:

"Detailed information, not available elsewhere in English, fills the book, making it a major resource..."-FILM QUARTELY

"...a very comprehensive history based not only on sound research, but also on interviews with Bolivia's most significant filmmakers..a very valuable tool for students and scholars of film and Latin American culture."-BRITISH BULLETIN OF PUBLICATIONS ON LATIN AMERICA