Out of Competition

LA SIERRA



Scott Dalton, Margarita Martinez

Country of production: Columbia
Year: 2003/04
Language: Spanish
Mins: 86

Producers: Scott Dalton, Margarita Martinez
Cinematography: Scott Dalton
Editing: Andrew Blackwell

Source: Blackwell, Andrew
290 Willow Street
New Haven, CT 06511, USA
Tel: 203-710-6570
e-mail: Andrew.blackwell@mac.com


In La Sierra, a neighborhood of Medellín, Colombia, two factions are in a state of perpetual combat. The Bloque Metro, a right-wing paramilitary group, has been doing its best to keep the peace, but with tenuous success. The left-wing group of guerrillas, Cacique, threatens to wrestle control from them day by day. Their brutal power struggle, which leaves dead bodies in the streets, is shocking enough. But even more horrifying is that the combatants are barely over the age of twenty. The strife in Colombia's civil war has been growing for forty years, and has claimed more than 30,000 lives during the past decade alone. The film follows three young people over the course of the year and shows their experience of war, death and love. There’s the barrio's de facto mayor Edisón Flores, a 22-year-old leader of the Bloque Metro; Cielo Muñez, a teen mother widowed at the age of 15, and 19-year-old Jesús Martínez, a dutiful paramilitary soldier, who has adapted to life without the hand he lost to a grenade. Best Documentary, Miami International Film Festival.

Scott Dalton, photographer and filmmaker, has covered the conflict in Colombia for five years. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Newsweek and the Associated Press (AP).

Margarita Martinez, AP reporter in Bogota, covers Colombia's civil conflict, gangs, and negotiations. She was a Fulbright Scholar in journalism and international affairs at New York's Columbia University.

Filmography:

LA SIERRA (2004)

SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 2005 AT 7.15 PM. / CHOPIN THEATRE
SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2005 AT 5.00 PM. / BEVERLY ARTS CENTER