When we all wanted to be Nicaraguans

When I was a student, (back in the day) one of things I did at our Poly was to help set up a Film Society to show films you could not ordinarily see. Every Friday night at six pm before heading for the pub we devoured anything with sub-titles.

The films from Latin America where always among the most interesting and challenging I learned so much about so many different parts of the world by watching their cinema. I love the art of a good story teller and I always found the rhythm and grammar of their films so much more interesting than the Hollywood standard.

The films of Chile, Argentina, Brazil and of course Cuba where in our schedule. Then came the Sandinista Revolution an event which gripped our imagination, we still have the mugs and the faded tee-shirts with pictures of the man in the big hat on them, Augusto Cesar Sandino. The overthrow of the Samoza dictatorship and the David and Goliath struggle between the FSLN, known as the Sandanistas, against the Contras backed by the USA.

This was the very early eighties when Mrs Thatcher was in her pomp and we took great heart from the Nicaraguan struggle. In artistic terms it produced some great literature as well as a series of short documentaries which we showed to gain support for the solidarity campaign.

In more recent years the radical democratisation of Latin America politics has generated some stunning new movies. The smaller Central American nations have all been gripped by this new wave but face considerable problems in getting films made there are the usual problems of raising cash and getting films distributed but in many ways made worse by the lack of the necessary film making skills. The nearest film school is as you may expect in Cuba.

It was a real delight then when back in 2010 after twenty years of silence this wave hit Nicaragua when Florence Jaugey’s film La Yuma hit the screens. Amazingly this was the first feature film to be made in the country for all that time!

That film told the story of a young woman who dreamt of escaping her bleak life in the slums of Managua by becoming a boxer. There was an extraordinary performance by Alma Blanco as Yuma, her strength, astuteness and determination reflected the feelings of the adversity and inequality faced by Nicaraguans.

It was an instant success shown in many film festivals receiving the audience award at the San Francisco festival.

Florence Jaugey’s film allowed us the rare opportunity to get a glimpse of life in a country which has been through so much in recent years. Florence, originally from France, came to Nicaragua in 1984 to be the lead actress in the movie El Señor Presidente by the prolific Cuban director Manuael Octavio Gomez.

In 1989, together with her partner Frank Pineda a Nicaraguan film maker, (he was second camera on Ken Loach’s film Carla’s Song) they set up in Managua an independent film company, the Camila Films Production Company. La Yuma was well received and it has received numerous awards at Festivals across the world.

Now we have the chance to go to the UK Premier of her new film La pantalla desnuda (the naked screen). Filmed in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, this is the story of a couple who topically find their intimate relationship is made public on social media.
To say making these movies is tough is an understatement. It took Florence ten years to make La Yuma despite being an award wining short film director. Her new film has cost $500,000 scraped together from sponsors and crowd funding. They have to do all sorts of work to make ends meet including working on BBC’s Caribbean with Simon Reeve broadcast earlier in this year.
As I began many of us remember the importance of short films in the Nicaraguan revolution when INCINE, the Instituto Nicaragüense de Cine, was important and of which Frank Pineda was a founder member, making dozens of short documentaries about the revolution.
As Florence Jaugey says, “It was a time before the internet, and a way of showing to the outside world what was happening in Nicaragua – everybody wanted to film, and be Nicaraguans!”


Now you can help support this fantastic new endeavour in bringing the lives of the underdogs to the silver screen by treating yourself to an afternoon of Nicaraguan film. You can see the UK premier of La Pantalla Desnuda / “The Naked Screen” (93 mins, 2014). Directed by Florence Jaugey together with one of her prize winning shorts “Cinema Alcázar” (10 mins, 1997) about an elderly woman who lives in what used to be a cinema, together with “Running in Solidarity” (10 mins, 2015). About a young woman runs the London Marathon for the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. Directed by George Fuller. £12.50 or £7.50 (concessions) on the day, £11 or £6.50 in advance.

020 7561 4836 or www.nicaraguasc.org.uk/shop/filmshowtickets.htm