the project: Searching My mother of God

Logline:

A documentary made beside the main character, Arnoldo Palacios (1924 - 2015), an afrocolombian writer who was born in a town in the middle of the jungle, travelled around the world until the end of his life despite a contracted poliomyelitis at the age of two years. Making visible the African diaspora identity and the fight of the human rights, we travelled with him in Colombia and France and we will meet him again in Warsaw, Moscow and Dakar. He was a representation of the world contemporary literature who described in several languages his time with poetry and joyfulness.

Synopsis (max. 400 words)

Arnoldo Palacios, afrocolombian writer, invites us to a journey along the path of his life since the day he was born at Cértegui, in the middle of the jungle, in 1924. Through interviews, conversations between friends, events and travels, we go on seeing how Arnoldo earlier began to sharp his senses and sensitivity, to take advantage of the power of imagination and words for fun, to create, explore and understand the world. Indeed, a poliomyelitis appeared suddenly when he was two years old, leaving sequels in the mobility of his legs. This did not prevent him from finding the path that should led him to discover the world making a frequent traveller, beginning the day he went from Cértegui to Quibdó, the capital of the Chocó, to start the high school which he finished at Bogota in 1946.

Arnoldo Palacios build the documentary beside the director in a close relationship and guides us through his literary work always linked to his existence and becoming almost a second reading of his life. Thus, we will learn why "The Stars are black" (novel published in 1948), we will visit Paris where Arnold arrived on a scholarship to study literature at the Sorbonne. We will see through his eyes the many important figures in the last sixty years who were his friends throughout Europe. We will accompany him in Honfleur, on the French Normandy who received him as one of his sons, and where the director met him the first time at the beginning of the 90’s.

Finally we rejoice with him for the recognition he began to have in his country in the last years of his life starting with the Grand Order of the Colombian Ministry of Culture (1998), and Guachupé Gold Black Colombia Foundation (2007), the reissue of his first literary work (2010) and the Spanish edition of “the Jungle and Rain”, published for the first time in Russia (1956). This documentary is the result of mutual support an accompaniment of the protagonist and the director since 2009 between France and Colombia. Up today without the presence in life, of the writer, we keep looking memories of Arnold in Warsaw,Roma, Moscow and in Senegal to finish what we started with the writer who died in November of 2016.

Project description ( max. 1100 words. You may choose the subdivisions yourself. (A project description should include: story, background information, main protagonists, access, visual approach, directors note etc. Production proposals should also include a detailed story outline) 
The documentary is fifty percent already filmed with scenes of events and interviews with Arnoldo Palacios, from Paris to Honfleur, in France and Bogotá, Quibdó and Certegui, in Colombia. We have digitized five hours of video-record in Chocó, Colombia, in August 2010, as well as two hours recorded in Honfleur, France, in January 2011. We need to visualize even fifteen hours on MiniDV cassette, listen five hours of audio-record and choose the relevant material. So, in this part, what is missing is a professional editing work. Also since the beginning of the project, the situation of the documentary as changed because our main character Arnoldo Palacios died few months ago. 
The scenes recorded with a video camera are:

Despite the recent disappearance and the desire to continue the dialogue directly with the writer, the intention is to finish the documentary, working in part with the existing material and traveling to places that we consider relevant to track parts of his personal history.

• Event Homage to the poets of Negritude: Aimé Césaire and Arnoldo Palacios, Bogotá, August 2009, in the Modern Gymnasium with the presence of the French Ambassador and the Minister of Culture;

• Two visits to the family home of the author where we talk about his life and discussed the purpose of the documentary, September and October 2009; • A meeting with Enrique Santos Molano, a critical and Colombian writer, in October 2009;

• Launch of the book "Love Poems" by Saturnino 'Nino' Caicedo Cordoba, an afrocolombian author, at the Museum of Bogota, in September 2009 where Arnoldo Palacios was the special guest;

• Launch of the book " Searching my Mother of God” in Cali, the second city of afrocolombian people in the country, October 2009• Launch of the book" Searching my Mother of God " at the Colombo French Alliance, February 2010;

• Event in the Virgilio Barco library, entitled "Meet the Author", in the month of Afrocolombian, in Bogotá, May 2010;A meeting at home about his life and relationship with events in the world, Bogotá, June 2010

• 75th Anniversary of the school Camilo Torres where Arnoldo Palacios studied and they made him a tribute, Bogotá, October 2014

The places we will visit:

Warsaw, Poland:

 • Arnoldo lived there three years after he lost the Colombian scholarship to study in France because there during The World Movement of Peace (1950), supporting the cause of non-aligned he declared about the Colombian government• We will film some streets to give illustration of the voice of Arnoldo speaks about this experience where he met Roman Polanski, the cinema director and translated the writers Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki from polish to Spanish 

• We will visit the foundation of the poet Katia Granoff (1895-1989) who published him. 

Roma, Italy:

• We will visit The Carlo Levi Museum which is dedicated to the Artist with the same name of the museum, an anti fascist italian painter and writer who painted close friend as the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda (1951), the Italian actress Anna Magnani (1954), the north American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1956), the Italian philosopher Italo Calvino ( 1959), the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros ( 1965) and also our character Arnoldo Palacios (1960) more info:http://carlolevifondazione.it/

• Also, we will search about the Italian cinematographic director Piero Vivarelli ( 1927 -2010) who directed movie as “Django” ( 1966) and also the movie “Il dio Serpente” where our character as a role as a shaman. 

Moscow, Russia: 

• In this moment, his youngest son is living there and it’s who we met in Honfleur, in 2011, in France.

• In this city, his novel “ the Jungle and the Rain” (1956) was published for the first time, so, we will hear to speak about it with the videos we will film there. 

Senegal-Dakar:• Hadji Amadou Ndoye, (1947- 2013) was a writer and a teacher of the University Cheik Anta Diop of Dakar. He was specialized in Hispanic literature and he lectured about Arnoldo Palacios. We will go to his University to interview his disciples.