The streets of New York serve as the setting for a strange encounter. Dante is a short made in 2020 directed and written by Cristian Peña and produced by Pablo Monsalve. Two friends who made a commitment to audiovisuals and who in this film took on a challenge that filled them with hope.
The film is part of a trilogy. The first short Circe’s Balloons (2013), also suspenseful, was made as an academic exercise at the University of Medellín, Colombia, where Peña was studying cinema. A job that had repercussions: it started the first version of the Short Film Season of that University and participated in festivals in Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
It is the story of a circus in which a clown conquers the spirit of the girls and boys who come to the tent and turns them into dolls to make them his spectators. There the balloon has a special meaning and works as a connecting element in Dante, and it will also be in the third film, still in the writing process. “The balloon is that prop that has the connection of those worlds,” says Peña.
Dante, the second part of this trilogy, was made independently and is also a symbolic and open-ended work. It is the story of a man obsessed with women’s hair, whom he chases until they cut off a lock of hair without them noticing. Three actresses and one actor give life to this nine-minute production, which has so far participated in the official selection of the Chelsea Film Festival (USA), Oculto Horror Film Festival (Mexico), American Film Festival (USA). .) and Havana Film Festival (USA).
Pablo Monsalve -journalist and photographer, graduated from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Medellín, Colombia- and Cristian Peña -screenwriter and director- live in New York, where they study and have dedicated themselves to the audiovisual field. They met in Colombia during the recording of some short films. Peña had participated in Lunesta as director of photography and editor, a film that was made when he was a student, as a graduation project, which was selected for the Short Film Corner in Cannes, and together they were in the shorts Primera Luna and El Dorado.
They founded Nadir Frame Productions. From the cinema, they want to create sensations and experiences in the spectators and invite reflection. Circe and Dante’s balloons show a subplot in which themes related to mental health, obsessions, loneliness and the disappearance of people appear.
Dante filming in New York
Dante was made in a pandemic, in November 2020. With a team of 17 people, they toured fifteen locations over four days: from Brooklyn to Manhattan; from Manhattan to the Bronx, in short, in the midst of all the ups and downs, they highlight that they felt great freedom when recording, they were able to move, discover that light they were looking for to give life to their work.
It was shot on film, which implied other challenges and additional costs for a low-budget film of about $16,000. The result is an image of great invoice, with a lot of texture.
For the director and screenwriter and for the producer, who also played Dante, it was an adventure. Peña and Monsalve approached the shoot with the professionalism that implied not only being in charge of a crew but shooting in New York, a city that inspired and challenged them. The choice and direction of the people who would accompany them, the definition of locations, the unforeseen, led them to work under pressure that they remember today as a time of pure adrenaline.
They managed to unite the team and work for a dream. It was also a kind of response to the lockdown forced by the pandemic. The team wanted to create with a lot of passion and put everything to achieve it, as Diana Bustillos Jáquez, executive director of this production and founder of LaBú Productions, recalls: “Dante gave us back the momentum after a year of uncertainty. It allowed us to unite more as Latin American migrant artists in New York, creatives, professionals.”
Bustillos Jáquez warns that shooting in 16 mm, with a director of photography like Nicolás Vallejo, achieved a “beautiful” result. Without ignoring the benefits of the digital medium, he explains that the film gives a different sensation in terms of the definition of the images and the atmosphere. For the team it was a great challenge.
“In 16mm we have limited film. Everything was perfectly planned, we had to rely a lot on the vision of Nicolás, Cristian and Pablo, and that’s how it was (…). We are all very satisfied, inspired and with the hope that more projects will come in 2022, because I have full confidence in the team that participated in this project”, assures Bustillos Jáquez.
Diana Vargas, director of the Havana Film Festival New York, says: “Dante is a film that I have followed very closely from the moment I met Cristian Peña and Pablo Monsalve, two very young Colombian filmmakers who came to study at New York”.
He adds: “It is a suspenseful short film, from a very classic idea of obsession, almost that it could be the beginning of a serial killer in a world where the image, appearance and appearance are more important than being. A fresh vision of a resentful, nondescript character, but with strong compulsions. And, beyond his story, Dante is the work in which filmmakers, most of them Latino immigrants in New York, decide to tell a story within very particular aesthetic codes. Independent cinema in times of pandemic that really impresses”.
Regarding the considerations for which Dante was part of the exhibition at the Havana Film Festival in New York, Vargas explains: “Since its inception in 2000, the festival has had the purpose of creating a bridge between Latin American filmmakers and Latinos residing in the United States. with the New York public, to encourage dialogue and that there may be a greater understanding of the cultures that make up our continent. Likewise, it has been our purpose to create this space so that the talented emerging filmmakers of the Latin American diaspora can find their viewers and weave the network for future productions with other colleagues. We knew of the artistic and human quality of Cristian Peña and Pablo Monsalve, they had already worked with us on other projects, so it was more than natural that they were this time special guests for the premiere of Dante at the Havana Film Festival NY”.
Monsalve emphasizes the importance of bringing together a committed team and the communication that must exist. Animate, convene, are words that come to light. He participated in the reading of each new version of the script, and when it came to playing Dante, he knew the nature of the character well.
“It is believed that New York is just about money, however, it is more about friendship, that desire to create what leads us to do things and unite (…)”, says Monsalve. “In production there is an enormous responsibility, that the crew feel comfortable. And this implies fostering a harmonious environment of closeness, where all the details are important”.
Many things happened during the filming, so many that a new movie could be made with him behind the scenes. They remember the recordings in the New York subway, in an elevator of an apartment building where they could barely make a single take and how difficult it was to get permission to make the images on a fire escape. Peña and Monsalve learned something key: one of the virtues that a director and a producer must have is the ability to respond, not what news reaches you, but what the solution is.
“As an actor I felt a lot of nostalgia. The character has a very strong anguish within him. It was not easy to transmit it, besides, I was doing the production of the film, having the two roles was difficult, making decisions and at the same time entering to build a character. It was an interesting, enriching experience.”
Clave en Dante is the original music, by Mateo Gutiérrez; art direction by Sabrina Merayo and sound editing by Juan Pablo Patiño. “They understood very well the concept and intention to enhance the story, knowing how to handle moments of high and low tension,” says Peña.
The third moment of this trilogy will be the closing of the circle and we will know why Circe is a macabre clown and why Dante has this mania for women’s hair. Both are connected. What unites them? The suspense continues.
eldiariony.com
Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.