Pablo Alvarez Mesa

Director

Biography

No biography available.

Filmography

Infinite Distances

Anonymous voices follow one another, leaving messages on an answering machine, creating a purely auditive experience. The messages are destined for various recipients, some identified and some not. From one voice to the next, the tone shifts from recognition and joy to boredom and anger. The degree of familiarity varies; the messages range from banal matters to the serious illness of a relative. All these voices have the goal of being heard on the other end of the line and eventually receiving an answer. Infinite Distances explores how we communicate, evoking recent nostalgia for the landline and pointing to our fundamental need to connect, share, and be heard.

N/A

Bicentenario

Exactly 200 years after Simón Bolívar’s Colombian war of independence, a campaign that ran from late May to early August 1819, filmmaker Pablo Alvarez-Mesa follows the iconic Libertador’s route through the country. At each historic battleground, he calls on a medium to summon the general’s spirit, helping Alvarez-Mesa reveal Bolívar’s permanent and more or less visible presence in an array of social rituals and state structures. This historic legacy, after two centuries transfigured into a blend of political mysticism and unchallenged military doctrine, remains an integral part of Colombia’s collective unconscious. It keeps finding new expression in an endless cycle of violence, which this intriguing medium-length film seeks to exorcise. (Charlotte Selb)

5.0

The Fish

'La Pesca' portrays a day in the life of a family of fishermen in Colombia. With poetry and sensorial richness, the film captures the gestures of these men as they weave nets, cook, and play dominoes, all the while waiting for the fish to come so that they can recommence anew.

6.0

The Soldier's Lagoon

Retracing Simón Bolívar's liberation campaign across Colombia, searching for The Liberator's ghost in the high altitude marshlands.

N/A

Presidio Modelo

“In this meditative essay on the infamous Cuban prison of Panopticon design, the walls in the prison crumble revealing a past that has been covered by layers of thick yellow paint. Exquisite photography and lyric narration reveal a world where pain left unvisited turns into amnesia; history cannot absolve everything.” – BIG SKY FILM FESTIVAL

5.0

Jelena's Song

In this short lyrical film, haunting childhood memories, photographs and family stories form the heart of a woman's search for transformation. A descent into the labyrinths of memory, the film documents Jelena's recollections of her childhood in both Croatia and Canada, resulting in a fragmentary reconstruction of her past. With candour and sensitivity, Jelena reclaims her own identity, disarming us with her courage and will.

N/A

Frank and the Wondercat

Frank Furko, an 80-year-old eccentric in the Pittsburgh suburbs, takes stock of his life and tries to reconcile his forty years working on the family farm with his domineering father, the end of his 20 year marriage, and his role as a celebrity derived from Pudgie Wudgie, his 20-pound performing house-cat. Supported by Frank's twenty years of VHS video archives, the film explores memory, loss, friendship and mortality.

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