7 - Gender Performances and Narratives of Place, Modernity and Desire in La Sierra

Summary

La Sierra, the directorial debut of the journalist team Margarita Martínez and Scott Dalton, inhabits an interesting interstitial space between documentary practices or modes and discursive traditions. Dalton and Martínez worked as journalists at the Associated Press in Bogotá, before embarking on the filming of La Sierra. This extraordinary film has made waves both at home and abroad, and constitutes a fresh approach to some of the well-worn themes of recent Colombian cultural production, among them the violence of male subaltern youth. In a tradition which includes Chircales and Luis Ospina's Oiga, vea (1971), of a ‘crítica social efectuada sobre la base de una investigación y una conviviencia largas con las personas acerca de las cuales se habla’ (Caicedo González, p. 87), Martínez and Dalton spent a year immersed in La Sierra, a barrio which is located on the easternmost edge of Medellín, and which, during the time of filming (January–December 2003) was controlled by the paramilitary faction Bloque Metro. The film centres on Edison Florez, the group's commander, Jesús Martínez, a group member, and Cielo Muñoz, a fifteen-year-old widow, who has arrived in La Sierra after having been displaced from her former home by left-wing guerrillas. There is also considerable attention to the family structure surrounding Edison, including the many teenage mothers of his children, as well as his own parents.