This work by Camilo Restrepo opens in Colombia, in which his friend Pinky narrates in the first person the feeling of revenge aroused by the man of a sect that manipulated and indoctrinated him in the name of God and love.
“He’s the one who deserves to die and I’m the only one who can kill him,” Pinky says without remorse.
He tells himself and the world after having had a conversation with Baby about Father’s decision to let Tuerquita die, who is a beggar and that makes him worthy of not deserving of life.
Pinky is the character in Los conductos , a film by Camilo Restrepo that is shown at the Bogotá Cinematheque, where the filmmaker’s retrospective will be screened until June 27, including his shorts and the multi-screen installation “Tele-Vision”.
Pinky is also a person of flesh and blood called Luis Felipe Lozano, a friend of Restrepo who decided to tell aloud his story of revenge after having emancipated himself from a religious sect that, under the premise “in the name of God”, committed all kinds of crimes and abuses.
“By mistake I found myself in the wrong place and from there I saw him, him, the Father … I saw him do something that I don’t even want to remember,” says Pinky in a part of the film. This is how he explains to the audience the pain he felt when he realized the manipulation he was subjected to in the group he came to, like all the other members, because of the hatred he felt for society.
But the Father cunningly knew how to speak to them and tell them what they needed and wanted to hear. He knew how to express love to them, even if it was not genuine love, but a love necessary to continue the submission that clings to power.
In The Conduits , says the director, the puns question about “being led or leading oneself, going through the conduit and letting oneself go, or taking oneself.”
It is not easy to take charge of life, adds Restrepo, as we are constantly manipulated by political and religious ideals and by the consumer society. However, for the director, the most terrifying manipulation is not the one that is exercised in a grotesque or savage way, but the one that is linked to seduction.
“Pinky was manipulated with love and seduction, and that is the most dangerous because they enter the cracks, in the feelings that they lack, it expands and then you are already obeying in that system that is not yours and you are contributing to that reproduce ”, he maintains.
Pinky, who at one time in his life was lost, found in the group a refuge that supposedly made him feel good and gave him that place that society denied him; but it was all a fantasy because “the chosen ones were the only ones who knew how to shape the world, kill, steal, dominate.”
He managed to get out of the clutches of the Father, but it had already penetrated his mind that the chosen ones were not human beings.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsOn the street he confirmed that the Father was not the one he should fear the most, but the entire sect, since all, faithful believers in God, were indoctrinated to attack anyone who defies the rules.
The Conduits walks the fine line of good and evil, but does not lead the viewer to a resolution on which is the right path for Pinky to follow. In fact, it is a representation of life itself in which each action has a consequence, but is loaded with nuances and contexts that should not be forgotten or ignored.
“The film, made in chiaroscuro and shades of gray that represent the possibilities, is the representation of morality, the ability to judge, to accept certain things, without judging Pinky or Desquite,” says Restrepo.
The character of Desquite symbolizes the bandit that existed in Colombia in the 40s or 50s, during the time of violence, and in the film he is Pinky’s alter ego , that man who, feeling that he had no future and had been mocked of him, decided to take revenge.
Many years passed from when Camilo Restrepo first heard from Pinky his desire to kill the Father until Los Conductos was filmed. Perhaps, for this reason, the film is in itself the path of emancipation of the protagonist, who dares to accept and relate what he has experienced in the first person.
This portrait of Pinky is also that of many people and even that of Colombia, because, for Restrepo, “the film today enters a system of echo with reality” in which Desquite, of course, had the opportunity to resurrect because the The country, as a poem by Gonzalo Arango says, has not been able to give its citizens dignity.
“I feel that there is something like that resurrection of the forgotten,” adds the filmmaker, who premieres this story in Colombia after being chosen best first work at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020 in the new Encounters section, which gives importance to films that do not respond to the commercial cinematographic narrative, since the viewer of Los conductos does not know if they speak to him in the present or in the past and to understand the story he must put together the puzzle posed by the director.
But, Camilo Restrepo, who came to the cinema after being a plastic artist, refuses to make an industrial product with moving images. He does not want to talk to everyone, rather he is committed to an artisan cinema that is closer to that work of art of which he is proud to sign and present because, like Pinky, he aspires to be in control of his life.