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Juan Alejandro Ramírez

Juan Alejandro Ramírez (born May 27, 1953) is a Peruvian ethnographic filmmaker.

Biography

Juan was born in Arequipa, Peru, and raised in Lima. He attended National University of San Marcos where he studied archaeology. After finishing his studies at San Marcos he received a Fulbright Scholarship to attend the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to study cultural anthropology. He developed a love of film through repeated visits to a cinema club in Lima, and was an avid photographer very early on before his notion to become a filmmaker came to fruition. It was only after a lecture by Werner Herzog, that he realized he wanted to be a filmmaker.

Career

His career in film making started after he finished his studies in Michigan and his brief stint with National Geographic. Following his courses at Hunter College and a permanent relocation to New York, he embarked on his first short film Todo y Nada (All and Nothing) which explores the experiences of longing for the past when living abroad. His approach to making movies is quite peculiar: he produces, films, edits, narrates and musicalizes his movies. Armed with a crew of one and a Arriflex 16mm camera, a special emphasis is placed on the images he captures without the help of direct sound, allowing him to recontextualize his films with a different soundtrack.

After a two month stay in Cotonou, Benin he embarked on his next project Me Dicen Yovo (I'm a Yovo) a poetic diary piece that touches upon the perspective of the third world as seen from someone from the third world. The next in a series of diary like films was Muy Lejos De Aqui (Faraway From Here) a fascinating journey through the filmmaker's homeland and India, gives us a rare glimpse into the convoluted, but always fascinating, contemplation of friendship, alienation and the patronisation of the so called Third World by the so called developed nations.

After completing this trilogy of travel diaries, one of his most important films to date Solo un Cargador (Porter) was made and shown at 170 film festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Fribourg, Rotterdam, and New Directors/New Films (New York City), and won awards in 13 of them. Ramirez never refers to his films strictly as "documentary films,"preferring the terms "poetic," or "essay" films. Porter, a fictionalized reconstruction of one indigenous, Andean man, a cargador who carries (white) climber's supplies and baggage up mountains, is remarkable in that it actually gives the man his own, meditative voice. Unlike most "anthropological" or ethnographic films, this one turns the object of the camera's gaze into the true subject of the film, as if the porter is the author of the film.[1]

His next film Alguna Tristeza (Some Kind of Sadness), is even more experimental, a tapestry of seemingly unconnected vignettes that combine the personal with the political and the historical, going from a portrait of an optimistic Peruvian taxi driver to that of three waiters on a train to that of an alienated outsider living in the Amazon jungle. Some Kind of Sadness was also shown at numerous film festivals and won awards at nine of them, including the prestigious Cinema du Reel in France. The subsequent film to follow Some Kind of Sadness, Diario del Fin (Diary of the End), focuses on a Peruvian woman looking back over her difficult life, while his most recent film Nadie Especial (Nobody Special), touches on three very different Peruvian women, thus continuing Ramirez's poetic analyses of Peru's downtrodden but resilient citizens. Most of his films stretch the boundaries of documentary and fiction with their re-created scenes, evocative voices, and imaginative editing, and none is longer than an hour in length. Although he refuses to be conventional or commercial, Juan Alejandro Ramirez continues to make films and get them shown at festival worldwide.

Filmography

Cinematography, Editing, Directing and Writing by Juan Alejandro Ramírez

  • Nadie Especial (Nobody Special) (2013)
  • Diario Del Fin (Diary of the End) (2009)
  • Alguna Tristeza (Some Kind of Sadness) (2006)
  • Solo un Cargador (Porter) (2003)
  • Muy Lejos De Aqui (Faraway From Here) (1999)
  • Me Dicen Yovo (I'm a Yovo) (1995)
  • Todo y Nada (All and Nothing) (1993)

Awards

Solo un Cargador (Porter)


Alguna Tristeza (Some Kind of Sadness)


Diario del Fin Diary of the End


Nadie Espcecial Nobody Special

References

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  1. ^ Rist, Peter H. Historical Dictionary Of South American Cinema (PDF) (English © 2014 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 472–473.
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