opinion

Curundú
by Raúl Leis --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

It was many enough years ago.

The final test was to insert oneself without money or references for various days in a neighborhood or countryside, and be able to survive while making a socio-economic diagnosis of the place and of the organizations or groups that work there.

The group of three people that took part in this was made up of two people from the Interior and me, who comes from Colon.

The experience was extraordinary, as we accomplished the task, and it allowed us to live the intensive reality of this enchanted neighborhood.

I went back many times on my own and tried to support the community process as much as I could through popular education, social drama and puppet theater. This reality inspired my theatrical work "Viaje a la Salvación y otros Países," which won the Ricardo Miro Prize and which was presented in Curundu itself by the Colegio Artes y Oficios theater group.

Curundu marked me and was important to my commitment, as this neighborhood lashed by fire and water and a few blocks from Avenida Central was like a social barometer that permitted me, better than the academic analyses, to see how the reality of urban poverty sinks in and expresses the profound social inequality in which we live.

A few weeks ago some Panamanian film makers screened a documentary entitled "Curundú," which allowed me to reconnect with the reality of this neighborhood on another plane.

The film shown for the first time at the Ancon Theater tells the story of Kenneth, a Curundu street photographer, who has a tremendous capacity to guide the viewer through the daily drama that's Curundu with impertinence and acute sensitivity. The viewer who thinks about keeping some distance is grabbed by a film that doesn't allow one to slink by --- there is no impunity in this film.

The 66-minute documentary is the work of producer Ana Endara Mislov and was produced in 2006 an 2007 with support from the CINERGIA Central American and Caribbean Audiovisual Support Fund.

The film is terse and incisive, as Ana permits Kenneth to take us along the paths of his life, and those of his family, his neighbors and Panamanian society, philosophizing about the avatars and challenges of a spiny existence shattered by endless contradictions. The camera is unperceived and the speech sounds within the context of dialogue.

The film demonstrates the worth of Panamanian cinema, adding to the list of notable projects. But Curundu continues on, ever present with its prevailing realities, questioning us time and again about the kind of development we have in this country.