Oscar Grullón: The maker of images and the builder of dreams

The film industry in capitalism has the purpose of profit, of the reproduction of capital and to strengthen the current social system, through the alienation of popular sectors, hiding social contradictions and reproducing false utopias. They allow exceptions for marketing interests, induced by the preferences of the public.

At the end of the 1960s, young Brazilian intellectuals were closely linked to the avant-gardes of French cinema-truth and surrealism in Italian cinema, with writers such as Bertoh Brecht and Antonio Gramsci, who were looking for new paths and critical reflections on the conceptualizations and contents of production and the role of cinematography. Traditional Brazilian commercial cinema was one of fission and evasion, of an aestheticism devoid of the “ugly” and saturated with the love of Corín Tellado: In the end, “everyone lived very happily”.

There was background. At the end of the 1950s, there began to be daring, desecration of ruptures with the film “Rio, 40 Grados” (1955), by Nelson Pereira do Santos, with “Os Cafetajestes”, by Rudy Guerra, and “Barravento”, (1962) by Glauber Rocha, with which the Brazilian Cinema Novo (New Cinema) was really born.

In 1963, Glauber Rocha wrote an essay on “The Critical Review of Brazilian Cinema”, which defined a philosophy and conceptualizations about “Cinema Novo”, which revolutionized the existing cinematographic dimension, ideologized, with a deep political content and an assumption of conscience. subversive, embraced by a new generation of young filmmakers.

The Brazilian Cinema Novo was not a fashion, but a philosophy, based on Glauber Rocha’s proposal with his theses on “The Aesthetics of Hunger” and the Aesthetics of Dreams. The key to understanding Brazilians, as well as Latin Americans, according to him, is based on the existence of hunger and misery, responsible for the violence, but of a holy violence, due to the indignation and repudiation that occurs when you become aware of them. Both, hunger and misery, are not divine punishments but the result of a system of inequality and repression, dehumanized and of insatiable imperialism.

The oppressed woman and man, with their customs, their realities, their beliefs, their religion, their frustrations, their dreams and their hopes are the content of the Brazilian Cinema Novo, where social contradictions surfaced. Its content was the drama of everyday life, therefore, its characters were ugly, disheveled, broken, the men unshaven and the women without poses, pretenses, makeup and perfume. They were human beings inserted in their contradictions and conflicts, hunger, misery, their spirituality, their mysticism and their daily life just as they were.

Cinema Novo impacted Brazilian society, shook its foundations, with productions such as “God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun” and “Tierra en Transe”, by Glauber Rocha, added to desecrating productions by other filmmakers, made the dictatorship The military will corner financing and deport producers to assassinate Cinema Novo.

Returning to the Dominican Republic in 1968, I found the Balaguerista “enlightened dictatorship”, with censorship and repression, where various committed communicators challenged it and a large part of the social media played the role of denouncers. The same happened with some militant artists of truth and justice and institutions such as the UASD, which turned art and culture into spaces of opposition with the Rondalla, the Choir and chanted poetry.

To give an example, the imposing figure of the artist and cultural promoter Silvano Lora emerged, irreverent and profaning, committed and rebellious with his performances of the Count, his marginal biennials and his subversive signs, redefining the role and commitment of the artist and art with His town.

In his team, there was a Quixote, Oscar Gullón, an exceptional artist of the lens, who understood that art in a society like this had to be compromised, that it had to be denouncing and subversive, using the particular cinematographic language, with codes and symbols that express the truth without prejudice, define a popular aesthetic that revalues ​​folklore and popular culture.

  Oscar Grullon
Oscar Grullon

Oscar Grullón, in hundreds of reports, documentaries and videos, reproduced the essences without makeup of popular neighborhoods, of marginal populations, beautiful women with their colored plastic rolls, alleys full of garbage, puddles of water and fried food stalls, without shame , with an awareness of indignation, but with dignity. But Oscar went further, by revaluing ancestral beliefs, showing the Congos, the Guloyas, the Sarandunga, defining popular characters and artists such as La Reverenda and Enerolisa, the impressive Duluc and the imposing figure of Xiomara Fortuna, to the extent that he elaborated a catalog of our identity.

Oscar went beyond indignation, exposing the heritage and dignity of creative human beings, enlightened, excluded and not valued by a system of exclusion, revaluing the virtues of the popular sectors. He spoke for those who had nowhere to express themselves and showed the riches of everything invisible, with striking images, with extraordinary content, with cinematographic quality and with an impressive human-artistic-cultural sensitivity.

In the recognition carried out by the COFRADIA Foundation, a few days ago, the participants reached the conclusion that the cinematographic work, the extraordinary work of symbolization, contents and images of Oscar is national heritage, exaltation of identity, folklore and culture popular Dominican, heritage of the people, source for students, teachers, researchers, expressions to get to know each other better and feel proud of our Dominican identity. Oscar Grullón is the Dominican Glauber Rocha!

Oscar Grullón: The maker of images and the builder of dreams