“Open mountain”
On July 19, 1929, in a town in Colombia, a group of shoemakers fought to improve living and working conditions in the country. They called themselves The Bolsheviks of Líbano Tolima. Their revolution lasted only one day, and its traces were almost completely lost. The women of this village share with Aura, an anarchist grandmother, a feeling that their rebellion is still going on.
Director Biography
MARÍA ROJAS ARIAS, Colombian visual artist and filmmaker, graduated from KASK, School of Arts Gent, Belgium. She is the co-director of La Vulcanizadora - Project Laboratory in Visual Arts, Cinema, and Expanded Theater. Her work deals with official and unofficial archival materials related to specific events of the past. Her short films include Abrir Monte (2021), Fu (2018) and La Casa Loca (2016). In 2019, she received a Next Generation grant from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development.
Director’s Statement
This film is a transhistorical encounter with the events that have left traces of struggle in this territory, moments that appear as an echo from the present. It is the body of a file that does not exist so far. "Abrir Monte" wants to recover the voice of the woman within this story. It’s a voice that is not common when talking about the stories of the revolution, the struggles, and the guerrillas. This presence is embodied in Aura, my maternal grandmother. Thanks to her I know these historical events, life in the countryside in Colombia, and many anecdotes of insurrection. With them, I have been able to recall that memory is in the blood and in the territory. In Libano (Tolima, Colombia), they say that when something of history is lost, whoever searches must begin to walk backward and return to the beginning. There is a past that we do not live as a generation but that appears as the reason for our present.