"Araya" is an old natural salt mine located in a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still, by 1959, being exploited manually five hundred years after its discovery by the Spanish. In images, the life of the "salineros" and their archaic methods of work before their definite disappearance with the arrival of the industrial exploitation.
Pedro Zamora (Miguelangel Landa) is a former guerrilla who returns to Caracas and moves to a pension as a tenant. Despite appearances, he has come to fulfill a secret mission to its ultimate consequences.
Jesús María Carmona is a small-time crook who poses as a cop so he can rob a bank. A few days before the day he planned to do it, a guerrilla group robs the same bank and Carmona is shot to death defending it when he has no other choice but to act as a policeman. Soon after, his image becomes a symbol for the police and he is honored, but his identity is found out. Meanwhile, in the neighborhood where he grew up his effigy is burned as he is now considered a traitor.
1964, in a Latin American country, a journalist is head of an armed liberation movement that decides to initiate radical actions. His second in command, a farmer, and the other members of the group will kidnap a north american colonel stationed in Venezuela to force his government to suspend the execution of the vietnamese Nguyen Van Troi, accused of trying to assassinate the American Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara.
Beginning with his childhood and covering the many facets that characterized his intellectual universe, this documentary details the different aspects of the most important venezuelan writer of the 60s, 70s and 80s: José Ignacio Cabrujas.
Documentary on Venezuela's dictator Juan Vicente Gómez.
Halfway between fiction and documentary, Initiation of a Shaman tells the story of Rarowe, a young Yanomami who is about to be initiated and must make contact with spirits brought by other shamans. The young man feels the effects of the initiation and always waits until the end to see if he can withstand it. The initiation itself is a rare event and occurs only when the old medicine man is about to die. The ancient rites includes the struggle of the youth with evil spirits which attempt to prevent the old witch doctor from imparting his wisdom to the young man. Hallucinogetic plants are used by the tribe to increase perception. The eerie images depicted are similar to those evoked in the books of Castaneda.
Three centuries of Venezuela's history as a Spanish colony are considered from economic, political and social standpoints; evocations of the past are compared to the present. Based on the ideas and research of Federico Brito Figueroa, Alfredo A. Alfonso, Miguel A. Saignes, Josefina Jordan, and Thaelman Urgelles among others.
Documentary film by Jorge Solé.