Mudos testigos

The final project by the late, celebrated director Luis Ospina is a collaboration with Jerónimo Atehortúa Arteaga on a found footage experiment that uses fragments from twelve films belonging to the silent period of Colombian cinema, plus quotes extracted from literary sources. With these elements, Mudos testigos stitches up a new narrative for an imaginary film: a romantic melodrama that develops during the first half of the twentieth century and tells the impossible love story between Efraín and Alicia.

Mudos testigos is imbued with the incredible power and lyricism of the silent image, and displays an engaging inventiveness achieved through the technique of collage. The mixture of fiction and newsreel documentary allows for a complex exploration of the sociopolitical background of its central love story. Divided into three parts, the film takes us from the fires of infatuation to those of revolution, from the city landscape to the heart of the jungle, from the mad correspondence between lovers to the oneirism of a spiritual journey, from the secrets and plots of forbidden love to political wars and class struggles. Mudos testigos uses the medium of cinema to inject new life into the remnants of its forgotten history.

– Cristina Álvarez López