Magic in the dark, fiestas in the sun

THE annual film festival in the capital of Colombia, Cartagena, is a tough challenge to even the most hardened film fanatic, with decades cheerfully spent inside musty cinemas the world over. The problem is Cartagena itself, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. On the way in from the airport, you have palm trees, surf, sand and emerald green ocean on your right, while the walled in colonial city sits opposite, with its winding streets, cobblestones, patios, balconies, flowers and constant sun.

As you get used to the 105 degree heat, a race against fatigue begins, since there are 61 films to be seen in seven days, including 5 films competing for the eight Catalinas de Oro, Cartagena's equivalent to the Oscars. This year's 36th festival, which took place last month, was patronised, as always, by the towering presence of native son and Nobel Literature prizewinner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who escorts the jury and special guests, adding celebrity glitz to social events.

The festival opened to the rhythm of Guantanamera, Cuban film maker Tomas Gutierrez Alea's follow up to Strawberries and Chocolate. The film is a picaresque voyage through modern Cuba, as a funeral cortege battles with bureaucracy and shortages to reach its final resting place, with liberal doses of romance, black humour and tragedy along the way.

Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba dominated the festival, with themes that ranged from nostalgic meditation on past times - Cinema of Tears, by Nelson Pereira from Brasil - to knife edge thrillers reflecting the urban culture of violence and isolation. Savage Horses, directed by Marcelo Pineyro from Argentina, tells the story of Jose, an old man who kidnaps a bank official 15 years after he was cheated out of his life savings by the bank. Jose, Pedro (the sympathetic bank clerk) and a punk drifter, Ana, take to the road and taste real freedom, before the implacable forces of law and order inevitably catch up.

The film feast was complemented by nightly open air fiestas, where rum and tequila flow and top orchestras play salsa and classical boleros until dawn, as actors and commoners mixed freely in the medieval atmosphere of the old city. In conferences and workshops, directors and producers discussed the decline of Latin American film making, as freemarket economics lead to the reduction or elimination of state support for the industry. In Brazil, where 50 features a year were produced a decade ago, the figure has dropped to less than 10.

Argentina presented four films, including Jose Subiela's magical Don't Die without Telling Me You're Going, a follow up to The Dark Side Of The Heart, which Irish cinemagoers finally had a chance to see last year. Subiela's Don't Die ... continues the director's theme of dreams and utopia in everyday life, as Leopoldo, a madcap inventor, creates a dream catcher, which projects images from dreams onto a TV screen, with unexpected results.

The jury, led by Chilean writer and director Antonio Skarmeta, gave the award for Best Film to young Mexican director Carlos Carrera, whose Sin Remitente (No Return Address) is a well crafted tale of a solitary old man, Andres, who divides his time between romantic ballads and heated arguments with the young woman living above him. The old man begins to receive anonymous love letters, with fatal consequences. Andres, played by Fernando Torre, won Best Actor award at the festival.

The jury's president, Skarmeta, delivered an emotional address on the closing night of the festival, describing his encounter with poet Pablo Neruda, first through poetry, then through politics, and the night closed with a presentation of Skarmeta's own version of Neruda's Postman (1983), with the same script as Radford's Oscar nominated version, Il Postino, but perhaps a tenth of the budget.

"Neruda is the ventriloquist of my soul," explained Skarmeta, bust as the movies are ventriloquists of the human heart" - a fitting end for a rich festival, in a setting close to paradise.