❝My Cinema in Times of Diversity

Was it inevitable that my cinema would be marked by my identity?

It is often said that our field, the film industry, is becoming increasingly difficult. However, I believe it is quite the opposite: making films has always been and will always be swimming against the current. Not only because it is an extremely competitive environment, but also because the cinema I make, the one I want to make, seems doomed to always be labeled with one tag: diversity. As if, before being a filmmaker, I was first and foremost a skin color, an accent, an origin.

In the past, cinema was a privilege reserved for an elite, for those who could afford to buy the equipment and access the spaces where films were made. Today, practically anyone can make films, but it has never been as difficult to ensure that this cinema is seen.

Here in Quebec, and in Canada in general, institutions have done tremendous work to reduce inequalities, especially in recent years, after movements like Black Lives Matter. Disparity still exists, but we live in a society much more willing to address it, and that is already a great step forward. However, in this process, we have also been transformed into categories. We have been humanized by being given space, but we have been dehumanized by being labeled. We are “diversity filmmakers,” but isn’t diversity the norm in the world?

In Colombia, where I grew up, difference was not only marked by skin color. We were different in many other ways: the neighborhood we came from, the way we dressed, our musical tastes, our talent for sports, the “smart” group at school, the more disciplined ones, popularity, the way we spoke, or even how we behaved in public. We were from the lower, middle, or upper class; within the middle class, we were either upper-middle or lower-middle. We were left-wing, right-wing, Protestant Christians, Catholics, from this neighborhood or from that street. These differences either brought us together or isolated us, creating identities, tribes, forms of belonging or exclusion. We were not just colors; we were a multitude of shades that inevitably placed us either inside or outside of something.

I was born in Medellín in the 80s, during the time of the Medellín Cartel, a city so violent that we, the children, were trained by our own parents to throw ourselves to the ground as soon as we heard gunshots. This was not fiction. This was not cinema. It was reality. I grew up seeing violence in the streets and on television, hearing explosions, seeing bodies with holes where faces once were. People who, in one moment, were full of life and, in the next, lay lifeless in the street, their bodies disfigured. Someone always arrived to cover them with a white sheet so that the curious would not see those terrifying images, but it was too late: those images were etched in our memories. Growing up in this context led me to become interested in what is most complex: humanity. This contradiction between who we are and who we want to be. The constant struggle between good and evil, love and death, hope and fear.

Today, I firmly believe the world is better than it was a hundred years ago. Even better than it was forty years ago, when I was born. We have progressed and regressed because utopia is impossible: every person on this Earth has their own, and if someone manages to impose theirs, then it will be the utopia of one and not the utopia of all that prevails.

Right now, on the verge of becoming a father for the first time, having lived in several countries, changed careers, and carved my own path, I understand the progress we have made. I understand the importance of talking about us, of making ourselves visible. But I also dream of the day when my cinema is not perceived as “diverse cinema,” but simply as cinema. When people listen to our stories and not our accents. When they see our films and not the color of our skin.

I wonder how long this struggle will last.

And I answer myself: all my life.❞

Jonathan Cortés

#MAINARTIST

Our organization is an artist-run center committed to supporting its community as a whole, without distinction.

Beyond the simple declarations of solidarity against racism following the events of the summer of 2020, but also against more recent racist acts and those that persist historically, it seemed essential to us to offer a place to our members so that they can express their feelings in the face of the discrimination they experience and which could be based on the color of their skin, their origins, their sexual orientation, their gender or a handicap.

We invite them to share their thoughts on this societal drama that constitutes all forms of rejection of the other.

Main Film is an artist-run center committed to supporting its community as a whole, without distinction, in the creation of independent film.

Our 32nd contributing artist is Jonathan Cortés.

#MainArtist #ArtisteImportant

Because it is artists who carry both the role of representing society and making it evolve.