Chilean filmmaker seeks links with China

BEIJING-Chilean filmmaker Silvio Caiozzi says he did not expect that his work would be cheered and understood as it was in Beijing recently.

His latest feature film And Suddenly the Dawn was well received at the Beijing International Film Festival.

The three-hour movie, crowned Best Film at the Montreal World Film Festival in September, is set in Patagonia in Chile, where a man who has escaped from his native land out of fear as a young boy, returns in search of what he had left behind.

"I intended to explore the complexity and depth of human nature," Caiozzi said after the movie's premiere in Beijing.

The audience did not leave the cinema until after midnight, and posed a variety of questions on specific filming techniques.

"I am surprised by their knowledge and enthusiasm for cinema. They were intelligent questions," says the filmmaker on his first contact with the Chinese public.

"If one's work is able to reach out to so many people, regardless of where they come from, or what language they speak, it is a wonderful gift," Caiozzi says.

Since his last film Cachimba (2004), the filmmaker says he took his time to fall in love with the new story. What Caiozzi was looking for is the complexity of human nature.

"Such complexity is what we have in common as human beings," he says. "The most wonderful thing about cinema happens when the viewer forgets that he is a spectator, and he becomes another character and gets emotionally engaged in the movie. That means the movie is well done."

Given that in China there are millions of movie lovers with a fervent thirst for better films, and Latin America produces works that continue to impress the world, Caiozzi says a wider collaboration between the two sides seems logical and natural.

"China is opening up to the world and eager to see how things are done everywhere else," Caiozzi says. "So, there is a possibility for coproductions, talent encounters and film exchanges."

He sees the likelihood of a "swap" mechanism to showcase a certain amount of each other's films every year.

"I'm going to try to push for the idea to get going," he says.

"In a globalized world where the human being is becoming more and more isolated, cinema is what brings us closer."