Featured image: Poster for the Alí Primera movie. Photo: YouTube/Humana Cine.
Three years of exhaustive research, nine months of production and post-production, 36 days of filming, 40 locations in three cities and five towns, and a technical crew of 111 professionals recorded the work of 777 actors and actresses to tell the story of Venezuelan singer/songwriter Alí Primera.
The feature film Alí Primera: La Pelicula (Alí Primera: The Film), produced by the Humana Cine production house and directed by Daniel Yegres, will be available starting Thursday, October 31, in all the country’s cinemas in memory of the artist and revolutionary on his 83rd birthday, 39 years after his death.
This biopic, according to a press release, has a well-achieved non-linear narrative structure that covers Primera’s childhood to his death. Yegres says the film was inspired by the way Ali himself structured his “Canción Para Acordarme.”
“It is a beautiful theme about Ali’s memories that does not have a chronological line,” said Yegres. “So, from that poetic structure, we wanted to do the same but in cinematic terms, with the structure of time jumps. It is a resource that allows the spectator to build his own chronology and gives more dynamism to the film.”
The work, more than a biographical film, is a heartfelt tribute to the leader of the “new song” movement who sought, through his struggle, to unite the artistic groups of the time with the historic project of empowering working-class people. Although Primera’s music is frequently referred to as “protest music,” Primera himself preferred to describe it as “necessary music.”
Primera was a member of the Communist Youth of Venezuela, the Communist Party of Venezuela, and the Movement for Socialism party. In 1973, he became involved in the electoral campaign of José Vicente Rangel in 1973. In 1985, at the age of 43, his life ended tragically in a car accident.
In Venezuela, he is known as “the people’s singer.”
March of the Red Carnations Commemorates Alí Primera in Caracas
Four actors played Primera in different stages of his life: Mervis Mosquera, Victor Manuel Amaya, Mauricio Celimen, and Eduardo Gonzalez (also one of the scriptwriters).
(Últimas Noticias ) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
