The Chilean-Venezuelan director Ximena Pereira presented her documentary ‘The broken goddess’ at the Hot Docs festival in Canada, in which she starts from the figure of María Lionza and the vicissitudes of her statue in Caracas to reflect on the situation in Venezuela.
In an interview with EFE in Toronto, Pereira acknowledged his satisfaction that the medium-length film, after years of work, has been selected by Hot Docs, the main documentary festival in North America and one of the most important in the world, which ended this Sunday.
“I feel it as a recognition of a job that has been laborious and has taken a lot of time. A rather personal work done between people from Venezuela and Venezuelans who live in other countries. And being here opens up a space for me as a director and as a producer,” explained Pereira.
The director, born in Chile, but who grew up in Venezuela and has lived in Santiago for years, explained that despite the time it took her to make the film, “the point of view never changed.”
“It has always been that I am neither with one nor with the other and I want to talk about the breakup of a country with a look that points more towards not believing in the politics of division, which points more to non-violence, if you want to see it from a more discursive place,” he noted.
“Or to look at the confrontations as punishment for a society that ends up ruined and with six million migrants around the world,” added the director.
María Lionza is a mythical figure of Venezuelan spiritualism who has numerous followers, called ‘marialionceros’, who worship her, especially in the Sorte mountain, in the state of Yarcuy.
The medium-length film focuses on the statue of María Lionza, located in the middle of a highway in Caracas, its physical degradation, breaking and replacement with a copy. All this in the context of what has happened in Venezuela and Caracas during the last two decades.
“María Lionza represents the strength, femininity and courage of Venezuelan women to do things their way, without asking anyone. And at the same time she is a luminous character, who has an energy that transcends any type of terrestrial confrontation,” she declared.
“And I take her as a symbol to transcend any type of difference because I believe she is a reference for something indivisible,” he continued.
It is perhaps because of the complex symbolism that María Lionza has in the Venezuelan popular imagination, that Pereira’s greatest difficulty in putting ‘The Broken Goddess’ forward was convincing herself that “she could talk about María Lionza with absolute freedom.”
“That I could take it, recreate it and build it from my own truth and not have to worry if it was going to seem like I was more or less Chavista or more or less from the opposition. Or whether the Marialionceros were going to agree,” she said.
Pereira ended with a reflection on what María Lionza would do in today’s Venezuela.
“She can, as a wise woman, do her job, which consists of shedding light on the difficulties of Venezuelans. Be there and hug them,” she added.
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