One of the most famous mediators between these two worlds is the Spaniard Gerardo Herrero, who has produced almost 50 feature films, predominantly by Latin American film makers. In his role as a director, Herrero for the first time concentrated on an East-West subject matter in his film TERRITORIO COMANCHE (1997), telling the story of a female Spanish star journalist, who travels to beleaguered Sarajevo. >globalEAST presents Herrero's latest work as a director, FROZEN SILENCE (2011), which tells a mysterious crime story against the setting of a “Blue Division” unit. During the Second World War, this special division of the Spanish army was authorised by the fascist dictator Franco to support Hitler's Wehrmacht in the war against the Soviet Union. ISPANSI (2010) by Carlos Iglesias likewise tells a story of incongruity and strangement in a distant country. The Spanish director, who lives in Switzerland, narrates the fate of a group of children and their custodians, who, during the Spanish Civil War, escape to the Soviet Union only to be caught up in the turmoil of the Second World War a few years later.
In addition to these historical connections, characterised, as it were, by war, other works demonstrate how Eastern Europe and the countries of Latin America grew together, yet without losing their respective idiosyncrasies. For instance, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs supports language courses for the Polish diaspora even in remote villages in Argentina. This is a little known aspect of relations between the East and the West, which results in unusual life stories between Poland and Latin America, as is illustrated by the documentary ARGENTINIAN LESSON (2011), a film noteworthy also for its excellent photography. With his camera, director Wojciech Staroń accompanies young Janek to provincial Argentina, where Janek's mother is to teach Polish for two years. The little village is poverty-stricken and subordinate to the vagaries of nature. When Janek gets to know Marcia, this is the beginning of a deep friendship that opens up for him access to this strange world. In GERMANIA (2012), Maximiliano Schonfeld tells the story of having to say farewell to one's second home. A Volga German family living in the Argentinian province of Entre Rios sells its farm to begin a new life somewhere else. This is a farewell to the everyday hardships in the flat landscapes of the lowlands and to a family tradition, which had begun in the nineteenth century with the immigration of Volga German settlers to North-East Argentina.
The Serb Goran Radovanović, who for one year has taught directing of documentary films at the Havana Film School, is likewise attracted by distant lands. In his home country, his indirect observations already made him a chronicler of the decline of socialism and the subsequent nationalism under
Milošević. In WITH FIDEL WHATEVER HAPPENS (2011) he embarks on a complex journey across provincial Cuba. A motorbike that sometimes fails to start up, a public telephone and the neighbours listening in, a journey to the workplace taxing the patience of the traveller: 52 years after the revolution, the glory of the old days is long since gone. What remains are songs conjuring up love and loss as well as the patience waiting for change to happen.
Creative partnerships between countries in Latin America and in Eastern Europe have been existing for many years now. One successful example is the cooperation of the Basque director Miguel Angel Jiménez with his colleagues from the Georgian Republic. Since 2007, Jiménez carries out his film making activities in Eastern Europe. His current film CHAIKA (2012) is the third cooperation with a production company from the Georgian Republic. It narrates a Russian-Kazakh family saga in the classical Eastern European tradition of story telling.
