Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?
I am Viviana Gómez Echeverry, daughter of two doctors. I was born in Cali, the capital of salsa and a drug-infested city in Colombia during the 80’s. I grew up in between drugs Traficant war, where life could be exchanged for cocaine or money. It is in this context, between violence and the joy of music, where I begun to explore the cinema with friends, in a response to the concerns of adolescence. I went then to study Social Media in Bogota and found my passion for the camera, so I travelled to Spain to specialize myself. After a couple of years in Europe, I returned to Colombia and got involved as a cinematographer in several documentary films. But the camera was not enough, I was interested in stories that portray life and wanted to show my point of view. I took the path of Direction and screenwriting as a quest to tell, within the film’s language, my own stories.
Your style in 3 words?
Stories weaves life.
What is your weakness?
I am a person who always questions the qualities of my work.
What is your strength?
I am a persistent person and have faith in what I do.
What makes you different?
I am a young Latin-American director and screenwriter that want to tell unusual stories in an unusual way in the Colombian Cinematography.
A few words about your work?
My work is about telling stories I carry inside and that allows me to communicate with people. Through a camera lens, a microphone, music and the way I put all this together, I can fragment the world and its characters to express myself and show my point of view about the beauty and cruelty of life.
What inspires you?
Human life is ephemeral, it is just a cosmic blink in universal history. That’s where my inspiration comes from, and also with the amazing complexity of people’s inner world and the intense feeling that it is to be alive.
How do your face uncertainties/Times of uncertainties?
Uncertainty is the daily bread when you work in the film industry, because making a movie depends not only on your idea and your need to tell it, but also on your production partner, the founds you win or not, the money you found for your project. When the way gets spiny, what I intent to do is meditate and breathe, repeating to myself that I do what I do for love, and that if I keep working, soon I will see the fruits. This is a long distance race.
Any new project coming up, you want to tell us about?
With Femme Fatale Films, the company I work with, we are developing a new project: a long length feature film called MERIDIAN 81, a story about the initiatory journey of a Spanish boy, who travels to the Caribbean looking for his father, and discovers a truth that turns him into a man. We have until now the support of the Colombian Fund for Cinematographic Development, and are looking for an international coproduction partner in order to accomplish it.
