Love is Strong as Death: The Antioquian Cinema of Luis Alberto Álvarez and Víctor Gaviria
Continuing the experiments of Buscando tréboles and his early shorts—often made in 8mm with friends as crew members, including Luis Alberto Álvarez as sound recorder—Gaviria worked entirely with a cast of young non-professionals for his first narrative medium-length film, Los habitantes de la noche. Produced by FOCINE, a short-lived but influential state-run production unit, the film tells the tale of a group of marginalized youths who attempt to rescue their friend from a mental institution, a story Gaviria shaped from the kids’ own testimonies. Moving through a nocturnal city by foot and on bikes, the boys communicate via a late-night call-in radio show familiar to all denizens of Medellín, “The Inhabitants of the Night.” Shot in situ on the streets, Gaviria heightens the real-world locations with subtly expressive shafts of light, hinting at the fairy tale neo-realism of later films like La vendedora de rosas. When it premiered on television in 1983, a time of heavy drug trafficking and gang warfare in the city, the film was a revelation: “With Los habitantes de la noche, a new Medellín was revealed to us amidst the safety of our homes: the characters in this story spoke like street people, their actions were as swift and tragic as the sidewalks of our adolescence” (Julián David Correa Restrepo).