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It was ours. We held the camera, designed the plot, edited...
We brought the ideas and invented the stories.
It's ours. Not a copy of anything mexican,
or anything from the US.
Behind the cameras of "Looking for Life"
First, we had to invent our characters and decide who we wanted to be.
So it's a boy, normal or not... does he like to play soccer?
Does he like traditional foods?
Stuff like that.
That's why I wanted to join. It was a chance to learn new things.
The most important thing for me is that we all had to help each other.
And I loved that we had to improvise everything.
The script was open.
That's better for the actor, because when you have a script, you think, "what will the character say?"
You're marking the character.
You put the character in a closed frame.
But if you improvise as we record the episodes,
"Why don't we do this? Or this?" It's such an improvisation.
I loved the way we invented on the fly.
Coming up with new characters, brothers and sisters we'd never though we had...
When I look at the results of the soap opera, it has the same logic as the theater we do here.
Because it is a narrative build from the drives of the kids themselves.
You brainstorm, and the kids gather things together and tear them apart.
They destroy it, tear it apart... but what matters most is they bring it into their own bodies.
Filming techniques are like math. 2+2=4, and you just have to learn it.
What really matters is the ethics behind it, this collective construction...
this way of being a dramaturge, of collective storytelling, of coming together,
To speculate and imagine, to conspire together.
We told the story and worked th camera all together.
It's not, "You do this, and you do this."
It was really built on teamwork. That's what I liked most.
You have the keys, right?
In theater, you have to make gigantic gestures so people can understand you.
But with video, you can make a small gesture, or just an expression with your eyebrow,
and on video, that says a lot.
I think it was tough for Arnold to learn to act in front of the camera.
Until episode six or seven, he was making these gestures,
He's playing a role in Shakespeare or Lope de la Vega.
And that's cool. He's a good actor.
But I think he learned a lot in this process.
You'll have to get a new room, maybe ask your mom for help...
When we started filming, it was great, and we were a couple of episodes into the story.
And I don't really know why, but Kati got mad and didn't want to come to Compa any more.
And she's the heroine of the story, one of the most important characters...
The most important character.
Kati was the most important in the telenovela.
I remember that day. We called an emergency meeting, "Kurt's coming in two days, what do we do?"
So we called an emergency meeting of our theater group, the Fulanitos, with Daniel.
And we explained that Kati wasn't coming any more.
So we invented a story: she was in the hospital, she was leaving...
We solved the problem with improvization.
I liked everything about the way I acted. No, I'm kidding.
I don't think I was acting.
I think that was me.
So imagine you have to play a rebellious girl.
That was easier for me, because it is kind of what I am.
I don't like it when people tell me what I have to do.
I'm always playing around and laughing.
That's why it was easy. But playing an older woman...
That would have been much harder.
There's some of me, of my personality, in that character.
Miguel is an interesting person.
The others told me, "Create a character so you can join in,"
I didn't know what do do, but because I was focussing on my studies,
I created a kid who's centered, who is the "guide" for the others.
The ***-retentive know-it-all of the group.
The other guys are all over the place, here and there,
So I was the one to say, "Let's reason through this, let's philosophize."
My family gave me a lot of the inspiration to create Amel’.
I wanted to play that character in order to show how people can change.
I want to inspire that change, people who are against it all, and then see differently.
But they don't change reading or anything,
but through personal experience.
For Amel’, it's with Pamela.
Friendship with Pamela, played by Janis.
In the midst of these changes, peasants and mestizos can live together.
I wanted to show how we can build that peace.
"Looking for Life."
Means that everyone is... well, looking for a life.
A life that's a little better, I think.
They want to do better, not to be like others who just stay there in a rut.
The girl who migrates, she wants to overcome, to study...
Looks for a school, meets new friends...
She tries to show that what matters isn't appearance.
That's it. Looking for a life.
Not some "Great Life," full of luxuries and money and stuff,
But that's it. And I think every character is after that.
It's a way of not being mediocre with yourself.
Because if you aren't going to look for it, who will do it for you?
If you don't do it for yourself, who is going to do it?
People all over Latin America use the telenovela as a way to think.
The categories of rich and poor, the struggle to survive, to overcome,
relationships between diferent people.
The day after an episode of a telenovela in Brazil,
people will say, "You're acting just like Flora, you're acting just like such and such character."
It's a way we have to think about the world.
But they are rich people's categories.
And I think all of you have created categories with which to think about life,
But they come from your experience, from El Alto.
I think the telenovela shows that people may do bad things, but they have a good side.
It's not like someone is all bad, all black.
We try to show the light side of the person.
It's not like normal telenovelas, with love and hate and betrayal...
I see it as more realistic
Showing more of what really happens in the life of young people.
In a soap opera, there is always a millionaire and a poor girl,
The boy, the girl, the villain...
What I've seen is that our telenovela is more realistic.
Now they are more creative, and they want to research.
They read more, research on the web.
They come with story ideas from their homes.
And they feel more secure, more confident about acting.
They say, "We know how, now. We can use the camera, we know how to act for it."
They don't say it with their mouths, but you see it in their attitude.