Panamanian filmmaker Annie Canavaggio finally released her first feature in 2014, the splendid documentary "Rompiendo la ola", shot in a poor community in the Southern sector of the isthmus of Panama. It is a fine combination of a sports film and direct cinema that shows the hard edges of Panamanian society through its three main characters. The film enters the lives, homes and inner thoughts of Cholito, Deivis and Oli, surfers born and raised in Santa Catalina, three men of African descent who love the thrill of the sea and its surf, and it reveals their hopes and hardships. In the 1980s I had the opportunity to travel all around that zone, doing theater in the communities and became aware of the conditions of poverty in which they lived. The surf was then for the locals, but vessels owned by the rich sailed around the area, as if announcing what was about to come. Today things have changed and, as one of the local boatmen says, it seems they will worsen with the sudden irruption of foreign capital among people of very low income. Cholito, Deivis and Oli are direct witnesses of that transition. Cholito, the oldest of the three, was the first to gain national and international attention for his surfing skills, but as the local and foreign rich competitors planted flags in Santa Catalina, his options vanished. As one Jamaican surfer says, tje sport now seems a game for the whites who, as they did with rock and roll, took surf for themselves and marginalized the "colored people" who created it. But such is life, and it is a fine thing that Annie Canavaggio chose to tell their stories. It has been a long journey in which they have been exposed to privation, elitism and social discrimination. Today young Oli has the opportunity to be sponsored by a firm. But don't take me wrong: the beautiful images by Vicente Ferraz and the action shot by surfer Bolívar Samuel in the water (with the GoPro camera held between his teeth, perhaps making him the first cinematographer to shoot with a "tooth-held" camera) make "Rompiendo la ola" a balanced work, one about a sport, spiced with all I have previously mentioned, as well as reflections and images of fabrication of surfboards, family relations, marketing, love and children and adults riding the waves. A beautiful, highly recommended film work.
