1989

Since its first broadcast on London Weekend’s South Bank Show in 1989, Tales Beyond Solitude has become recognised as a landmark film biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the extraordinary, Nobel Prize-winning, Colombian author.

Structured around an extensive and exclusive interview, it won first prize for foreign documentary at the Latin American Film Festival in Havana 1989. Garcia Marquez, always reluctant to talk about his writing, called it his favourite film about his work, focussing the world of his stories through his passion for cinema.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has done more to popularize Latin American literature than any writer before him. However, little is known of his obsession with cinema, an uneasy marriage which took him to Rome in the days of the neo-realists, to Mexico as a scriptwriter in the sixties, and to Cuba where he became President of the Latin American Film Foundation.

This documentary mixes sequences specially shot on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Marquez’ inspiration for the imaginary world of Macondo, with clips from films based on Marquez’ stories - Tiempo de Morir, (Jorge Ali Triana), The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Fernando Birri) and Erendira, (Ruy Guerra) - and archive film which reveals the creative process of making these films. There are also interviews with two key collaborators, the celebrated filmmakers Fernando Birri from Argentina and Ruy Guerra from Brazil.

Director: Holly Aylett
Producer: Sylvia Stevens
Cinematographers: Mario Garcia Joya, Ross Keith, Copito Perez
Editor: Virginia Heath