Profiles: Dunav Kuzmanich | Proimágenes Colombia

Director and screenwriter Dunav Kuzmanich was born on July 4, 1935 in Santiago, Chile, but he spent most of his career in Colombia. He died on August 9, 2008, in Santa Fe de Antioquia, Colombia. Today, thanks to the restoration of several of his films by the Bogota Cinematheque, the Audiovisual Arts Department of the Bogota institution Idartes, the Dunav Kuzmanich Foundation, Proimágenes Colombia, and the Colombian Film Heritage Foundation, we can once again appreciate Kuzmanich’s legacy.
 
After he was expelled from several primary schools, Kuzmanich completed his studies at a school run by the Catholic Salesian community. In his youth, Duni, as he was affectionately known, backpacked across South America several times, surviving by performing pantomime and practicing seduction as one of the fine arts. He was also well-known as a folklorist, under the pseudonym Jacinto Rey. Duni studied education, worked as a publicist, and fervently devoted himself to clandestine activities in the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), which led to his political persecution and later arrest.
 
Duni began his career as a TV screenwriter, short film maker, globetrotter, and payador (a singer of traditional ten-line verses). His first short film was Juan Maula y El Garrudo (1966), followed by the documentary shorts Desafío (1967), Transformación del campo y el campesino (1968), and Creación popular (1971), as well as the feature film Cuando amanece (1971). He was the writer for the TV program Primer plano, on the Universidad Catolica de Chile’s Channel 13 (1963-1964). Around 1971, he began working with the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende, and eventually directed several episodes of the film news program Chile en marcha (1971).
 
When Augusto Pinochet carried out his coup d'etat against Allende, Duni went into exile in Colombia. There, he worked as producer of the telenovela La bruja de las minas, by R.T.I. (1981); director of photography for exteriors and editor of the telenovelas La mala hierba (1982) and Amalaia (1982-1983); writer and director of the series Farzán; and director of Bastián y Bastiana: El secreto de Susana (1989), a documentary for Colcultura’s Aluna program. In the 1980s, along with Pepe Sánchez and actor Héctor Ulloa, he created, wrote, and directed the series Don Chinche (1982-1989), proclaimed by the newspaper El Tiempo to be the best Colombian TV series of the 20th century.
 
As a screenwriter, he wrote around 30 scripts over his career, including some that were never filmed and many that made it to the big screen. These include several short films from the period of Colombia’s first “surcharge” on ticket sales to support domestic film: Duni’s debut in Colombian cinema, Cadáveres para el alba (1975), by Carlos Sánchez; Esta noche de frío (1975), by Fernando Contreras; and Canoa (1977), by Carlos Sánchez. During the same period, he served as an advisor on the documentary La guaca (1976), by Lizardo Díaz, and as screenwriter and editor for El indio sinuano (1976). His later projects include the award-winning A Man of Principle (1983), which he co-wrote with the film’s director, Francisco Norden; San Antoñito (1984), by Pepe Sánchez, which Duni co-wrote with Sánchez; and Ship of Dreams (1995), which he co-wrote with Eduardo Machado and the film’s director Ciro Durán.
 
As a director, Duni shot five feature films in Colombia. His first was the award-winning Canaguaro (1981), written with Pepe Sánchez and Marcelo Romo, which won a special mention at the third Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana (1981). He later directed La agonía del difunto (1981), which he co-wrote with Esteban Navajas; Ajuste de cuentas (1983), co-written by Duni, Waldo Urrego, Javier Ponce, and Jairo Obando; El día de las Mercedes (1985), which he also produced, co-written by Duni and Antonio Montaña; and Mariposas S.A. (1987).
 
Duni’s credits also include assistant director and co-writer with Pepe Sánchez of El Patas (1978); general supervisor of El tren de los pioneros (1986), by Leonel Gallego; and production designer of Apocalipsur, by Javier Mejía (2006). He was also a professor of screenwriting, production, and direction at a number of universities in Colombia.