Profiles: Jorge Caballero | Proimágenes Colombia

Jorge Caballero Ramos was born in Bogota in 1979. He received degrees in telecommunications engineering at the Universidad Javeriana in Colombia and audiovisual communication at the Universitat Oberta in Catalonia. He lives and works between Bogota and Barcelona, where he has served as a director and producer at Gusano Films.
 
In 2001, he began working at several different production companies as a programmer for websites, databases, and multimedia content. He made his first forays into the professional world of film and television with work on business and industrial advertising videos. After several more years of professional activities, in 2003 he joined up with Carlos Muño to direct the culture and entertainment TV show Elipsis for a Catalan regional television station. In 2004, Caballero met the artists Quim Moya, Alejandro Araya, and Laura Casaponsa. Together, they founded the Estràbic collective and created several video installations. It was with Estràbic that Caballero co-directed his first commissioned documentary, Historias de barrio (2005), which examined immigration and the city’s identity.
 
In 2005, he made the documentary Manresanos en el Camp de la Bota. He went on to create several other projects when he met the artist Francesc Abad, including Rotspanien, dealing with Nazi death camps in Austria. Together with the historians Joaquim Aloy and Pere Gassol, he co-directed the documentaries Entre el ruido y el silencio (2006), on the Franco regime’s bombings at the end of the Spanish civil war, and 20 años de franquismo, on the first two decades of the dictatorship in Catalonia. That same year, he directed the documentary La fosa militar de Manresa (2006) and the shorts Feedback and Equipaje de mano. While creating his documentaries, he continued editing, producing, and directing advertisements and museum projects.
 
In 2007, he decided to create a more personal piece, the short film La paradoja de Arrow, on the mechanization of daily life. His first feature-length documentary was Bagatela, a look at how misdemeanors are handled in Bogota courts. This film won him the Colombia National Documentary Award; the BAFICI award for Best Human Rights Film; a FEISAL Mention a the Guadalajara Film Festival; the award for Best Non-Fiction Film at the Mieres and Asturias Festival; and was screened in the official selection at festivals such as Cinema Du Reel, Malaga, and Oslo.
 
His second feature film was Nacer, a reflection on giving birth in hospitals. Nacer won him awards such as the Colombia National Documentary Award, the best film award at the L’Alternativa Festival (Barcelona), the best documentary award from a network of Latin American public television stations, best documentary at the UNASUR Festival in Argentina, and best project at Doc Buenos Aires. 
 
His third feature film, Patient (2016), has won support from the Tribeca Film Institute’s Latino Fund; an incentive award from the Colombian Film Development Fund (FDC); the Best Director Award in the Official Documentary Competition at the 56th Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI); the Silver Biznaga for Best Director at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival; the Best Documentary Award at the San Diego Latino Film Festival (United States); a Special Jury Prize at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in Mexico; the SIGNIS Prize at the CineLatino Recontres Festival in Toulouse, France; and a Special Mention at the Havana Film Festival New York.
 
Caballero is currently the expanded documentary coordinator for the Masters of Creative Documentary program at the Universidad Autonoma of Barcelona and has been a guest lecturer at several Ibero-American universities and festivals. He is now working on interactive and virtual reality projects and the development of his first fiction feature film.