Profiles: Juan Pablo Tamayo | Proimágenes Colombia

Juan Pablo Tamayo was born in Medellin, Antioquia province. Over his career, he has held a range of production-related positions, including co-producer, production manager, producer, field producer, and executive producer of numerous Colombian features and short films. With his company La Ventana Films, he also provides production services to international productions and consulting services to film projects.
 
Tamayo studied Social Work at the Universidad de Antioquia, at the same time as he was working as a producer on a host of fiction and documentary short films and videos. In 2004, he was awarded a scholarship by the Paris-based intergovernmental organization Union Latine, and studied Film Production and Financing in Madrid. In 2007, he was selected from among more than 160 applicants from 10 Ibero-American countries to study production in Panama City, thanks to a scholarship from Ibermedia and the Film Association of Panama.
 
Before his first experience as general producer of a feature film, Tamayo worked for two years as an assistant to producer Jaime Osorio at the company Tucán Producciones. Tamayo produced the documentary Negro profundo, historias de mineros (2002), winner of a special mention at the Bogota Film Festival and selected for the official selection of the Toulouse Film Festival in France. He has also had credits on the short films La Serenata (2008) by Carlos César Arbeláez, winner of an FDC incentive award in 2005; Carlos César Arbeláez’s La caja, winner of a grant for Best Unpublished Screenplay from the Medellin city government; and El otro lado (2011) by José Andrés Gómez, also winner of an FDC award. He produced Yennifer Uribe’s Como la primera vez, winner of an artistic creation scholarship from the Medellin city government and a short film incentive award from the FDC in 2014.
 
In the short film genre, he co-produced María Gamboa’s 20MIL, winner of the award for best female director at the Cero Latitud Festival in Ecuador; Best Director at the El Espejo Short Film Festival; and Best Actress at the In Vitro Visual International Festival, now known as the Bogota Short Film Festival (BOGOSHORTS). He also handled the post-production of Benjamín en Tecnicolor, winner of an award from the Medellin city government in the fiction short film category.
 
Tamayo's production experience includes work as field producer of María Camila Lizarazo’s feature film Music Angels (2008), produced by Clara María Ochoa (CMO Producciones), and as production manager and field producer for the co-production Of Love and Other Demons (2010), by Costa Rican director Hilda Hidalgo. He also produced Carlos César Arbeláez’s The Colors of the Mountain (2011), winner of more than 27 awards, including an award from the Film Development Fund; a grant from the Ibermedia program for co-productions; a Films in Progress Award at the Toulouse Film Festival in France; an audience award and a special mention at the first “Political Film for the 21st Century” Festival in Ronda (southern Spain); the Kutxa New Directors Award for the film’s director, Carlos César Arbeláez, at the 58th San Sebastian International Film Festival in 2010; and the Luis Buñuel Award for Tamayo himself, awarded by the Ibero-American Producers Federation (FIPCA) for best Ibero-American production.
 
Tamayo was also the producer and executive producer of Carlos César Arbeláez's second feature, Eso que llaman amor (2016), which earned an FDC incentive award for production and a post-production grant from the Visions Sudest fund in Switzerland. He was producer on the documentary Tengo una bala en mi cuerpo (2013), by Raúl Soto; production manager for the documentary Buscando al animal (2016), co-directed by Raúl Soto and Víctor Gaviria; associate producer of The Animal's Wife, by Víctor Gaviria (2017); and associate producer of Catalina Mesa’s documentary The Infinite Flight of Days (2016).
 
With his company La Ventana Films, he has provided production services for films such as Corazón de León (2014), by Emiliano Torres; Miguel Courtois’s Operación E (2011), for which he was also co-executive producer; and series such as House Hunters International, from Fox Life (2013–2014). He was also a production consultant for Carlos Triviño’s feature film The Silence of the River, winner of the Official Colombian Film Competition at the 2015 Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI).
 
With La Ventana Films, Tamayo develops audiovisual projects, provides production services to companies seeking to shoot their films in Colombia, produces films, and offers consulting for a wide range of audiovisual products. Ventana Films’s work is focused on the creation of production strategies and audiovisual industry paradigms.
 
Finally, Tamayo’s resume includes extensive teaching experience, including at the Universidad de Antioquia Audiovisual Communications Program (2006-2009), in the Certificate Program in Fine Arts Film; the production module of the Imagining Our Image (INI) Workshop organized by the Ministry of Culture (2008-2009); the International Certificate Program in Film Directing at Laudem Education Institute in New York, in 2014; the masters program in Audiovisual Production Design and Management at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and the Universidad de Antioquia; and the International School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Banos, Cuba.
 
Tamayo served as an advisor to the Film Department of the Ministry of Culture in the first half of 2010. He has been a member of the board of directors of the EGEDA producers association and a juror for festivals and funds such as the Film Development Fund (FDC); the Santander provincial government’s Provincial Program of Incentives for Artistic Production and Creation; the Medellin city government’s Creation Grants; the Seventh Santander International Film Festival (FICS); the 30th Oriente Film Festival; the Ministry of Culture’s Regional Production Grants for the creation of fiction and documentary short films; and the 13th Colon Workshop on film project analysis in Argentina (2012).
 
Last updated: November 2016.