Profiles: Iván David Gaona Morales | Proimágenes Colombia

Ivan D. Gaona was born in Güepsa, Santander on September 26, 1980. He attended high school in the city of Bucaramanga and earned a degree in engineering from the School of Civil Engineering at the Universidad Industrial de Santander. During his studies, he founded and led the “1905 Film Club” at the School of Engineering. In 2004, together with musician Edson Velandia and other friends from the region, he created the filmmaking collective “Miles Broncas” to explore the creation of short film in Bucaramanga.
 
That same year, after participating in the Ministry of Culture’s Imagining Our Image workshop, he entered the School of Film and Television at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he studied from 2005 to 2008.
As a college intern, he was chosen to work as second assistant director on Ciro Guerra’s feature film The Wind Journeys, where he also served as still photographer. He also edited the “behind the scenes” for The Wind Journeys and Rubén Mendoza’s The Stoplight Society.
 
Gaona worked alongside director Jacques Toulemonde as assistant director on several feature films, including Juan Pablo Bustamante’sLecciones para un beso (Lessons for a Kiss), Roa by Andi Baiz, and La Playa D.C. by Juan Andrés Arango. In 2011, he was the second unit director on the series El laberinto, from Caracol TV and Sony Pictures.
 
In 2014, Gaona directed two documentaries for Discovery Channel in the series Wonders of Colombia 2, produced by Laberinto Producciones. That same year, he joined the team of directors at the advertising production house Los Notarios.
Meanwhile, in 2011 Gaona joined forces with Diana Peréz Mejía to found the film company La Banda del Carro Rojo Producciones, which has brought to life a creative universe in southern Santander province by making one short film there each year.
 
These shorts include El pájaro negro; Los retratos, Best Short Film winner at the 2012 Macondo Awards; El tiple, winner of the India Catalina Award for Best Short Film at the 53rd Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI) in 2013; Completo and Forastero, which were screened in the Official Competition at the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, one in 2015 and the other in 2016; and Volver, soon to have its world premiere.
 
In 2014, La Banda del Carro Rojo Producciones won the Film Development Fund (FDC) incentive award in the first feature film category. With this grant, the production house was able to film its feature Guilty Men in the municipality of Güepsa and rural areas of the municipality of San Benito in Santander province; the film is set to open in Colombian cinemas on October 13.
 
In 2015, the production company received the FDC incentive award in the feature film post-production category for its project Güepsa, historias cortas de Santander, which combines its five short films shot in southern Santander province with additional material from the five years in which these shorts were produced. The project is currently in post-production. Finally, Ivan D. Gaona is now working with his company La Banda del Carro Rojo Producciones to develop his next feature film, Mujer primavera, with Diana Pérez Mejía as executive producer.