To Alejandro Legaspi it makes him laugh when he hears the word 'Caligula'. He knows that they refer to the now eternal nickname of his son Julián because of the series he starred in in the nineties, 'The Avenging Angel'. “He was 18 years old, he was a little boy,” he says today about his son. Legaspi (Montevideo, 1948) has an extensive career as a film director, editor and screenwriter, but has returned to the spotlight on the Peruvian big screen for Gregorythe film he co-directed with Stefan Kaspar and Fernando Espinoza as part of the Chaski Group and which became a critical and box office success when it was released in 1984.
Gregorio's original reels had to be traced to the Swiss Cinematheque, where they ended up after the bankruptcy and merger of the companies that previously stored them. Thanks to funds from the Peruvian State, the restoration began at the hands of Guarango Cine y Video, a Peruvian production company. The result is great: we could see the new tape and the colors are vivid; the image proportions, correct; and the sound, clear, far from the versions that circulate on the internet. We talk with Legaspi after a presentation to the media.
–In Gregorio's time, having a Peruvian film released was quite an event. Now, in 2023 alone we had 80 Peruvian films, now about four in theaters. How does that make you feel?
–Well, but, on the one hand, I think it's cool that there are so many movies and that's what everyone wants. A thriving national cinema, that makes a lot, that can make a living from cinema, that makes cinema. Cinema is a reflection of Peru, it is something that identifies us. That seems great to me. The thing is that, when there is a lot, the issue of what you like or don't like, what films you think are important and what don't, what films you think are good, do you like or don't like the films that are made? I mean, there are all those questions that I imagine you have in your head. So, of course, one could say, there are few films that interest me. That's my opinion. I see the billboard and say “that movie doesn't interest me.”
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–But, in some way, what we live today is not what the Chaski Group worked for? You fought to have a Peruvian cinema. Is this the dream of the Chaski Group?
–I don't know if anyone was working to create a Peruvian cinema at that time. Chaski Group was a collective, there were several people, and we can agree on many things, but each one has things on their minds. Personally, what interested me was telling stories that interested me, moved me, and that I thought could interest and move other people. I always thought that at the time and I think about it now. That for me is cinema: the possibility of telling stories that seem valuable and important to me. From that perspective, when I see the vast majority of films (today), I say “the truth is that no, they don't interest me, they are not stories that I would tell, they are not stories that interest me”, that is the feeling that I get. is left over. But it's a global sensation, huh? The same thing happens to me with cinema everywhere in general. And yes, most of the movies seem uninteresting to me, and sometimes I discover movies that seem very good to me. For example, Scorsese has begun to disappoint me, I prefer the Scorsese of 15 years ago than the current one.
–The Gregorio of the film lives in a Villa El Salvador that was the sandy area, where today there is a complete district, a city.
–That person that Gregorio saw (in 1984) as a young boy is today the father of a businessman from Gamarra. All of that thriving Peru of Villa El Salvador, of the Northern Cone, are the children, the grandchildren of that Gregorythe one who identified with what he saw.
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