Workshops in Bolivia

In 1983, in Atocha, in the south of Bolivia, a workshop is set up in a miners’ camp in partnership with the miners’ union. It aimed at creating an audiovisual network parallel to the miners’ union radio circuit, one of the country’s rare communication networks. The trainees were miners chosen on merit or on the merit of their fathers for their action within the union. Thanks to I.N.A., some of their films were broadcast on TF1 in 1986.

In 1984, Ivan San Jinés, son of the famous Bolivian film director, came to train at the Ateliers Varan in Paris. When he returned to Bolivia, following the closure of most of the mines, he brought the trainees from Telemayú to La Paz where together they formed the CEFREC, and began to make educational films for the indigenous communities of Bolivia. The collective later broadened its activities to include urban and rural areas. The collective is still operative today.