Bellavista is much more than just a beautiful old hotel in Cartagena facing the sea in Marbella.
Its stories of more than half a century passed down under the shade of its trees, its colorful mosaics and its stray cats in the corridors and gardens, and the endearing and patriarchal presence of Enrique Sedo Talazaque, the custodian of its memories, have inspired novelists and filmmakers. has affected. , But the history of the hotel is also the life of the young Enrique Sedo and Madame Eugène Talzac, parents of Enrique Sedo, who fled a refugee camp in France, fleeing the ruthless persecution of fascism, to America on a humanitarian ship. Read here: “You have to do right to improve”: Queen of the Carnival of Barranquilla
An old hotel that has been an inescapable magnet for artists, poets, musicians, painters, filmmakers, etc.
They arrived at the port of Cartagena and fell in love with the beach in Marbella and began managing the Hotel Calamari, which was on a corner and was owned by Cuban Antonio Torrente. Very close to El Bellavista which was owned by a Belgian. Enrique and Eugene fell in love with El Bellavista and bought it in 1952. As proof of love even after war and death, she planted some rubber trees next to Eugene’s garden, which are still alive seventy years later.
Frank Marino was so impressed with the story that he began to interpret it both as a bloody novel and as a crude film. After enduring many incidents and adventures, certain about to die on the voyage, Enrique and Eugene begin an incomparable adventure to the rhythm of the waves in Cartagena: Bellavista. This time the history of Bellavista is filmed with the impulse of the producer of Cali Frank Merino, who directs the film producer and director Megahipopotamos Producciones of Cartagena Carlos Castro Mesia, who together with Frank directs and co-produces the film. We do. Canal Cultura de Cartagena; The screenplay is written by Luis Merino and Eduardo Rickerel. It may interest you: Saya Vergara, ex-IPCC director, takes direction of workshop schools
Music Direction by Jorge Borja. Jaime César Espinosa co-produces with Ochumare Transmedia and directs the animation. Simone Jaramillo co-produces audio post-production with Vinylo Estudios. The film is supported by the Ministry of Culture and will be presented after five years of filming at the Cartagena International Film Festival, FICCI, from 2018, which will take place from March 22 to 27, 2023.
From the very beginning, Frank Merino was clear that the story of Enrique Sedo and his persecuted parents during the Spanish Civil War and fascism in France was already a fictional plot for a thriller, love and intrigue film. Italian actress Roberta Sparta, accompanied by Jaime Salazar, producer Mónica Cuesta, maestro Ricardo Duque and director Carlos Castro Messia, were mesmerized to hear true episodes from the lips of Frank, who shared experiences in film workshops with young people. Cali and Cartagena, and came to Bellavista to point to the formidable magic that competes with dazzling imagination. And that magic is in the old hotel that has been an inescapable magnet for artists, poets, musicians, painters, filmmakers, and more. Celia Cruz passed by the hotel and sang in the shade of its giant rubber trees, whose roots are a sky of floating beards that caress the earth.
The film will be presented at FICCI after five years of filming from 2018, from March 22 to March 27, 2023.
Until recently, the great American painter Timothy Hall, better known as Tim Hall, lived there for thirty years with his wife Marelvi Peña from Cartagena and their daughters. Tim has to look again at the sunset from Bellavista in order to continue painting, despite the fact that he no longer lives there, but at the roots of light, the singing of the water and the purr of cats under the trees, every time he Creates a new canvas and feels the whiteness urged by Bellavista’s stroke of light.
The poet Raúl Gómez Jatin passed through there, the photographer Bernardo Machado and his wife Alejandra Patiño, who died in room 45, the French photographer Jean Paul Thomas, the Brazilian painter and mosaicist Aura Oliveira, the writer Pedro Badrán who wrote a beautiful story about Bellavista and his a novel set in characters and their natural environment; the boxer Tomás Padilla, el tiburón de Marbella, who dedicated himself to teaching swimming and was the eternal savior for those drowned at sea in Marbella; Italian fire sculptor and painter Paolo Biugiani, who still has a room and a studio each time he returns to Cartagena; theater artist Aparcio Vega, who, after the pandemic, revived an area for theatrical productions; Filmmaker Frank Marino who keeps Bernardo’s memoir album and Enrique Sedo’s memoirs, and this is where, now, other living memory passes, converted into a film in the initiative of a training school for new filmmakers in Cartagena It happens. Read here: Registration has begun for a free course on Human Rights at UdeC
Despite being closed as a hotel in the years of the pandemic, Bellavista has resisted dying, having learned the splendor of the stories of so many years at the bottom of the sea.
Something is always open and it is the hope that still beats in Enrique Sedo and his older sister, Monique. And in that tireless dreamer’s illusion is filmmaker and manager Frank Merino, with all his human and technical team who make possible this film about Bellavista, which is essentially a strip of living memory of Cartagena. .
Screenings of the film will be accompanied by photographic and artistic exhibitions of albums by Enrique Sedo and Bernardo Machado, and a vertical cultural day called Bellavista Vive, which will present pieces from the film in Eugène Talzac’s Jardín de los Cachos. The lives of many generations of Cartagenans have passed through the forty rooms of the Bellavista, but also the life of the city’s art and culture which have found this place a haven for peace, contemplation in front of the sea and, above all, sowing. ideas and works of art. Something like the love of Enrique and Eugene is still alive and awake, in the flowers that bloom at dawn and the beard with floating roots that dispel the silence.