My Gabriela

It is impossible to distinguish fact from fiction in My Gabriela. The lives of Gabriela Samper and her daughter, Mady Lievano Samper, which are narrated in this novel, seem like the most finished work of fiction, but there is not a speck of invention in them. The characters are real, the events occurred as they are, and the places where Gabriela and Magdalena lived their incredible adventures are there. Everything in this novel is the transcript of the magic that impregnates the lives of certain people from their birth and makes them special, both in happiness and unhappiness. This is the case for Gabriela Samper, the mythical documentary filmmaker whose essentially romantic image is revived along with her earthly splendor in My Gabriela. The memoir is written by the writer and documentary filmmaker, Mady Samper (Magdalena's alter ego), who, with stylistic luxury and delicate poetic breath, traces the portrait of her Gabriela and the revealing panorama of that dark and yet luminous time, in turmoil, transformed by tremendous contradictions, among which Gabriela had the luck--good or bad--to live and develop her fantastic eye to discover in miraculous documentaries, such as Los Santisimos Hermanos, the realities that are hidden behind the apparent.

Enrique Santos Molano

Bogota, Colombia

November 2022

My Gabriela is based on the life of the author's mother, Gabriela Samper, a Colombian documentary filmmaker and one of the most important pioneers of the New Latin American Cinema. Gabriela Samper was a woman ahead of her time who took risks confronting an archaic society and endured ostracism and unjust persecution for her ideas. This did not stop her from fulfilling her career and commitment as an artist and filmmaker whose important films documented the identity and cultural heritage of the Colombian people and addressed the social transformation of a colonized culture. Her film The Most Holy Blessed Brothers was selected to be part of the collection of the film archive at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. During the sixties, Gabriela was part of a group of Colombian intellectuals who initiated the movement of Modern Theater in Colombia. She worked as an actress, producer, and theater director bringing the arts to children, countryside, towns, and villages where they had never seen the magic, color, and joy of the performing arts before. The story of Gabriela Samper, enriched by details of violence in Colombia and the rise of Latin American film and performing arts in the twentieth century, addresses the imbrication of art and politics during the Cold War.