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Oscar Molinari

Oscar Molinari

Directing

Biography

Oscar Molinari Herrera (b. Rome, March 8th, 1941, d. Caracas, September 25th, 2017) was an Italian-Venezuelan filmmaker, photographer, artist and writer. Oscar Molinari was part of a generation of young filmmakers who the early 1970's maintained an avant-garde position in the cultural scene in Venezuela. In 1972 he writes and directs the short Ojo de agua (The Fountainhead) with which he receives the award to the Best Short Film at the Cadiz Film Festival (Spain, 1972), the award for Best Short Film at the New York Film Festival (USA, 1972) and a special mention at the Film Festival of Caracas (Venezuela, 1972). In 1973, after his return from Spain, where he established a life-long friendship with Salvador Dalí, he creates the Independent Film Workshop in Caracas alongside Diego Rísquez, Carlos Azpúrua, Carlos Oteyza and Julio Neri. Molinari was one of the founders and organizers of the New Venezuelan Film Festival (Festival de Cine Nuevo Venezolano). In 1974 he travels to Los Angeles, invited by close friend and actor George Hamilton, and enters the University of Southern California where he studies actor direction under Lee Strasberg and animation and editing with Alejandro Jodorowsky. Upon the completion of his studies, he returns briefly to Venezuela to direct his second short film La Bicicleta (The Bicycle). By the late 1970's, Molinari establishes himself in Mexico City and begins collaborating with Alejandro Jodorowsky by creating fotonovelas (photo novels) where Jodorowsky would write the text and Molinari would photograph the narrative. These fotonovelas were included in the popular Mexican magazine Sucesos where Jodorowsky was Chief Editor.

Known For

Borrón y cuenta nueva
10.0

Leonor Malpica (Mimí Lazo) is a woman in her 40s who works in a lingerie store, has a son studying abroad, a dog named Fifí and an excellent husband. Excellent, until one day she receives a disturbing phone call –anonymous, of course– in which the fidelity of Julio, her husband, is questioned. Without hesitation, Leonor decides to check with her own eyes that Julio is cheating on her with another woman. What follows is a whirlwind of crazy situations involving a maid who dreams of being the star of a soap opera; a bolero singer with two lovers: the pianist at the nightclub where she works and a prominent public official; the girlfriend of a television actor who introduces her suitor as her daughter, and a detective who arrives at the crime scene uncalled for.

Borrón y cuenta nueva

2002
The Orinoco Dam
6.7

After the accidental death of her husband, Dominique Vallorie agrees to take over the construction of an important dam on the Orinoco River. She does not know that by accepting to go to Venezuela, her life as a woman and engineer will change. Through a great love story she will assert herself despite all the pitfalls on the way.

The Orinoco Dam

1996
Tierna es la Noche
8.5

Tierna es la Noche is a film without bullets nor sea, without mosquitoes, without peasants nor flowers. It only contains a barman, a man and a beautiful woman who lives in a bathroom. For commercial reasons, we have included two policemen, a drop of blood and a multilingual nymphomaniac. For aesthetic reasons, a tear and a black man. For both reasons, the film takes place anachronically, during the fifties and nineties in a make-believe city called Caracas. It's a story of histerics, like all stories, unfinished.

Tierna es la Noche

1990
The Color of Fame
7.5

Magaly enters a TV contest looking for Marilyn Monroe look-alikes, pressured by her husband and a money prize of $25,000 to help them overcome their precarious financial situation. During the casting for the contest, Magaly meets Norma, her strongest and cheating competitor, a voluptuous version of Marilyn ; and Rossel, the sponsor, a well-suited millionaire who is sure about conquering her. Looking for an adviser for the contest, Magaly and Arturo find Hector, a transvestite that believes himself to be Monroe's reincarnation. He tries to do with Magaly what he cant do with himself as a man: to become the real Marilyn Monroe. In the process of becoming Marilyn Monroe, Magaly suffers an identity crisis that mimics the life of the mythical blonde.

The Color of Fame

2008
La Bicicleta
N/A

As a funeral procession advances through a dusty town in the Paraguana peninsula, a young man rides his bicycle through the crowd. A beautiful woman stands apart from the crowd and gazes in wonder as the young man rides away. A child, the town's fool and the woman go after the Bicycle, each character with his own motivation. Enraged with indignation, the men also follow the cyclist through the town and onto the desert seeking to kill him.

La Bicicleta

1975
When Pizarro, Cortés and Orellana were friends
6.7

An anthropological fable surrounding the clash of two cultures in the conquest of America.

When Pizarro, Cortés and Orellana were friends

1979
Ojo de Agua
N/A

Two days in the life of six kids who work for Omar, a dwarf, in a huge garbage dump outside of Caracas where they scrounge bottles, paper, cloth, and whatever they can find to recycle.

Ojo de Agua

1972
Karibe con tempo
9.0

An homage to the painter Armando Reveron, this is the story of a contemporary painter who chooses to live in isolation in a hut alongside the Caribbean Sea. Along with Claudia, his muse, he works using nature as his source of inspiration. Alfredo, a friend and art connoisseur, forces the painter to create a series of paintings for an exhibition in New York that aims at achieving fame and putting him on the contemporary art market. The film presents a tropical perspective of the dilemma between artist and the commercializing of his work.

Karibe con tempo

1995