Father Leonel Naranjo says that, at 82, “it has expired.” In Tumaco, on the other hand, they are sure that it is still more valid than ever. And it is true. Just a month ago, the father inaugurated the only cinema in the city. It’s called Nazareth Theater.
The film with which the room opened was Puss in Boots. “I had not seen that movie. The way in which the cat decides to take advantage of the last life that he has left is very interesting, loving and serving others. He no longer anguishes before death, but he lives doing good.
Every film has an educational background and that is what we want with this theater: that children and young people learn to watch movies and analyze movies. It is an art that helps one to think and decide many things”, says the father.
The theater is located at the entrance to Tumaco, in a house that 11 years ago was a motel. It was called Memories of Paradise. Now the façade is painted in curuba and there is a billboard that says: ‘the magic of cinema, films for children, young people and adults’.
“It will be difficult to transmit the magic of the cinema, but here we go. What happens is that the children of Tumaco did not get the time of the cinema, that emotion of seeing the premiere of a movie, because in Tumaco there are no theaters. So many generations do not know what going to the movies is, they believe that watching a movie is eating popcorn on the floor and no. At the Nazareth Theater we try to recreate the magic of the cinema as much as possible”, continues the father.
The theater seats 25 spectators, all nestled close together in a room of red chairs. He still needs curtains to guarantee darkness and an air conditioner for the heat in Tumaco, but Father Leonel goes ahead and in silence with what he has. He has always done it that way.
He was born in Manizales. In his youth he met the Discalced Carmelite Fathers and at the age of 19 he began the novitiate. He doesn’t quite know why he chose the priesthood (today he is a Discalced Carmelite friar). He had two options: go to work in Paz del Río – he had a signed contract – or the seminary. He preferred the second.
When he finished his studies, his community sent him to Medellín. There he worked with young people and joined a group that is still alive after 53 years: Mojuma. He translates the Manrique Youth Movement. Later, Father Leonel began touring Colombia, including Cali, where he arrived in the late 1970s to do social work in the Comuneros de Aguablanca neighborhood.
With Father Gonzalo Gallo, they opened a children’s home to care for children who were left alone at home because their parents had to go out to work. They also organized industrial clothing workshops so that mothers who are heads of households had a better income. However, drug trafficking and gangs began to grow and Father Leonel left the city, disappointed.
“The only alternative was to work with these young people by opening training centers. The boys got up to do nothing, they had no opportunities, and gangs began to form. I concluded that there was not much to do because the State did not want to support any training for these people. So, I went to Tumaco”.
His friendship with Father Gonzalo Gallo remained intact. It was he who proposed to open a movie theater. He even donated a 70-inch television. But the coronavirus pandemic arrived and everything was suspended. In addition, the television that Gonzalo donated was damaged by the humidity of Tumaco.
“Then the pandemic passed and a lady friend of mine, from Cartagena, donated us another television and that’s how we started again,” says the father, whose cell phone works as a landline. He always leaves that device on top of the dining room. He never puts it in his pocket. He smiles.
Cinema, he adds, is his way of resisting. In Tumaco life is difficult. Continue the violence. This week they killed two social leaders. Those who die are mostly young people. They also accustomed people to being given, to being assisted, and that causes values to be lost. Some do not go to the cinema because they do not give refreshments.
Father Leonel explains that in any case he makes a presence with the theater. Not running away is their way of helping, of accompanying. A shepherd never abandons his sheep. The next premiere of the Nazareth Theater, where the entrance costs a thousand pesos to pay for the energy, will be The Passion of the Christ.
Not running away is their way of helping, of accompanying. A shepherd never abandons his sheep, says Father Leonel.
Father Leonel with his collaborators
The cinema room has capacity for 25 people
