Film Show 046: Theo Montoya

Theo Montoya (b. 1992) is a Colombian filmmaker whose 2022 film Anhell69 stands as one of the most accomplished debut features of the decade. Inspired by the parties he hosted at the now-defunct Club 1984—a space he created for queer people in Medellín—the film takes on the woozy atmosphere of a late-night DJ mix. When I first saw the film at True/False Film Festival in 2022, Montoya expressed his love for techno music twice in the post-screening Q&A, and describes in the conversation below that editing Anhell69 was similar to using the DJ software Traktor. Utilizing archival footage, Instagram feeds, interviews, and a diary of the making of the film, Montoya captures Medellín as he understands it: through tragedy and pain, but also glorious moments of intimacy and ecstasy. Legendary Colombian director Víctor Gaviria appears in the film, complicating notions of Colombian past and present, but so do “spectrophiles”—people who love ghosts—as a way for him to navigate queer desire, loss, and survival. Theo Montoya and I spoke via Zoom on June 4th, 2024 via Zoom to discuss his love of dance music, pushing back against mainstream cinema, and the making of Anhell69.

Joshua Minsoo Kim: What was it like growing up in Medellín?

Theo Montoya: That’s a very interesting question. I remember there being this sunny day while downtown. There were a lot of motorcycles and this very specific smell, this incense from the church. My memories now are in December. I remember these campfires, a lot of music, music in all the streets.

What would you usually spend your free time doing?

It depends when we’re talking about. When I was a child I was playing most of the time, and then when I was a teenager, I was watching a lot of movies, not just in the cinema but on television too. I know that I speak a lot about cinema in my movies, but there are only a few independent cinemas in the city, and to go to the cinema in Medellín is very expensive. It’s not something you can do often. The most popular way you can consume cinema is through television.

Are there any films you saw on television that were really important for you?

Titanic (1997) was a very important film. I was talking today with a friend, and once DVDs arrived, it was very important because I was always renting a lot of DVDs. Brokeback Mountain (2005) was a film I was renting almost every weekend. I loved the music. This was a successful business where you’d rent pirated DVDs. I think it was a very important moment for cinema in Colombia because we didn’t have Blockbusters. You’d pay one dollar to rent two DVDs for three days. I would rent films based on the suggestions of the owner of this DVD place. He was a mafia guy but by day he owned this DVD business. He had a funny name.

Do you mind talking about your relationship to music? How did it shape your understanding of film?

When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with electronic music. I listened to trance—normal DJs like Ferry Corsten and Armin van Buuren. As I grew older I listened to Richie Hawtin and that opened me up to many things. He was the owner of Plus 8, and Marco Carola was on there. I also liked Magda and Troy Pierce. From there I started to understand more about techno and minimal music. I explored Detroit techno and the pioneers of German techno. When I was in my 20s, I was listening to Stockhausen and started to make music on my computer. I downloaded Traktor and started planning parties with my friends. I was really into these plastic parties that Richard Hawtin was hosting—he was playing as Plastikman. I was very inspired by this concept even with Anhell69 (2022); you can see plastic at the parties.

Do you feel like making music yourself unlocked things about the creative process for you?

I never played with vinyl, I used Traktor. It’s very similar to (Adobe) Premiere because it’s all digital software and I was mixing and it’s not about the quality of DJing. It syncs for you. These older DJs were way more technical; with this it was more like a game. I was interested in mixing all types of music—maybe I was inspired by Stockhausen. And through Richie Hawtin, I started to learn about Ricardo Villalobos, who would play Latin music while DJing. I was in love with this concept of mixing different styles. When I started to make movies, it was similar because it was more about editing. My favorite part wasn’t just shooting places and people, but to have a concept appear from the editing.

There is a very interesting DJ mix called Balance 014 (2009) by Joris Voorn. He mixed a lot of different kinds of music, like thirty seconds or a minute of something and it was like a collage. When I was a teenager, I was more focused on music but there weren’t a lot of critics. I was in love with people describing music with all these descriptions that compared electronic music to spaceships and aliens.

Given your love for music, how’d you decide to make films?

I would say there are two important artists in my life. There’s Richie Hawtin—as a teenager, I’d even make drawings of him. There was a video clip of his music being played over a Tarkovsky clip, I think it was The Mirror (1975). I was also in love with Andy Warhol. I loved that he made movies but also had parties. Before I made movies, I was the owner of a techno club called 1984. I was playing and hosting these parties. I realized that as a DJ, it was easy to get lost… in Medellín, there are a lot of drugs, and I loved alcohol. I was drinking a lot and involved with everything.

Like Andy Warhol’s Factory, everything was silver. I was also inspired by Berghain—no phone, no pictures. I wanted to have a safe space in Medellín for queer people. I wanted people to go there who could hear everything, it would be more than just reggaeton. I remember I would play post-punk. People could take drugs, fuck, anything—it was a free place in the city. I remember it had a very beautiful rooftop. I have a lot of good memories with it. I had this club for one year, it was 2016, but I was hosting parties before this too. Anhell69 is connected with all these ideas; it’s a homage to all the parties we made. I met (actor) Camilo Najar at a Halloween party that I hosted. It was in a small house with friends and he was there.

What was it like when you first met him?

He was this beautiful guy. It was the first time he tried drugs—the first time he smoked weed and tried cocaine was there. The friends he made in his teenage years were people he met at this party, as he wasn’t born in Medellín. I didn’t pay attention to him a lot that night because I was playing music. I actually won a prize with a short film that I made, and to celebrate I had this party.

So this was before Son of Sodom (2020)?

It was a very bad short film for a local festival and they gave me money, and I invested it into this party. Early on, my idea of cinema was totally different—it was more about Andy Warhol’s vision. I wanted to create parties all day and to support short films with parties. It was about creating a movement.

So what happened after you stopped running the club and before you made Son of Sodom? Like around 2018 and 2019.

I went to live in Peru. I was very lost and didn’t know what to do. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) was very important to me. I wanted to be a DJ, I wanted to be an artist, but I also wanted to be a beatnik (laughter). I wanted to travel and so I quit everything. I’m making a movie now about this trip I made. I actually went to find someone there. When I came back, I started to make Anhell69. 

Son of Sodom is a precursor to Anhell69. Can you talk to me about making that?

I had Anhell69 in my mind at first, and then in the middle of it came Son of Sodom. I was thinking about how to make a film because my background was so different… I didn’t know a lot about festivals. I thought the future of cinema was through the internet because it democratized everything—I was making short films and putting them online. I thought festivals weren’t going to be important, but then I realized that people were interested in these things.

In Anhell69 you have the Colombian filmmaker Víctor Gaviria star in the film, and you’re also making a homage to other Colombian filmmakers like Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo. Do you think there’s anything distinct about Colombian filmmaking in general?

For me, this question of identity is very important. We’re in a moment where everything is globalized and we’re taking in all these cultures. To say that Anhell69 is from Colombia is very difficult. Our religion—Catholicism—is very Colombian but it isn’t originally from here. It’s like sushi. There is an adaptation of sushi everywhere and it’s different depending on where you’re eating it. Everything in this world is a mix.

What’s your relationship with religion? It appears throughout the film.

With Anhell69, I was trying to talk about this duality in society. Religion says no gay people, but all its images are very gay. I’m trying to point out these holes. We will say something, but in the dark, all these other things are happening.

Did you have a specific goal with Anhell69?

I felt that my film was going to be for young people and that it was going to be against colonialism. I said that my inspiration was an American writer, and Richie Hawtin is from Canada. I had these references that were outside of my country, and it was important for me to see my own culture. The beatnik generation exists in Colombia too but with other writers. There was Gonzalo Arango and he loved Kerouac and tried to send letters to him. So even if we are talking about local artists, these people also liked artists from other countries too. But the idea was that Anhell69 would be an invitation to research our own history. I knew young people would be interested in all these images and would want to look into Ospina and Gaviria.

With music, when you’re hearing a very specific sound, you want to figure out where it’s coming from. And from there you discover even more. There may be a DJ you hear but then you learn where the music he’s playing is from, and it may be someone from another country. It was very interesting for me to open this door and to invite the audience in, to show them other doors. I wanted one of the doors to be to Colombia’s past.

Part of this invitation is for younger people to understand the colonization of cinema. And there is a type of cinema that is the dominant form around the world. It’s Hollywood. Young people think the only way to make a movie is to make a huge blockbuster, or to make this very specific kind of film, but there are things that are closer to us. Humanity is dominated by the mainstream, and this is something we should be worried about all the time. We don’t want people to think there is only one way to think or make something—people need to explore.

Were you specifically trying to combat specific aspects of mainstream filmmaking when doing Anhell69? Obviously you have these interviews interspersed throughout the film alongside the typical narrative filmmaking, and then you’re inspired by someone like Apichatpong Weerasethakul as well.

I think I was trying to go against my city and the filmmakers from my country. I wasn’t just inspired by Apichatpong either; the shadows in my film were inspired by these mothers in the city who created these figures that represented family members who disappeared—this was because of the government. These shadows in my film don’t move during the day but at night they have red eyes and move and are fucking. It was this idea of giving pleasure to this city. When we hear these speeches about our country, we only think about violence and these disappearances, but these were normal people. They were fucking. And we need to transform this idea—Colombians are more than just victims.

What was the process of editing the film like?

It was connected with this idea of mixing in Traktor. With Premiere, it was like I was editing in many channels. I was just playing and playing and playing. I was trying to mix image with sound, and the sound is super important in Anhell69—it’s full of texture. All the cuts are connected with specific sounds, and there is an unbalance in atmosphere. I was playing with the editing a lot and I got lost because it was a lot of information, so I invited two other editors. I was working with Matthieu Taponier, who is a French editor, and Delia Oniga, who is Romanian.

It’s very interesting because many people talk in the film and especially in the sound design and editing too… it was very connected with the electronic music scene in Romania. There is an important Romanian DJ who’s on the soundtrack: Cosmin TRG. This film was a co-production, and there was this connection with the electronic and minimal music I liked in my teenage years. I discovered this track by him and I decided to put it in the film.

With editing, something I’m learning with the film I’m trying to make is that if you’re not confident with the thing you’re doing, when you watch the same footage you shot over and over again, it doesn’t feel good. Being confused is good, yes, but if you don’t know how to put everything in order when editing… Well, I am a person who wants to destroy and create new things all the time. And I don’t think that’s good (laughter).

Did that happen with Anhell69?

Yes (laughter).

So how did the film evolve over time?

I wanted to be very conceptual with the film’s point of view. I wanted us to be in the car, I wanted us to see this guy who is dead and to just see the sky. I had these strict rules where I recorded many shots in the city that are good, but I decided to delete all these moments because I wanted to follow this concept. But you have to remember this is like a game—you have to play more, you have to write and delete. But it can be frustrating.

I remember when I first saw it at True/False Film Fest in 2022, I was really moved by this constant juxtaposition between this loss of hope and optimism, of suffering and joy, of isolation and community.

The film is not trying to give an easy speech about hope. It’s trying to be objective about what is happening in this country, at least from my perspective. It’s about the nihilism of a generation, but also the history of humanity. We can talk about hope, but we look back at history and see how people keep repeating the same mistakes. I think hope is when you are awake; to be alive is to have an opportunity.

A lot of people think about the future with capitalistic ideas. People schedule their life to have a family, to have a house, and they’re planning in this way that is a result of society telling you that you need to reach these goals. The future becomes about saving money. But the movie allowed me to talk about other philosophies of life, of other ideas. I was very intrigued by Albert Camus. Camus said that one of the important questions of today is whether or not to commit suicide. And when you really talk through this, you can really live life.

Hope is perhaps not how we typically think of it. Hope can just be about living this day, and when you decide to do it—to not commit suicide—you’re living. It is a miracle to live. And the movie for me is about life, because it is about the miracle of cinema, too. Even though they’re talking about death and suicide in the film, we’re watching life as a maximum expression. And at the end of the film, my character wakes up—I open my eyes. I was thinking about resurrection, which is a miracle that can only happen in cinema. I was thinking about the concept of being alive and being dead… everything to me is more dual; there is not only one answer about all these questions we have. And the reality we’re living is crazy: there is a reality we see through our eyes and one we see through a screen.

You describe Anhell69 as a trans film. What does that mean for you?

I don’t really know, but I think this film allowed me to think about identity. We talk about gender identity, but the film itself is also a fiction and it’s a documentary. When you really understand a movie, you understand its territory and atmosphere. All movies have to play with their own codes, their own universe. My movie isn’t really what happens in Medellín; it’s my perspective. I have thought about gender identity for a long time, and the movie is me asking these questions. We were talking about Apichatpong earlier and in his film Uncle Boonmee (2010), he talks about reincarnation and a guy remembers that he is a princess. He’s mixing formats, styles of cinema, and all these other ideas too. But also, Anhell69 is trying to be aware of its own nature, and we have this voiceover to help people think about these ideas too. I think of Anhell69 as a song and that the voiceover is its lyrics.

I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you: Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

My legs (laughter). I was looking at them the other day and liked that they were long.

Theo Montoya’s Anhell69 is currently distributed by Grasshopper Film.

Thank you for reading the 46th issue of Film Show. Shout out to the Balance series.

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