Violeta Ayala

Violeta Ayala (born Violeta Michelle Ayala Grageda; 16 February 1978) is a Bolivian-Australian Quechua[1] filmmaker. She is best known for directing the award winning documentaries Cocaine Prison[2](2017), The Fight[3](2017), The Bolivian Case[4](2015) and Stolen[5](2009). In Dec 2020, it was announced Ayala would premiere her first Virtual Reality animation Prison X – The Devil & The Sun[6][7], at the Sundance Film Festival 2021.

Violeta Ayala
Violeta Ayala.
Born
Violeta Michelle Ayala Grageda

(1978-02-16) 16 February 1978
Cochabamba, Bolivia
OccupationFilm director, producer, writer, artist
Spouse(s)
​
(m. 2012)​
Children1

Film career

Ayala's latest feature Cocaine Prison was filmed inside San Sebastian prison in Cochabamba, by the inmates themselves,[8] giving a unique perspective on the foot soldiers of the drug trade.[9][10][11] Cocaine Prison premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017[12] and has won the audience award at the Rencontres Cinémas d'Amérique Latine de Toulouse.[13]

In 2017, Ayala also made The Fight, a short film about a protest by a group of people with disabilities that march across the Andes in wheelchairs and on foot for 35 days to the seat of the government in La Paz, asking to speak to President Evo Morales about a disability pension and were repressed by the police.[14][15][16] The film was released worldwide by The Guardian in May 2017[17] and has won a Walkley Award,[18] the Deutsche Welle Doc Dispatch Award at the Sheffield Doc/Fest,[19] as well as a nomination for an IDA Documentary Award[20] and was a finalist for the Rory Peck Sony Impact Award.[21]

In 2015 Ayala made The Bolivian Case, a feature about a high profile case concerning three Norwegian teenage girls caught with 22 kg of cocaine in an airport in Bolivia. The film was shot in Cochabamba and Oslo, premiered in the Special Presentation Program[22] at Toronto's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2015,[23] has won an audience award at the Sydney Film Festival[24] and was shortlisted for Platino Awards[25] and Premios Fénix.[26]

Ayala's feature directorial debut, the highly controversial documentary Stolen (2009),[27] that uncovers slavery in the Sahrawi refugee camps in south-western Algeria and in Western Sahara also premiered internationally at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2009.[28] The film accolades include Best Feature Doc at the 2010 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles,[28] Grand Prix at the 2010 Art of the Document Film Festival in Warsaw,[29] Golden Oosikar Best Doc at the 2010 Anchorage International Film Festival,[30] Best Doc at the 2010 African Film Festival in Nigeria,[31] Audience Award at the 2010 Amnesty International Film Festival in Montreal,[32] Best Film at the 2010 Festival Internacional de Cine de Cuenca in Ecuador[33] and many more.

In 2006 Ayala began her collaboration with Dan Fallshaw on Between the Oil and the Deep Blue Sea, a documentary set in Mauritania, about corruption in the oil industry, that follows the investigations of mathematician Yahyia Ould Hamidoune against Woodside Petroleum. On the same subject Ayala co-wrote Slick Operator[29] an article published in the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald.

Ayala is an alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab,[30] the Berlinale Talent Campus, HotDocs Forum, Britdoc Good Pitch, IFP[31] and a Sundance[32] and Tribeca Film Institute[33] Fellow. Ayala has given masterclasses at the National Film and Television School in London and at the Scottish Documentary Institute as part of the Bridging The Gap Masterclasses.

Since June 2013 Ayala has been invited to host a blog at the Huffington Post as part of 12 bloggers writing about the War on Drugs, that include Susan Sarandon, Arianna Huffington and Russell Simmons.

In 2018, Ayala received a Jaime Escalante Medal in a ceremony organized by the Bolivian embassy in Washington for her extraordinary talent in cinema[34]

On June 30, 2020, Ayala was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[35]

Early life

Ayala was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1978, the daughter of Fanny Grageda and Efrain Ayala. Ayala's maternal grandfather was the political Quechua leader Vitaliano Grageda,[36][37] He was one of the founders and a former Secretary General of the Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia.[38] Vitaliano Grageda was an active member of The Communist Party of Bolivia.

Her mother was a biochemist and had a pharmacy, her father immigrated to Sydney, Australia when Ayala was a child.[39] She has two half-brothers from her mother's subsequent relationship with doctor Roly Elias. She grew up in the south part of Cochabamba, one of the city's poorest areas.[40] Following her mother's death in 1995, Ayala immigrated to Australia.

Ayala is a graduate of Charles Sturt University where she majored in Broadcast Journalism. She worked as a journalist at SBS Australia. Ayala has lived in Australia and the United States and has dual Bolivian-Australian nationality.

Personal life

Ayala is married to filmmaker Dan Fallshaw, with whom she has a child, born in June 2016.[41]

Filmography
  • Proyecto Vila-Vila (2005, Documentary)
  • Between The Oil and The Deep Blue Sea (2005, Documentary)
  • Stolen (2009, Documentary)
  • The Bolivian Case (2015, Documentary)
  • The Fight (2017, Documentary)
  • Cocaine Prison (2017, Documentary)

Awards
Year Award Category Work Result
2018 Toulouse Latin America Film Festival

(France)

 Audience Award Cocaine Prison Winner
Artículo 31 Film Festival (Spain) Desalambre Award The Fight Winner
Tempo Documentary Festival (Sweden) Stefan Jarl International Documentary Award Cocaine Prison Nominated
2017 Ida Awards (United States) Best Short The Fight Nominated
Walkley Award (Australia) Best Cinematography The Fight Winner
Rory Peck Awards (United Kingdom) Sony Impact Award The Fight Finalist
Camden International Film Festival (United States) Best Documentary Feature Cocaine Prison Nominated
Festival Internacional De Cine De Oruro Diablo De Oro Best Documentary The Fight Winner
Festival Internacional De Cine De Oruro Diablo De Oro (Bolivia) Best Documentary The Bolivian Case Nominated
Sheffield Doc/Fest (United Kingdom) Doc Dispatch Award The Fight Winner
Festival Internacional De Cine De Los Derechos Humanos De Bolivia – El Séptimo Ojo Es Tuyo (Bolivia) Best Documentary The Fight Winner
2016 Ibermedia (Spain) Distribution Award The Bolivian Case Winner
Premios Platino (Uruguay) Best Documentary The Bolivian Case Shortlisted
Premios Fenix (Mexico) Best Documentary The Bolivian Case Shortlisted
2015 Sydney Film Festival (Australia) Audience Award The Bolivian Case 3rd Runner-up
2010 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles (United States) Best Documentary Stolen Winner
Art of the Document Film Festival in Warsaw (Poland) Best Documentary Stolen Winner
Anchorage International Film Festival (United States) Golden Oosikar Best Documentary Stolen Winner
African Film Festival (Nigeria) Best Documentary Stolen Winner
Amnesty International Film Festival (Canada) Audience Award Stolen Winner
Festival Internacional De Cine De Cuenca (Ecuador) Best Film Stolen Winner
Rincon International Film Festival (Puerto Rico) Best International Feature Stolen Winner
Rivers Edge International Film Festival (United States) Best Film Stolen Winner
Documentary Edge Film Festival (New Zealand) Best Documentary Stolen Special Jury Mention
Documentary Edge Film Festival (New Zealand) Best Editing Stolen Winner
Xv International Tv Festival Bar (Montenegro) Silver Olive Stolen Winner
Ojai Film Festival (United States) Best Documentary Stolen Special Jury Mention
One World Human Rights Film Festival (Bratislava) Audience Award Stolen Winner
It's All True Film Festival (Brazil) Best International Documentary Stolen Nominated
2009 Sydney Film Festival Best Documentary Stolen Nominated

References
  1. "Violeta Ayala". Brown Girls Doc Mafia. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  2. Ayala, Violeta (16 September 2017), Cocaine Prison, Mario Bernal, Daisy Torres, Hernan Torres, retrieved 22 May 2018
  3. Ayala, Violeta; Fallshaw, Dan, The Fight, retrieved 22 May 2018
  4. Ayala, Violeta (29 April 2015), The Bolivian Case, retrieved 22 May 2018
  5. Ayala, Violeta; Fallshaw, Dan, Stolen, IMDb, retrieved 22 May 2018
  6. "2021 Sundance Film Festival". fpg.festival.sundance.org. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  7. Spangler, Todd (15 December 2020). "Sundance 2021: New Frontier Program Unveils 14 Selections, Presented (Of Course) in Virtual Spaces". Variety. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  8. "'Everything in this conflict is about control': Violeta Ayala Talks 'Cocaine Prison' – Point of View Magazine". povmagazine.com. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  9. "Meet Violeta Ayala, the Indigenous Director Who Gave Cameras to Bolivian Inmates for 'Cocaine Prison'". Remezcla. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  10. "Bolivian Director Violeta Ayala on COCAINE PRISON and Demystifying the Narco Representation". Cinema Tropical. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  11. "'Cocaine Prison' Aims to Humanize the Drug Trade by Giving Inmates Video Cameras". Video. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  12. "Cocaine Prison". www.tiff.net. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  13. "Palmarès (2018) | Cinelatino". www.cinelatino.fr (in French). Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  14. "The 10 Most Politically Explosive Docs of the Year". No Film School. 27 December 2017. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  15. Ayala, Violeta; Fallshaw, Dan; Phillips, Charlie; Poulton, Lindsay. "Fighting for a pension: disability rights protesters in Bolivia face police barricades – video". the Guardian. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  16. Why are these protesters hanging from a bridge? – CNN Video, retrieved 15 May 2018
  17. Ayala, Violeta; Fallshaw, Dan; Phillips, Charlie; Poulton, Lindsay. "Fighting for a pension: disability rights protesters in Bolivia face police barricades – video". the Guardian. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  18. Meade, Amanda (29 November 2017). "Guardian wins Walkley for film on Bolivian disability rights campaign". the Guardian. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  19. "'City of Ghosts' wins top prize at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017". Screen. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  20. "IDA Documentary Awards 2017". International Documentary Association. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  21. "Rory Peck Awards – Episode Guide – All 4". www.channel4.com. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  22. Gupta, Shipra Harbola (26 February 2015). "Hot Docs Announces 17 Special Presentation Screenings". IndieWire. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  23. "Bolivian Case – Hot Docs". www.hotdocs.ca. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  24. The Bolivian Case, retrieved 15 May 2018
  25. "Eligen 7 filmes de Bolivia para Premios Platino". Los Tiempos (in Spanish). 14 March 2017. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  26. El caso boliviano (in Spanish), retrieved 16 May 2018
  27. Richard Kuipers (11 June 2009). "Stolen". Variety. Retrieved 21 June 2009.
  28. Richard (18 August 2009). "TIFF Talk: Additional Documentaries Announced". TIFF Talk. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  29. Kate Askew and Violeta Ayala. "Slick Operator". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 December 2010.
  30. Elnaz Toussi (16 March 2012). "Film Independent's second Documentary Lab begins in LA". Screen Daily. Retrieved 16 March 2012.
  31. Wissot, Lauren. ""I'm Tired of this Appropriation of Stories by Filmmakers from the West:": Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw on Cocaine Prison | Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  32. "EDN: Sundance Documentary Film Program announce grants". edn.network (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  33. Indiewire staff (28 April 2011). "TFI Names Winners & Grants for Tribeca All Access & More". IndieWire. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
  34. DEBER, EL. "Violeta Ayala recibe medalla Jaime Escalante y pide respeto al 21F | BOLIVIA | EL DEBER". www.eldeber.com.bo. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  35. "ACADEMY INVITES 819 TO MEMBERSHIP". Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 30 June 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  36. Redaccion Central. "Fallece Vitaliano Grágeda, dirigente de gran compromiso social de la Csutcb". Lostiempos.com. Los Tiempos. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  37. "Bolivia Daily Life". Getty Images. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  38. "Violeta Ayala, con el cine como arma – Diario Pagina Siete" (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  39. "Violeta Ayala, la cineasta boliviana que ayuda a las personas con discapacidad". ANF. Agencia de Noticias Fides. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  40. MACFARLANE. "Meet Violeta Ayala, the Indigenous Director Who Gave Cameras to Bolivian Inmates for 'Cocaine Prison'". Remezcla. Remezcla. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
  41. Wissot. ""I'm Tired of this Appropriation of Stories by Filmmakers from the West:": Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw on Cocaine Prison". Filmmaker Magazine. Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
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