JOSÉ NIETO Historian (Barranquilla, Colombia)

Appreciated editor of the magazine Correvedile, cordial greeting.

José Nieto Ibáñez was born in the city of Barranquilla the day December 1 1944. Their father, Julio Nieto García was cuban, son of Spanish with barranquillera; but your grandfather, on the part your mother (the captain of ships to vapor the river Magdalena, Francisco Venancio García I Frómeta); he was in turn an immigrated Cuban, when the wave of foreigners flooded the city and the Colombian Atlantic Costa.

The Father of José Nieto arrived from Cuba, in 1939 and he dedicated great part from its life to the publicity, being the creator of the signature "Orb Publicity", very important in the decade of the 50. Their mother, Zoila Rosa Caro Ibáñez, was originating of the municipality of Bolívar's Carmen and it was always a woman dedicated to the maintenance of its small home.

In 1962, amid of the Cuban Revolution, José Antonio is driven by his father to the Havana, where it finishes high school studies in letters and after some doubts he opts to enter to study the Degree in History, career that concludes in 1970. That same year he/she returns to Barranquilla, their native city; but when finding numerous obstacles there to work in their profession, he moves a Bogotá from where it undertakes a traveling adventure that takes it to stop to the Chilean capital. It remains in the southern country until the bloody military blow forces him to emigrate to Holland, in refugee's quality under the protection of the ONU, no without before to have known; although almost time, the patios of the jail of Rancagua.

In Holland he sits down residence during almost 14 years, enough time to procreate three children with its Chilean handcuffs: María Victoria Herrera.

The few years it began to feel the call of their homeland. He returns, in 1987, to Barranquilla and from 1988 he is devoted to investigate, under the auspice of the Foundation Patrimony Films Colombiano, the origins of the cinema in the city. In your earth natal 15 remains years, always dedicated to investigate.

And, as product of her, it elaborates 4 books. That is: "Floro Manco. Pioneer of the Cinema" (1997. Published for the Autonomous University of the Caribbean); "Genesis of the Colombian Professional Baseball" (1999. Published for the University of the Atlantic); "The Tragedy of the Theater Cisneros. Origins and Sequels" (Year 2000. Editorial Antilles), a work written in collaboration with gift Francisco Héctor de Parias Glen.

In the year 2003 return with their wife to Chile, remaining until March of the 2004 in the port of Valparaíso, city where studies studies of film script and with their professor's consultantship it elaborates "The Crime of the English Pension", script that competes in the Festival of Cinema of the Havana, version number 26. 

However, the weight of the memories of that happened in 1973 lo takes to travel to Spain in March of the same year. From then on, it resides in Seville where most of their time dedicates it to investigate in the General File of Indies, with an eye toward future works.

Lastly, in the 2005 temporally returns Barranquilla with the specific object of publishing: "Barranquilla in Blanco & Black". History of the Seventh Art in the city" (1876-1935). Take I

This work is the product of an intense work of investigation of several years, not only investigating the "Fund of Press", but in the numerous notarial protocols that rest in the Departmental Historical File of the Atlantic. For their extension this book has been divided in two volumes that embrace a total of 16 chapters and an annex.

This first one, which has been published by the acquaintance Editorial Improvements, in July of the 2005; contiene the following chapters:

1. - Barranquilla before the arrival of the Cinematograph.

2.-the Municipal Theater Emiliano Vengoechea.

3.-Ernesto Vieco Morote. Pioneer of the Cinema in Colombia, wrongly forgotten.

4. - it pauses Film. The Guerra of the a Thousand Days in local documents.

5. - the Cinema in Barranquilla (1903-1911).

6. - the Living rooms of Cinema (1912-1914).

7. - the National Company of Kinematógrafos "Universal". pioneer Entity in the distribution of the Cinema in Colombia.

8. - the Cisneros and The Colombia in their "Parallel Lives". (Primera time: 1914-1918).

9. - Floro Manco, Pioneer of the Documental Cinema.

The chapter first sandal one period that goes from 1876 to 1895, having these two dates special significance, because in the first one the Living room Fraternity was constituted and in second o'clock, the Municipal Theater "Emiliano Vengoechea."

Also, in 1895 it was given to know to the world the invention of the Cinematograph for the siblings Lumiére, in Paris, the beautiful capital of France.

It becomes necessary to clarify that we begin this book in date so distant, to have the opportunity to know, through old notarial documents, what it happened with the commercial movements of the local elites; to observe the romantic events of the protests of the ship captains, caught amid forces opositors in the war of the 85; to know about the desires of other youths (in chapter separated), to have theatre that he came to substitute to the more and more deteriorated Living room Fraternity.

In this first chapter we will also have the opportunity to know to important personalities as gift David López Penha Junior, Francisco Javier Cisneros, Louis Gieseken, Abraham Zacarías López Penha; the inheritance left by the "creso" barranquillero, gift Esteban Márquez, and other that will allow us to visualize better to the city until the moment in that they began to arrive, after the war of the a Thousand Days, the first itinerant cameramen, bringing on their backs the happy invention of the Cinematograph.

Already of the second the true history of the cinema begins from now on, in our city. So that the reader will know about the first rehearsals of film projection of hands of the samario, Ernesto Vieco Morote, grateful as the true one introductory of the cinema in our páises; beginning there with Barranquilla in July of 1897.

He will come closer to the history of the Theater a little more Emiliano, cultural missing enclosure, without pain neither glory, in the decade of the 30; he will know about the first cinema rooms installed in the small city, such as: the Fraternity, the Universal one, the Fifths, the Centennial, the Lebanon, etc; of 1912 hasta 1914, when the Theater Cisneros, works of the general Diego TO of Castro, and you begins the construction of the one that later would be a great coliseum, pride of Barranquilla, the Theater-circus-Colombia, in 1916.

You will be surprised to know that for Barranquilla the cinema didn't only enter, but rather the first company distribuitor of the new invention was constituted for the whole country: The National Company of Kinematógrafos * "Universal", founded October 28 1913 for the gentlemen: Abraham Zacarías López Penha, Carlos Martínez Aparicio and Georg last Strauss. Wll be able to know more than close to our pioneer of the documental cinema, ítalo-Colombian el ciudadano, Floro Manco, to who the author dedicates the chapter 9 of the book. 

This first take he has 451 pages and around 70 pictures in white and black.

For this year 2007, José planned Nieto to return to Barranquilla to the object of concluding the edition of the second takes, which will come to close the cycle of this history up to 1935, year in that he/she is still founded the existent, Theater Rex.

The author also has an entitled unpublished work: "The Cinemas of Barranquilla" (1933-1957) whose thread driver is the history of the numerous open cinemas that had the city; but of which we will write in another opportunity. Not without before to thank to the editor of Correvedile having allowed me to arrive to you, I say goodbye with greetings and awaiting new and positive encounters through this wonderful one half.

Cordially

José Nieto Ibáñez

(*). The term was conserved Kinematógrafo and non Cinematograph, because the word comes from the Greek Kine that means Movement.