Panamá Radio

Subversive and iconoclastic, surely unintentionally, with respect to the prestigious tradition of the Latin American memory documentary (mostly concentrated on larceny, dictatorships and great political ills) «Panamá Radio» offers 60 minutes of cordial and fresh remembrance of an era (the sixties up the eighties) and a city, and a nation that has changed a lot, for bad and for good, throughout all these years, especially the urban landscape surrounding the 5 de Mayo Square, which was the center of Panamá City.

While the viewers are informed, and inevitably compare the Panamá of before with its present situation, they also enjoy the charisma and the ability for fluid and essential conversation of the two main characters: Dora de Ángeles and Lydia García, two friends who worked at the music store called Panamá Radio, located on the 5 de Mayo, and who remember their youth before the camera, when they lived surrounded by music and the stars that visited the store.

Maybe I should have written that there are three main characters and not two, because the sympathetic duo of nostalgic but never melancholic old women is joined by the director, screenwriter and interviewer Édgar Soberón Torchia, responsible for evoking, from the first minutes, the reasons that encouraged him to rediscover this story of a record store that was much more than just that.

When talking about the main characters, and "the voices" that occupy most of the considerable body of references and information, it should be added that none of the sixty minutes of the documentary is dedicated to onanistic self-referentiality, so much in vogue in this kind of projects: the director points out the reasons that link his personal history with the subject of the documentary, but «Panamá Radio» is, in any case, neither a film about the director, nor it is only related to his personal memories or appreciations. Closer to this type of autobiographical meditations is the excellent feature film, also seen at the International Film Festival (IFF) of Panamá in 2019, «The Dry Season», in which Edgar plays, as an actor, a character that is very close to himself, and participates in several confessional scenes, closely linked to the aesthetic that animates that project.

«Panamá Radio» would not need intimate disquisitions, since the film is rather a fascinating juxtaposition of photographic testimonies, musical fragments and funny anecdotes certainly linked to the history of a place, of a barrio, and such a story is left in the hands, above all, of the two protagonists, two women whose contrasts of temperament and expression remember, with local spontainety, the "buddy movies" of the most acute comic spirit. They shore up the joyful heart of this privileged documentary, as well as José Alonso's effective cinematography, as he moves with equal skill while chasing his characters through the narrow streets of the old neighborhood, or when he contemplates them in the tranquility of their domestic spaces. Appreciable dexterity also supports the editing of Aldo Rey Valderrama, a professional who is very aware that the narrative rhythm and the codes of causality, characterization and suspense can and should also be found in documentary or testimonial works such as this one.

«Panamá Radio» is made with the awareness that solemnity and transcendentalism will never be the only ways to build knowledge and rescue heritage. Luckily for its many and enthusiastic spectators, the film, although made from the perspective of nostalgia and remembrance, is never tear-jerking or pessimistic, because it transmits, instead, some confidence in the values of the simple people, the people. As a result it also communicates the joyful feeling that culture and art can be created from the humblest strata of public servants, those who fulfill the socially cohesive function of entertaining the nation, and disclosing its great values, not only local, but of the entire area, as it refers to the passage through the famous record shop of artists from Cuba, Spain, Puerto Rico, México, and of many other countries.

If the Panamanian cinema is offering clear signs of progress, year after year, and it is possible to verify them in the IFF Panamá, we are in front of a work that is a remarkable example of such a boom and that also indicates a feasible way to continue with the essential illustration of the national idiosyncrasy and history. The most significant thing is that we can fulfill this important task by combining the simple and the wise, emotional warmth and intellectual maturity, the entire balance sustained by a grace that we should never tire of celebrating.