August 2005

Rolando Klein's only feature film, Chac, developed a strong reputation through word of mouth in the mid-1970s. After graduating from UCLA's film school, Klein lived in Chiapas and Yucatan in southern Mexico for two years, researching, writing and directing Chac, a fictional work based on Mayan myth, in which the Tzeltals of Tenejapa were actors. Chac premiered at Filmex '75 in Los Angeles, and went on to win several awards: Belgium's L'Age d'Or, Best Director and Best Feature at the Virgin Islands Film Festival, Best Feature at the San Francisco Invitational Film Festival and more. Klein left filmmaking until 2000, when he worked for two years with a group of teen mothers in the inner-city of Los Angeles as they made a documentary about their lives and their children. Klein currently manages a manufacturing facility in New Mexico. Born in Santiago, Chile, he graduated from the University of Chile with a degree in industrial engineering.

"I must have been 11 or 12 when my dad let me borrow his 8mm camera to experiment with an unexposed roll of dated film. The cowboy movie that I shot in our backyard with its crude animated title sequence became a family classic and I was hooked for life.

It was fortunate to come of age at a time when movies, liberated by lighter camera equipment and faster film speeds, allowed crews to come out of the sound stage into the real world and a remarkable generation of filmmakers emerged. Godard, Fellini, Truffaut, Costa-Gavras and others inspired a whole generation of followers, me among them."

Screened by NMAI

• Chac (1974) director, producer, writer

Image credits: Rolando Klein - courtesy of filmmaker