Following the grand jury prize at Sundance going to "Padre Nuestro," I wrote a news brief for the largest-circulation daily in Bogota, El Tiempo. The reporting was then gamely stolen and bizarrely credited to the Spanish wire news agency EFE. I guess I became a cross-cultural stringer there, with quotes I gathered listed "as told to" Matthew Fishbane. Other words and descriptions from my original article submission appear verbatim -- but from here what recourse would I have for attacking that theft?
Sadly, it's a tale of provincialism: that the producer of the film had lived in Colombia and written a film there as well as hundreds of hours of Colombian serial drama was enough to claim a victory for the country on an international stage. This was, after all, the gist of my report, with more emphasis on the Colombian-born actress in the film than on the producer. A few connections to the paper, a couple of emails, and all of a sudden the bridge is made. Some readers commented early in the day about the stretch, but their complaint is not that Colombian triumphs overseas shouldn't be celebrated, just that the triumphs have to be "authentically" Colombian. A gringo who spent time there is just not connection enough. But if the producer says his work was influenced by working and living in Colombia, then isn't that reason enough? It was reason enough for me to nudge into the paper.
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