Oceanía

Oceanía is Gerardo Vera's artistic and living testament.

It is the last project he produced before the coronavirus carried him off prematurely. It is undoubtedly the most exciting of the thousands of works he produced over the course of a career in cinema and theatre that spanned half a century.

Oceanía is the memory of a passionate life. It is the portrait of a country and an era. It is the autumnal gaze of an exceptional man who one day felt the need to put his life story down in black and white. Hundreds of pages in which he unashamedly depicted a reality filtered through the veil of memory: his privileged childhood, his family’s painful ruination, the awakening of his eternal love for cinema, the discovery of love, the torment of a broken heart, his political commitment, his hatred of his father, reconciliation through compassion. And the seed of the theatre, his true passion that accompanied him until his last days.

Oceanía is the result of a distillation of these pages in the form of a monologue. It is a text on which Gerardo and I worked shoulder to shoulder for months on end, whose final result, as presented here, filled him with pride.

Oceanía is a sincere and profound posthumous tribute from his family in the theatrical world, led by Carlos Hipólito who generously and without hesitation has stepped into Gerardo’s shoes now that Gerardo is no longer with us, and by José Luis Arellano, who took up the baton from his mentor and friend, to finish what he had started.

Oceanía is the keeping of a promise that I made to Gerardo shortly before he died. A promise that became an obsession for me, from that moment on.

Oceanía is now a reality, Gerardo, thanks to you.

José Luis Collado