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VAMPIRO NEGRO & THE RIVER OF GOLD

VAMPIRO NEGRO & THE RIVER OF GOLD,
Is a 46 minutes long Folk-Adventure Documentary.

The movie sets out to explore the legend of a famous Alchemist that lived in the deep jungles of the Peninsula de Osa in Costa Rica. This Quest takes us through a river of spiritual growth, following the stories of how “The most biologically intense place on earth" was created millions of years ago.

  • JUANCHO OTALVARO
    Director
  • JUANCHO OTALVARO
    Writer
  • JUANCHO OTALVARO
    Producer
  • PAULA MORA
    Producer
  • JUAN MANUEL ARTEAGA
    Producer
  • WILLIAN VILLALOBOS
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    45 minutes 57 seconds
  • Production Budget:
    12,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Costa Rica
  • Country of Filming:
    Costa Rica
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    DIGITAL + SUPER8
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - JUANCHO OTALVARO

Always on the lookout for new ways to create creative outlets, Juancho has been able to explore emotional experiences through photojournalism, and film, where he has found knowledge from different cultures around the World.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Vampiro Negro & the River of Gold was inspired by 6 years of visits to a region known for having the "most intense biodiversity in the Planet", located in the south pacific peninsula of Costa Rica.

With this project, we intend to create a documentary format that navigates between the thin line of mythology and imagination.
We initially started out capturing the fictional legend of an ancient Alchemist called Vampiro Negro, responsible for creating the natural landscape of what it is today "the most intense biodiversity place in the Planet". But as the crew got deeper into the jungle and further deep in the filming experience, everything evolved into a mysterious and poetic mood. The production was a stylization of our own imagination, and in the process, we began to realize that the legend we had written for the script; ended up being a parable to our own self-transcendence.
There was no directing, and for the most part, no planning. In a sense, we adapted a guerilla-style production, improvising on a daily basis where and what to shoot, depending on what the day before had lead us to.
The film-crew was composed by 1 cameraman, 1 camerawoman and 1 super-8 operator who shot relaying on motivation from the locations, and from individual inspiration of the script. There are no actors and what we shot, is as we saw: an emotional adventure.
This new consciousness defined the final look and feel of the movie. The use of video and super-8 film contrasts the jumps from reality to the folktale, while the use of still-35mm photography gives a photo-documentary vibe, but most importantly, helps widening the spectrum of imagination, aided by the narration which acts as the spinal cord of the story.