U.S. HISPANIC
Camino Films: We aim to position Dominican cinema abroad and to soon produce a documentary and a comedy
Miryana Márquez| 22 de marzo de 2023
Eddy Jimenez de Camino Films
The Dominican production company Camino Films, and its distributor Camino Films Distribution, led by Eddy Jiménez, are aiming to support positioning Dominican cinema in other markets and on streaming platforms.
“In the Dominican Republic, some 60 films are made a year, but the local cinema network is not enough to show all those films in addition to the Hollywood blockbusters. Easily between 30 and 40 of those tapes remain on the shelves after their presentation at festivals. We are hoping to take them to stream markets in the US, Canada, and Asia, among others,” said Eddy Jiménez, who in addition to being the owner of Camino Films, is a director and screenwriter.
Jiménez debut feature was El Camino Correcto (2016), produced with “a low budget and a lot of effort.” The tape is currently on around 20 streaming platforms, including Canela, Pluto TV, Roku, and Tubi. Also in 2015, he directed the short film entitled See You Soon which was on Univisión.
In August 2019, Atraco Por Joder debuted, it was the highest-grossing film in Dominican cinema that year and was distributed internationally by Spanglish Movies, owned by Gustavo Aparicio. Also in January of that same year, the movie Cara a Cara was released, which is available on various platforms, including some from Olympusat and Plex.
Camino Films has the objective to make two productions between this year and the next: a documentary about urban music and a comedy film titled PopiWa.
PopiWa revolves around three regular friends who work in a winery and have fun playing dominoes and watching baseball games while dreaming of how to become nouveau riche. One day, watching the news, they come up with the idea of finding a capuchin monkey that escaped from some rich Muslims and collect a juicy reward.
Jiménez said that they have in mind the well-known Dominican actor Fausto Mata (Sanky Panky, Los Domirriqueños) to star in PopiWa and are looking for a Mexican actor as his partner.
The documentary involves a mobile urban music recording studio. Jiménez explained that 90% of urban music comes from the barrios (slums) and the intention is to take a mobile studio to Dominican Republic prisons where there is a lot of emerging talent in the genre, “to support them and record the whole process.” They already have the support of the Attorney General’s Office to have access to prisons and to hold a festival on the premises. “We are ready to record, we have the equipment, we just need financing. We are looking for a platform that wants to support us,” he said. The documentary would be 70 minutes long. Jiménez is the director and co-writer. The name of the documentary is still under evaluation.
