Barber/filmmaker finds muse in crime

Jackson Gutiérrez was trimming the hair of one of his regulars while the client shared the latest neighborhood gossip: A group of men on motorcycles had chased down a thief and thrown him off a cliff.

"No way," said Gutiérrez without looking up from his shears. "We should put that in the next movie."

Gutiérrez's first love is cutting hair. His second love is making movies. And Caracas' gritty Petare neighborhood has given him the opportunity to do both.

Gutiérrez, 30, cuts the hair of local arms dealers, petty thieves and regular street hustlers. It's cliché to say that people talk to their barber, but they do.

And Gutirrez has woven many of their stories into the 17 films he's made about crime, gangs and murder. His movies are made fast and cheap, and they're distributed by a network of sidewalk vendors who pirate the movies alongside the latest Hollywood blockbusters.

His breakout film "Azotes de Barrio en Petare" or, roughly, "The Afflictions of Petare Neighborhood," was finished in 2006 for $230. It was seen more than 1 million times on YouTube before being taken down and is thought to have sold hundreds of thousands of copies on the street.

"His movies are something of a phenomenon with the street merchants," said Carlos Caridad, a Venezuelan filmmaker who blogs about the industry. "If he had made money on those sales, he would be a rich man."

Gutiérrez seems unmoved by the recognition. Almost every day he can be found at Tazmania, his cramped one-seat barbershop that's tucked between scrap-metal stores in Petare.

On a recent weeknight, he was shearing "El Gocho," a former arms dealer who played himself in Gutiérrez's third film, "Azotes de Barrio III." Gutiérrez stars in most of his own films and often casts friends as extras. One reason El Gocho got the role was because the film needed his guns, Gutiérrez said.

"People have told me so many things sitting here," Gutiérrez said, patting his barber chair. His first movie was based on one of his customers, "Junior," who regaled him with stories about a pack of kids, some as young as 12, who were using drugs and robbing people in the neighborhood.

Lately, Gutiérrez has been collecting tales of vigilantism.

"Right now what seems to be popular is 'lynching' thieves. Just last month they burned some guy alive," Gutiérrez said. "That's the craziest thing going on right now."

"It's not an overstatement to say that Jackson's work revolutionized the way movies are made in Venezuela," Lopez said. "He just filmed on the street and told real stories that found a mass-market following without any film or television distribution."

Caracas is a mecca for true-crime stories. The city has one of the highest murder rates among major cities worldwide, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. And kidnappings are rampant. Locals say if you squeeze the newspaper hard enough it drips blood.

While Gutiérrez's films seem like rollicking violence-fueled capers, he said he hopes his work will open people's eyes to inner-city crime, and be a warning to the community.

"Many people blame the government [for the violence], but it's not the government's fault," he said. "It's the fault of our parents who have stopped looking through their kids' notebooks or asking them who they are spending time with or asking them why they got home late."

Gutiérrez's passion for storytelling comes as Venezuela is seeing a boom in national cinema. Unlike other Latin American nations, where Hollywood blockbusters often crowd out the market, Venezuelan theaters are required to reserve some of their screens for national productions -- lowering the risk for financiers. A decade ago, Venezuelan productions drew about 5,000 viewers a year, said José Antonio Varela, president of the Fundacion Villa del Cine, the state-funded film agency. Now, the country is producing about 20 feature-length films a year, drawing about 1.6 million viewers nationwide.