Ava and Gabriel: A Love Story

Film

by Felix de Rooy

Details

Curaçao / 1991 / 103mins / Drama, Romance / Dutch

Gabriel, a Black Surinamese artist, travels to Curacao to paint a mural commissioned by the local church and falls in love with Ava, a teacher of mixed origin. When Gabriel chooses Ava for his model for the Virgin Mary, intense racial and cultural clashes are sparked.

About the Director

Felix de Rooy

Felix De Rooy was born in 1952 in Curaçao, the Dutch Antilles and was raised in Curaçao, Suriname and Mexico. He was educated at the Free Academy of Psychopolis in The Hague, Netherlands and received a Master of Arts in Film Directing from New York University in 1982. He is a visual artist, a theater and film director, curator and collector. He has won several film awards, including the Golden Calf in the Netherlands, the Paul Robeson Prize in Burkina Faso, and the Saul Yelin Prize in Havana, Cuba. He is an artist with a high degree of consciousness of his Afro-Caribbean identity, forthright views and the courage to express them. Transculturalism and the ways different cultures see and represent each other, are his subjects. De Rooy is a master mixer of visual languages and cultural influences. Learn More