Biography

Thaelman Urgelles, born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, began to study psychology, art and social communication in 1965. Then he practiced journalism on sport and current news. Since 1973 he was part in a theater experience that took him to the cinema, first in little productions in Super 8 and 16 mm, educational and political documentaries and narrative short film.

His first feature was produced within the great film activity that made of Venezuela the third producer of feature films in Latin America. Co-directed with Carlos Rebolledo in 1977, Alias (El rey del Joropo), based in Edmundo Aray ´s Los Cuentos de Alfredo Alvarado, about the famous Venezuelan dancer and delinquent, whose life is the theme of a television program which tells his gruesome adventures and also discovered the contradiction of the television medium.

Then he worked as one of the most successful and praised Venezuelan directors. He produced and directed La venganza o que bella son las flores (1978), a satire about the real inequalities of the Venezuela society with Carlos Azpurúa’s plot and Mario handler’s editing, He also made La boda, maybe one of the best Venezuelan film of all time, with a wedding story in which its guests are a microcosmic representation of the nation, with its past, present and future, and the meeting of different social strata linked to thirty years of history, as well as the transition from the dictatorship to the democracy from 1950 to 1980.

El atentado (1984) and La generación Halley (1986), the subsequent Urgellés´s productions, always within the direction and screenplay practice, were more commercial. In that time, he also produced Casa tomada (1985) and Pacto de sangre (1988), both directed by Malena Roncayolo. From 1987 and 1990 he produced some documentaries and directed two miniseries, both for television. He participated since 1976 in the successful Venezuelan film institutionalization process: President of the National Film Author Association (Asociación Nacional de Autores Cinematográficos, ANAC), among others.

In 2000 he adapted to the big screen the theater play Los pájaros se van con la muerte by Edilio Peña, written in 1975.