Floating Below Politics
IRAN had its moment, Finland and Korea too. But at film festivals around the world these days, much of the talk is focused on Argentina and the emerging crop of young directors who have been winning prizes and praise from Berlin and Rotterdam to Toronto and Miami.
That flowering began here in the late 1990's and is still more an art-house phenomenon than a commercial one. Its most recent product is Lucrecia Martel's 'Holy Girl,' which opened in New York on Friday, and hopes to build on the momentum established by Fabian Bielinsky's 'Nine Queens,' a deft crime caper released five years ago (and recently remade by Hollywood as 'Criminal'), and Daniel Burman's poignant comedy 'Lost Embrace,' which had a successful run in the United States earlier this year.
Yet other than their age, their nationality and a proclivity for setting up their production companies in somewhat run-down buildings on the fringes of chic neighborhoods here, the new directors, ranging in age from late 20's to early 40's, don't have all that much in common. They do not share an aesthetic, the way the French New Wave or Brazilian Cinema Novo did, and some of them did not even know one another until they met at film festivals in Europe or North America. 'To call us a movement or something like that would be excessive, because it isn't that yet and I don't know if it ever will be,' Ms. Martel, 38, said during a recent interview at a bookstore and cafe near her home in the suburbs here. 'We've been nurtured by the same crisis, but that's about it,' she added, referring to the recurring political and economic turmoil that has characterized Argentine life for decades.
In both 'The Holy Girl' and her first feature, 'La Ciénaga,' Ms. Martel has shown an ability to make the ordinary seem bizarrely unsettling. In 'The Holy Girl,' the story, which Ms. Martel wrote, moves back and forth between a medical conference at a somewhat tatty provincial hotel and the sexual and religious conflicts experienced by the teenage daughter of the hotel's manager. It is as if 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' were being filmed by David Lynch or Luis Buñuel, two directors Ms. Marteladmires. On the other hand Pablo Trapero and Adrián Caetano, directors with whom Ms. Martel is sometimes lumped, have a marked realist streak. And Martín Rejtman, who has a parallel career as an Iowa Writers' Workshop-trained author of short stories, makes urbane, wry and slightly off-kilter comedies like 'The Magic Gloves' and 'Silvia Prieto.' Their dialogue-heavy films stand in contrast to Lisandro Alonso's two films, 'La Libertad' and 'Los Muertos,' which are almost wordless, relying on visual imagery for their power.
'I believe that Argentine cinema today is defined more by what it isn't than by what it affirms,' said Mr. Trapero, 33, whose best-known film is probably 'El Bonaerense,' a drama about police corruption released in 2002. 'What we have in common is that many things are excluded from our films, such as the notion of the omniscient discourse of a director who knows the truth and interprets and illuminates it for the spectator.'
Surprisingly perhaps in view of Argentina's turbulent history, there is also an aversion to overtly political themes in favor of more intimate and personal ones. 'Smaller stories and a smaller focus' is the way Mr. Alonso, 29, puts it.
Diego Lerman, for example, was born on March 24, 1976, the same day the Argentine military overthrew the Peron dynasty and ushered in seven years of brutal dictatorship that came to be known here as 'the Process.' His father was a labor leader and his earliest years were spent in hiding, moving from one refuge to another with his parents, a situation similar to that portrayed in 'Kamchatka,' a popular movie by Marcelo Piñeyro released here in 2002. But when Mr. Lerman had a chance to make his first feature at the age of 25, he chose to make the Argentine version of a road movie. 'Tan de Repente' ('All of a Sudden') tells the story of lesbian punks named Lenin and Mao who abduct a shop clerk and end up traveling with her to visit an ailing relative in a provincial city.
'Movies that try to be instructive or enlightening annoy me, because they divide things clearly and simply into good and bad, which is a lie,' Mr. Lerman said. 'Many of the people who criticize the dictatorship now supported it then, so to divide things up that way is a simplification and reductionism that seem to reflect a lack of intelligence.'
Yet the experience of having grown up under military rule is not entirely absent from these filmmakers' work. Ms. Martel, whose movies have been praised as lacerating portrayals of middle-class decadence and hypocrisy, said the impact of those years was reflected more in the underlying ethic and approach to making films than in the subject matter itself.
'During the dictatorship, we were children, living a reality in which the middle class above all denied what was going on, a reality that was sustained with great effort because there was no way to maintain such deceitfulness,' she said. 'To discover all of those falsehoods generated a desire to find truthfulness and credibility, whether in the stories we tell, the way we use dialogue or even in the way we cast actors.'
The film boom here is also a result, if indirect, of the economic crisis that flattened this once-prosperous country in the late 1990's, culminating in the collapse of the economy in December 2001. 'It used to be that in Argentina having a profession like that of a doctor, lawyer or engineer was a guarantee of a certain economic stability,' said Mr. Trapero, who was an architecture student before shifting to film. 'But that guarantee ceased to be true, and for me and a whole generation we decided that if a profession isn't going to guarantee me a future, well, then I'm going to do what I really want to do, which is to tell stories.'
The crisis has also had an unexpected impact on the financing of movies. With money so scarce in recent years, many Argentine filmmakers have ended up looking abroad for support -- whether to the Hubert Bals Fund, affiliated with the Rotterdam International Film Festival; the Sundance Film Festival; or Pedro Almodóvar's production company in Spain, all of which have been active in the resurgence.
Forcing directors to look outside Argentina for money actually has given them more creative latitude than if they were working with production companies based here, many of which are linked to television channels. In addition, since 1994 Argentina has had a so-called cinema law that imposes a 10 percent tax on movie tickets and video sales. The tax is meant to provide money for local productions, but some of the movies that have been most praised abroad have received only minimal support through this system.
'As regards numbers, many films do better in Europe than here,' said Lita Stantic, a veteran director and producer. Daniel Burman, the 32-year-old director of 'Lost Embrace,' goes even further: 'Movies that don't make a dollar here are the ones that sell best abroad.'
Perhaps that is because movies that do well in Argentina tend to be glossy and sentimental, featuring actors who are well-known here, like Ricardo Darín and Norma Aleandro. The newer crop of directors, in contrast, can be unsparingly candid in their assessments of society and behavior, which appeals to sophisticated moviegoers abroad who want to be challenged, as well as entertained. To save money, some of the new crop of directors have shot in black and white, or on weekends. Others (Mr. Trapero in particular) have also worked on each other's films as producers, editors or even cameramen.
One thing that all the young directors here have in common is scoffing at the notion that they are pioneers. Instead they emphasize that Argentina has a strong cinematic tradition, to which they feel connected. Back in the 60's and early 70's, for instance, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and Ms. Bemberg were writing or directing films outside the commercial mainstream that forced Argentines to confront the contradictions in their society. But that blossoming of talent ended with the 'dirty war' that culminated in the military dictatorship. When democracy returned in the early 80's, filmmakers felt that they 'should talk about important themes, with heroes,' as Mr. Lerman put it. The best example is probably 'The Official Version,' which tells the story of a military officer's wife who discovers that her adopted baby is actually the child of leftist militants who have been made to disappear. It won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1986.
'Coming out of the dictatorship, it was a tricky situation,' Mr. Rejtman said. 'Creating art is not a naïve occupation, and there is a difference between expressing ideas and creating art. My objective is to tell the story but not impose it, which is the opposite of what happened in the 1980's, when all the films were very explicit.'
With foreign producers and festival directors now turning up regularly at festivals here to scout for promising films and directors, everything seems to indicate that the current resurgence will continue and strengthen. For instance, Ms. Stantic, who has come to specialize in first films by young directors, is currently working with Lucía Cedrón, 30, who three years ago won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for a short and is now working on her first feature, 'Lamb of God.'
'I sold my film in countries that had bought 'Nine Queens' and so had become curious about Argentine cinema,' Mr. Burman said of 'Lost Embrace.' 'It's like a chain reaction. Once you generate interest in one place, it becomes easier to interest others.'
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