New Argentine Moviemaking by Richard Shpuntof

100-plus festival awards, great reviews and production costs to die

for Aren't these people supposed to be in the middle of an economic
crisis?
by Richard Shpuntof | Published March 23, 2004
The film was Pizza, birra, faso (Pizza, Beer and Cigarettes). You've probably
never heard of it, but it was the spark that ignited the New Argentine Cinema.
When it premiered at the International Mar del Plata Film Festival in 1997,
Adrin Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro's crude tale of a bunch of poor streettough kids trying to turn their lives around with a small-time robbery generated
more excitement than any Argentine film since Luis Puenzo's The Official Story
(La Historia Oficial) won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1986.
But the excitement of 1997 was a very different kind from the excitement of
1986. In 1986, Argentina was barely three years into rebuilding its democratic
society after nearly a decade of dictatorship and state-sponsored terror. From
1975 to 1983, Argentina's military disappeared as
many as 30,000 of its citizens, and when democracy was restored in 1983,
moviemakers embarked on a mission. Films like Hctor Olivera's Funny Dirty
Little War and Fernando Pino Solanas' Tangos, the Exile of Gardel weren't
mere movies. They sought to recover a stolen history.
By 1997 a new generation of moviemakers was facing a new set of challenges.
Under the weight of an enormous national debt (another legacy of the
dictatorship), Argentina's economy had spiraled into hyperinflation in 1989,
and unemploymentespecially among young adults reached an all-time
high. What little money there was for film was going to older, more established
moviemakers, and even there the results were depressing. Sergio Wolf, film
critic and documentarian, details the fall: If we are speaking about the key
filmmakers, Luis Puenzo had a flop with Old Gringo (starring Gregory Peck and
Jane Fonda); Carlos Sorin had a flop with Eversmile, New Jersey (with Daniel
Day Lewis); Solanas' The South, likewise. Adolfo Aristarain had moved to Spain
to film, and Maria Luisa Bemberg was filming one of her last pictures and was
already quite old. Worse, Argentine movies had become stiff, mannered and
clichd.
In contrast, Pizza, birra, faso (though nowhere near as strong as Caetano's solo
follow-up, Bolivia), had the three ingredients that represented a break with the
old Argentine cinema: dynamic camerawork, an unmannered style using
mostly non-actors and dialogue that could have rolled off the lips of people on
the street rather than the tip of a writer's pen.

But Caetano and Stagnaro had not entered unchartered territory.

Local underground hero Ral Perrone had already made 10
features on video, and Martn Rejtman, whom many consider the
first director of New Argentine Cinema, had enjoyed critical
success with Rapado. But the first to garner awards, receive
positive reviews and actually bring moviegoers to the theater
was Pizza, birra, faso.
Ricardo
Darin,
The film's very title generated excitement among young
audiences. With its use of local slang rather than proper Spanish Norman
Aleandro
(birra instead of cerveza for beer, faso which means
and Hector
cigarette, or joint to anyone under 30), it suggested
Alterio in
something exciting, something real, something of their own
everyday experience. Add to this a pulsing soundtrack of cumbia Son of the
Bride
villera music and a tale of unemployed youth, and it was clear
(2001)
that something was happening here.
As Caetano went to work on Bolivia, a lean drama about an illegal Bolivian
immigrant who comes to Buenos Aires to make money to send back home, two
of his peers were already deep into their first features. In 1999, Pablo Trapero
completed Crane World, an eloquent portrait of a middle-aged manonce the
bassist for a one-hit-wonder band in the '70s, now unemployed, overweight and
separatedat a crossroads in his life. The following year, Lucrecia Martel filmed
La Cinaga (based on her Sundance Lab-winning screenplay), and raised the
stakes for New Argentine Cinema. La Cinaga not only fit the rubric of the new
cinema, but it was both profoundly Argentine and displayed a high level of
technical virtuosity.
Between these three projects, Argentine films won major awards at Sundance
and Berlin (La Cinaga), Venice and Rotterdam (Mundo Gra) and Cannes
(Bolivia). Most importantly, these films expanded the local audience, sending a
message that this new cinema represented a diversity of young moviemakers
not just Caetano his followers. Eduardo Quintin Antin, editor-in-chief of El
Amante Cine and director of the Buenos Aires International Festival of
Independent Film, explains: What Pizza, birra, faso demonstrated was that a
young director could successfully make an important film that dealt with
certain issues and that brought different voices to the soundtrack, with a
certain amount of artistic freedom. But it wasn't anything that, in formalistic
terms, has had any continuity. There isn't a Pizza, birra, faso school.
A cursory survey of any handful of films shows the
diversity of New Argentine Cinema. Plots range
from a woman who becomes obsessed with
meeting others who share her name (Rejtman's
Silvia Prieto ) to a pair of punky lesbians who pick
up an overweight straight girl to prove their love
(Diego Lerman's Tan de repente).

The recent devaluation

of the Argentine peso has
made filming in
Argentina the best buy a
moviemaker or producer
could imagine

The influence of New Argentine Cinema's realistic dialogue and production

styles can be seen in films like Fabin Bielinsky's Nine Queens, which did very
well at the U.S. box office and is currently being remade in the U.S. by Gregory
Jacobs as Criminal, as well as in Juan Jos Campanella's Oscar-nominated Son
of the Bride.
Of Carlos Sorin, whose Minimal Stories swept festival prizes in Europe and Latin
America and is coming to U.S. theaters later this year, Wolf says: There was
definitely a change. Compared to La plicula del rey, which was Sorin's first
film, Minimal Stories is a complete inversion. One is a megalomaniacal, gigantic
project to create the story of the king of Patagonia and the other is a minimal
story about a poor retiree in search of his dog.
New Argentine Cinema has also increased interest on the part of American
producers in filming their own work in Argentina. Faye Dunaway, who wrapped
Jennifer's Shadow in Buenos Aires this past September, told Le Nacion she was
attracted to the project because she was very interested in the
innovative work of Latin American filmmakers.
In the case of Imagining Argentina, it was the cause of the
disappeared that brought director Christopher Hampton to the
country. Hampton first received the film's script in 1989, after
winning the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Dangerous Liaisons, and
campaigned for 11 years before finally getting support from
Myriad to make the film. When he arrived in Buenos Aires for the
first time, he was surprised at the city's European-ness.' Says
Hampton: I've been to a good number of cities in South America
and Buenos Aires is unique. It is a dreamlike, displaced city.
Moviemaker David Moreton first went to Argentina for a break
from pre-production on his second feature, Testosterone, and was
immediately taken with the city. Between the lower production
costs and the city's very distinctive look, he decided to rewrite
the script for Buenos Aires. Says Moreton: It has a great mix of
sophistication and a sort of sultry, sexiness that fit the film
perfectly,"

Diego
Lermans
Tan de
repente
(2002) and
Fabin
Bielinskys
Nine
Queens
(2000)
show New
Argentine
Cinemas
crossover
appeal.

Julia Solomonoff, an Argentine moviemaker who has been living

and working in the U.S. for the past seven years, has opted for an
Argentine producer for her feature-length Hermanas, which takes
place in both Texas and Argentina, because she feels the most
critical artistic decisions that I need to makethose places where
I can't compromise the film without weakening its emotional
impactwill be better nurtured by the kind of support and
freedom that a director gets in Argentina.
Further, the recent devaluation of the Argentine peso has made
filming in Argentina the best buy a moviemaker or producer could
imagine.

rolo Azpeita, who produced Herencia, winner of the first prize at the Miami
International Film Festival, gives a realistic idea of the costs: We made
Herencia before the devaluation for around $750,000. But if we had to do it
today, the total costfrom start to finishwould be somewhere around
$500,000. Octavio Nadal of Patagonik Films, which produced both Nine
Queens and Son of the Bride, says either of those films could be filmed today in
Argentina for around $800,000. In terms of production services, a film that
costs half a million below-the-line is our level of film... today's independent
filmmaker is an important client for us.
Axel Kustchevasky, publisher/editor of La Cosa and a programmer and creative
consultant to Telefe (one of Argentina's largest TV stations), makes an even
more dramatic claim: For $200,000 U.S., you can make a film in Argentina that
looks like it cost $1 million.
Even more impressive is that in 2003 alone, right in the middle of this
economic crisis, Argentina produced a total of 61 films that have, to date, won
over 115 awards in festivals internationally. In 2004 and 2005, almost all of the
major players are coming out with films: Martel with La nia santa, Trapero with
Familia rodante, Caetano with Despus del mar, Rejtman with Los guantes
mgicos, Campanella with La luna de Avellaneda, Sorin with Le chien, Puenzo
with La puta y la ballena and Bielinsky with El aura.
Ironically, with so much production and all of its success in Latin American and
European festivals, New Argentine Cinema is not well known in the U.S. While
the Film Society of Lincoln Center has been promoting these films since 1997
(bringing films like Rejtman's Silvia Prieto to audiences through their Latin Beat
and New Directors/New Films series), only now are some of these films getting
American distribution deals. Marcela Goglio, one of the co-curators of Latin
Beat, admits It has been a slow start, but points out that the audience for
Argentine film has grown enormously and distributors are finally taking note.
She confirms, a change is definitely happening.