Diario de Lima 4

Identidad nacional.

Pier Paolo Pasolini con un sadhu, en el rodaje de Appunti per un film sull'India. Exposición fotográfica en el Centro Cultural de la Pontificia Universidad Católica, sede central del Festival de Lima.

Los increíbles acróbatas de la calle.

Nada. Asfalto.

El legendario Polvos Azules, donde se alberga "la mayor cinemateca del mundo, donde te puedes llevar cualquier película que se te ocurra por un euro" (Javier Corcuera dixit). Me llevé 15 x 15 dólares (no euros), entre ellos, por ejemplo, 4 dvds con los cortos inhallables de Naomi Kawase. No eran habladurías. Corvcuera me contó que él siempre "dona" un master de sus películas a uno de los negocios de Polvos Azules, para que el dvd pirata de sus films salga con buena calidad. Muchos cineastas locales defienden la piratería, como un mal menor que en todo caso sólo afecta a Hollywood e, incluso, como una forma de generar una cultura cinematográfica amplia en un medio como Lima, donde, de otra manera, sería imposible ver todo el cine del mundo que está disponible en Polvos Azules.

El embajador de la República Argentina en Lima es Darío Alessandro (¿remember la Alianza?) que me invitó a comer en un lindísimo restaurant sobre el Océano Pacífico. Veleidades del cuerpo diplomático. Lo que podría haber sido un almuerzo "protocolar" se convirtió (gracias al instinto documental de un servidor, todo hay que decirlo) en una apasionante biografía política, mechada con pescadito peruano y vino argentino (de la embajada). Alessandro me contó su trayectoria desde los Montoneros, pasando por la JP Lealtad (el sector que se abrió de Montoneros por estar en desacuerdo con la via armada a partir del regreso de Perón al país), la vida durante la dictadura, el "grupo de los 8" de los peronistas disidentes antimenemistas, el Frente Grande con Chacho Alvarez, la conformación de la Alianza, la renuncia de Chacho y la caída de De La Rua. Ojalá lo hubiera grabado. Un tipo extraordinariamente lúcido y sincero, hoy medio "retirado" de la política, por desgracia. En todo caso, si decide "volver", se ganó mi voto.

La vista desde el restaurant, con surfer temerario (es invierno en Lima).

Donal Foreman, el periodista irlandés que me hizo una entrevista para Nisimazine, revista online de NISI MASA, European Network for Young Cinema (ver Diario de Lima 3). Juan Daniel Fernández nos filmó para un video blog que no sé dónde estará... El mejor momento de la entrevista fue cuando Juan Daniel, detrás de la cámara, estornudó sonoramente.

Los herederos de Eugenio Polgovsky, premio al mejor documental del Festival de Lima.

Foto que salió publicada en Vertigo, el diario del festival.

Diario de Lima 3. Interview: Andrés Di Tella

Argentinean documentary filmmaker Andrés di Tella is in Lima this week for a retrospective of his work and to sit on the jury of the official documentary selection. We talked to him about his style and philosophy of filmmaking.

In your recent films, Fotografias and La television y yo, there is an interesting mix of the autobiographical and historical. How did you arrive at this style of filmmaking?

In my earlier films, my personal subjectivity was transferred onto the characters in the film. For instance, my first feature documentary, Montoneros, una historia, is the story of a woman who becomes involved in a guerrilla movement in ‘70s Argentina. I could have chosen any number of people but I chose this woman - and I only realised this afterwards - because I saw something of her in myself.

In La television y yo, this becomes explicit in the way you compare the Yankelevich family with your own.

That film began with the story of Jaime Yankelevich, who introduced TV to Argentina: an immigrant who did well, whose life was crossed by politics which he benefited from, but was eventually ruined by. I realised that my interest in Yankelivich was in part due to unsatisfied curiosity about my own grandfather, another immigrant who made good, became an industrialist, and whose enterprise eventually floundered.

What interests you about this personal approach?

Often in documentary, the decision is to erase the filmmaker’s participation and just show a “window” on the world. I grew tired of this artifice. I don’t believe, for instance, that there is such a thing as an interview in a documentary. A documentary is a film just like any other film: there are scenes and encounters. And in those encounters the fact that I’m making a film is a crucial element.

In La television y yo, you speculate that “maybe this film was just a pretext for talking” to your father.

My father said things in that film that he had never said to me before. I think that’s something incredible that can happen with a camera, where people come out with something they’ve never said before in “real life”. There’s something about the recording situation that, given the right constellation of stars, brings out what wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

There are great moments in your films when you admit to being totally lost. Why did you choose to include this?

Obviously it’s constructed, but we make an effort to include a lot of mistakes and moments of doubt. I always have a plan, but I really believe that the best part of the plan is what fails. Our plans are so limited and pathetic, anything that reveals this brings us closer to the truth.

[Our videoblogger, Juan Daniel Fernández, sneezes.]

Bless you! This is the best thing that can happen: the unexpected. That’s life. And in film that’s what happens: you make a lot of deliberate, conscious decisions looking for an effect, and then you really don’t know what’s going to happen.

Donal Foreman

Nisimazine / A magazine published by NISI MASA / European Network for Young Cinema

fuente: www.nisimazine.eu