Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ARGENTINA: Local Non-Actors in No-Budget Films

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 21 2005 (IPS) - "I was already old when I started out, but it’s my whole life," says Nélida Agustoni, 71, who has appeared in several films whose casts are made up of local residents of a small city in Argentina, and which are currently being presented at the Latin American film festival in Toulouse, France.

"I just love it, I don’t care if I have to appear in curlers or a night-gown. I have played a prostitute and a crazy woman on the streets, and I don’t have any problem with that," Agustoni told IPS.

She said she just played the best role of her short career: a dying woman in the film "Lo bueno de los otros", by Fabio Junco and Julio Midú.

The full-length film is the "star" of a series of seven films featuring locals from the town of Saladillo, presented as a novelty at the 17th Latin American Film Festival running Mar. 11-20 in Toulouse.

The film is also being shown at the 20th International Film Festival held Mar. 10-20 in the Argentine resort town of Mar del Plata.

The seven films were filmed by Junco and Midú in Saladillo, a town of 30,000 located 180 km north of the city of Buenos Aires.

Not even the mayor turns down an offer to appear in the duo’s films, even if the characters he is assigned make him look foolish or unpleasant.

Since Junco and Midú began to produce feature-length and short films and soap operas for television and the local film industry, more than 300 residents of Saladillo have appeared on screen.

But there are around 30 who are the filmmakers’ favourites, and the characters are almost tailor-made for the members of this select group, which includes Agustoni.

"I’m game no matter what. Now they’re going to give me the role of a nasty woman. I think I can pull it off pretty well. I already played a character who was as mean as could be," she said.

Agustoni’s home is also one of the preferred locations for the filming. "There isn’t a corner of this place that hasn’t been filmed," she added.

Junco and Midú, who were born in Saladillo, now live in the capital. But when they return every weekend to their hometown, they get a warm welcome.

Cranes and even patrol cars driven by police officers appear in the films, to make the scenes look real. Sometimes such a realistic climate is created that unsuspecting passersby are taken in.

"Once we were filming an accident. One of the characters was lying on the street, her face full of ketchup, surrounded by police cars and ambulances. Her real-life mother, Jenny, was pretending to cry beside the body, and the rumour that ‘Jenny’s daughter is dead!’ started to spread," said Junco, laughing.

In a telephone interview with IPS from Toulouse, where he is attending the presentation of the films, Junco remembered when his passion for cinema awoke. "When I was nine, the Marconi movie theatre, the only one in Saladillo, closed. And when I was 10 I discovered (Alfred) Hitchcock on television, which also marked me deeply."

In the late 1990s, he joined the adventure that Midú had already set out on in Saladillo, and together they started filming movies and soap operas with local residents on the weekends, with just a digital camera and a handheld video camera.

"The total budget is the cost of the cassettes," said Junco. "The ‘catering’ is what some of the actresses bring, to share with everyone."

The experience has changed the culture of the town. The Marconi theatre reopened in 1999 for the premiere of the duo’s first film, and has stayed open. Junco and Midú went on to study filmmaking, and have produced a total of 17 films so far, while many local residents have turned into actors and faithful spectators.

"’Lo bueno de los otros’ is the best thing we’ve produced, because you can see the influence of film school, but I believe that in the past five years, it is the local residents who have evolved the most," said Junco.

"At first, when we showed the films, they all laughed and applauded every time they recognised one of their neighbours, and shouted during scenes that had any sexual overtones," he said. "But now there is total silence during the showing, everyone is very respectful, and afterwards, they all turn into film critics."

The phenomenon has caught on in other small cities and towns as well. In October 2004, Junco and Midú organised the first "Muestra Nacional de Cine con Vecinos" (national exhibit of films with local non-actors), the second edition of which will be held Oct. 6-8.

The filmmakers were pleasantly surprised to find that people in many parts of Argentina, with just a handheld camera and no economic support, were coming up with good results recruiting family members, friends and neighbours to appear in their amateur films.

But these virtually no-budget productions made their leap to the international scene with a documentary by Argentine filmmaker Alberto Yaccelini, "Los de Saladillo" (The People of Saladillo), where the local residents talk about their experiences in working with Junco and Midú.

"That’s how I found out that for a lot of people in Saladillo, this was like a kind of therapy, something they eagerly awaited," said Junco.

"No one ever told us directly, but it became a community-strengthening phenomenon, even though that wasn’t one of our goals. We just wanted to film," he added.

That documentary is to be shown in April at the Independent Film Festival in Buenos Aires.

Junco and Midú are getting ready to begin shooting their first film that will have financing from Argentina’s National Film Institute, which will star two professional actors, along with the residents of Saladillo.

"For us it is important to show that actors can work with ‘non-actors’. I’m not of the opinion that locals can be the salvation of the filmmaking industry, but with some screenplays, actors do a really stilted, artificial job, and it would be better to call on local people," said Junco.

The idea has been successfully adopted by Argentine filmmakers like Pablo Trapero ("Familia rodante"), whose own grandmother is among his favourite "actors", Carlos Sorín ("Historias mínimas"), who began to use non-actors in advertising productions, and Raúl Perrone, director of "Pajaritos", a budget-less film.

Professional actors and local non-actors even worked together in many scenes in "Motorcycle Diaries", a movie about a South American journey by a young man who would later become the legendary Argentine-Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

In the multi-country co-production, produced by Robert Redford and directed by Brazilian director Walter Salles, the main characters were played by well-known actors, but many other roles went to locals in each area where the shooting took place.

"Today, audiences are seeking a bit of reality along with a bit of magic," said Junco.