Civil Society, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

FILM-ARGENTINA: Local Characters Get All the Parts

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 3 2007 (IPS) - “I’d like to be offered the role of a madwoman some day, or of a vicious person, just out of curiosity, because I’m really not like that at all,” says Carmen Drive, a 56-year-old Argentine homemaker who has already acted in 18 movies without ever having set foot outside her home town, population 30,000.

Drive is one of filmmaking duo Julio Midú and Fabio Junco’s favourite amateur actresses. The young directors are behind a novel cultural phenomenon called “Cine con vecinos” (Film with Local Non-Actors), which arose almost as a game over a decade ago in the town of Saladillo, 180 kilometres southwest of the capital, in the province of Buenos Aires.

More than 300 local residents, including the town’s mayor, have joined in the fun of playing fictional characters, first in television soap operas, and later on the big screen. Showings of the new films got the local cinema re-opened, and they have also been screened in several festivals in Argentina and abroad.

The idea has been replicated elsewhere, attracted the curiosity and attention of critics, and caught the interest of television. Argentina’s state Channel Seven will show a selection of films in which local non-actors appear, in order to showcase a new, and highly varied, genre of cinema.

In recent years, these films have had a special section devoted to them at the festival in Toulouse, France, and also in film festivals held in Bolivia, Cuba, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United States and Uruguay, as well as in domestic and international film festivals organised in Argentine cities and provinces.

“They’re extremely low-budget films, shot with cameras of the sort that many people have at home for birthdays and parties, and the actors are amateurs who may be friends of the directors, or neighbours,” Junco, busy preparing the Fourth National Festival of Film with Local Non-Actors to be held Dec. 4-8 in Saladillo, told IPS.

As soon as the event is over, the movement’s founders will go to Cuenca, Ecuador, to lead a workshop on the genre, to promote the activity in the Andean country where a great deal of interest has been shown, said Junco.

The theme of the festival is “The Cultural Diversity of Filmmaking of Our Own”. The aim is to attract similar ideas being put into practice in cities and small towns in the rural interior of the country. “We received 46 feature-length films from all over the country, and we selected eight for the contest and eight for showing outside of the contest,” he said.

The judges, all distinguished filmmakers, are Lucía Puenzo (“XXY”), Leonardo Di Cesare (“Buena vida delivery”), Aníbal Di Salvo (“Los próximos pasados”), Pablo Meza (“Buenos Aires 100 kilómetros”), Lorena Muñoz (“Yo no sé qué me han hecho tus ojos”) and Fernando Spiner (“La sonámbula”), who have already seen the preselected pictures.

The prize for best picture is a professional “boom” microphone, donated by the National Culture Secretariat, and best director, screenplay, actress, actor and production will be awarded wood and aluminium statuettes made at the Saladillo Technical School.

“Puenzo was ecstatic, mind-blown by the material she saw, because she thought it was full of new ideas, new dramatic structures and an incredible authenticity in the acting, which was remarkably natural,” Junco said. He and Midú selected films for the show apart from the competition.

Junco said there was no more effective way than these films to record and broadcast how people speak in small towns in the interior of the country, which means they are of great cultural importance.

“The films short-listed for the contest were chosen by Hayrabet Alacahan, preselector for the Toulouse Latin American Film Festival, for their technical merit. But for the non-competitive screening we chose movies more for their entertainment value. Although they may be less artistic, we think they are more suitable for a neighbourhood film festival,” he said.

Some of the directors of the selected movies come from the Argentine capital, but most are from the provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Salta, Río Negro, Santa Cruz, Tucumán and Neuquén. Some directors are film students, others are amateurs, and even farmhands are among the actors.

The documentary “Las dos orillas”, by Argentine director Emilio Cartoy Díaz, will also be shown at the festival, and there will be workshops on movie production led by renowned directors like Nicolás Batlle, and special lectures on screenplays by Meza and on digital technologies by Rodolfo Hermida.

The organisers of the Saladillo festival will also be launching a foundation that will make them eligible for state funding, and enable them to promote their movies and to sign agreements with provinces, municipalities, institutions and foreign countries.

“At the moment we can’t do very much because we’re two individuals receiving a certain amount of support, but if we set up a foundation, everything becomes a lot easier,” Junco said.

Junco and Midú began as amateurs, and with the passage of time were able to study filmmaking. Their latest productions, which they consider to be their best efforts so far, are “Lo bueno de los otros” (roughly, The Good Side of Others) and “El último mandado” (The Last Errand). Drive acted in both these films, portraying very different characters.

“Actually, I’ve acted in nearly all the boys’ movies,” said Drive, who has a son and four grandchildren, and works as a nanny. “I think I should have been an actress because I really like it, I don’t feel at all shy. In ‘Lo bueno de los otros’ I played a longsuffering wife who was kept under her husband’s thumb, and in ‘El último mandado’ my character was that of a spoilt, rude maid.”

Drive is also acting in a soap opera, directed by Midú, which is shown in Saladillo at weekends. “Lots of people around here recognise me on the street because of the soap opera,” she said with pride. But although her long experience suggests she is well versed in acting, she admits that she sometimes “puts her foot in it.”

“We often laugh about what happened when we were filming ‘Lo bueno de los otros’. I went off to the hairdresser, and without thinking, I had my hair dyed a lighter colour and had a perm. It never occurred to me that we still had scenes to film. The boys wanted to strangle me, but anyway, I put a scarf on my head and hey presto, we finished the film.”