To Save and Project, The Museum of Modern Art's international festival of film preservation, celebrates its 11th year with two Argentinean additions, the restored 35mm prints of the directorial debuts of two of South America's most influential filmmakers: Martín Rejtman's Rapado (1992, pictured left) and Lisandro Alonso's La Libertad (2001).
Both restored prints by the Harvard Film Archives are a great opportunity to delve into the amazing world of the so-called Argentinean New Cinema which has launched the career of numerous talented filmmakers.
Rejtman's Rapado is the droll and melancholy story of two or perhaps three days and late nights in the life of a young man still stuck at home. The 35mm print presents what has now become known as the director's signature style: restrained camerawork, distilled dialogue and zero-degree performance style. “Rejtman’s legendary feature debut became an instant cult sensation, immediately recognized as an authentic, iconic harbinger of a new sensibility in Argentine and Latin American filmmaking," says the Harvard Film Archives.
Alonso's La Libertad (pictured right) follows a day in the life of a migrant woodcutter absorbed in his ceaseless labor and the sun-bleaches pampas where he works in unmitigated solitude. According to MoMA "the impact of Alonso’s feature film debut, and subsequent films like Los Muertos and Liverpool—with their beguilingly spare, sensuous, and enigmatic confusion of fictional and nonfictional elements—continues to be felt not only in contemporary Argentine cinema but far beyond."
To Save and Project: The 11th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, curated by Josh Siegel, will be held from October 9th through November 12th. Nearly all of the titles in the series are New York premieres and presented in their original 35mm or 16mm print.
