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BOLIVIA (Argentina, 2001, B&W, 75min. In Spanish with English subtitles) A timely and urgent feature, rich in ideas and sensibility,
portrays, through an intimate look at its characters, an Argentina
in a state of social emergency. The film was born from a story written by Romina Lafranchini. Made with a minimal budget, which required three years of discontinuous filming, the film is set in a bar that was made available to Caetano on different days and at different times in the lower-middle class Buenos Aires suburb of Villa Crespo. Although never able to film for more than three days at a time for budget reasons, the thread of the story is perfectly continuous. With asceticism and a power of synthesis which enables the director to give an ample human portrait of the characters, Caetano calls attention to the pressing social reality of a country in the brink of plummeting. tells the story of Freddy, an illegal immigrant who has left Bolivia, his home and his family to try his luck in Argentina, where he hopes to build a future in which they can be reunited. He lands a job as a cook in a restaurant where the owner is happy to flout the law in order to secure cheap labor and where Freddy meets the characters that will change the course of his life - a Paraguayan waitress, a traveling salesman from the province of Córdoba, two Buenos Aires -porteño- taxi drivers and one of the driver's buddies. The interactions between Freddy, his co-workers and the regular clientele unfold into a low key but deeply humane drama, in which prejudice and discrimination are commonplace, and rare glimpses of warmth all the more precious because of this. With strong performances, a concise narrative and impeccable camera work, Bolivia explores issues of xenophobia and social violence in Argentina. According to Caetano, "when writing the script, what interested me was the story; the issue of racism was not very present. However, it is inevitable that when addressing those characters and setting the story in that particular social strata, there is a series of themes that appear on their own and impose themselves." The filmmaker believes that, "the film's main theme is the collision among people of the same social class, they are workers about to be left out of any class at all, and thus they are intolerant towards one another. Basically, they are trapped in a situation they can not escape." The honest and raw characteristics particular to Bolivia can be, in part, attributed to the film's black and white cinematography, the setting of most of the action in one location - the restaurant - and the use of both professional and non-professional actors. For rental information please contact Rebeca Conget
Support from INCAA (Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía y Artes Audiovisuales de la Argentina)
Freddie Flores, who plays the role of the Bolivian immigrant, gives a compelling and dignified lead performance, eliciting the audience's sympathy and respect as the heart of this quietly devastating film. Flores belongs to a theatre group of the Bolivian community in Buenos Aires. Rosa Sánchez, who plays the waitress in the restaurant, is Paraguayan and a domestic employee who debuts as an actress in . Enrique Liporace and Héctor Anglada are professional and renowned actors in Argentina and play the roles of the boss and salesman respectively. Oscar Bertea, Alberto Mercado and Marcelo Videla - two taxi drivers and their buddy - play the regulars of the restaurant. , a production, was produced by Matías
Mosteirín, with Lita Stantic as associate producer.
Support was granted by the INCAA (Instituto Nacional de Cinematografia
y Artes Audiovisuales de la Argentina), the Rotterdam Film Festival's
Hubert Bals Fund and Fundación PROA. The director, Adrián
Caetano, wrote the script, based on a short story by Romina
Lafranchini.
Adrián Caetano was born in 1969 in Montevideo, Uruguay.
At sixteen, he moved to the province of Córdoba, in Argentina,
and has been living in Buenos Aires for the last few years. When
he lived in Córdoba, he directed several short films on video,
among them
and . In 1995, he won a script
contest, which allowed him to shoot his first 35mm film, . A year later, he finished another short film, . Soon after, together with Bruno Stagnaro,
he co-directed his first feature length film, , the 1997 landmark critical and popular hit,
that is credited with launching the revolutionary New Argentine
Cinema. In May 2001, his second feature, had its premier in the Cannes Film Festival where it won the Young Critic's Award at La Semaine de la Critique. Since then, has played in major festivals around the world; several of the awards received include: FIPRESCI at the London Film Festival 2001; Made in Spanish at the Festival de San Sebastian 2001; KNF Circle of Dutch Critics, at Rotterdam Film Festival, 2002. In August 2001, Caetano directed , an adaptation of the classic nineteenth century poem of the same name written by Esteban Echeverría. The director's latest feature film, , competed at the Director's Fortnight in Cannes this year.
2002 El OSO ROJO (The Red Bear) 2001 BOLIVIA 2001 LA CAUTIVA 1997 PIZZA, BIRRA, FASO (PIZZA,
BEER, SMOKE) 1996 NO NECESITAMOS DE NADIE
(We Don't Need Anybody) 1995 CUESTA ABAJO Rotterdam Film Festival 2002 - KNF Award from the Circle of Dutch Critics Cannes Film Festival 2001 - Young Critic's Award, Semaine de la Critique San Sebastián Film Festival 2001 - Made in Spanish Award London Film Festival 2001 - FIPRESCI Award Huelva Film Festival 2001 - Special Jury Award "The characters in Bolivia are strong, a step further from
stereotypes and Adrián Caetano directs them with respect
in his excellent second film. "THE MOST IMPORTANT ARGENTINE FILM OF THE LAST TWENTY YEARS.
A work with an unusual narrative force." "EXCELLENT. A perfect movie, exceptional, one of the most
profound and best narrated films in Argentine Cinema in years. Bolivia
spits out anger with talent, one cannot avoid to be stirred and
applaud." "EXCELLENT. Enormous. Poignant. Rich in ideas and great sensibility,
Caetano carries out great prudence, honesty and rigor to describe
the tragedy of his antihero. Bolivia is not only an intelligent
approach to a complex reality. It is, by all means, a necessary
film." "A treatise written with rage, but respectful of the history
and people that it depicts." "Adrián Caetano is now more than merely hope for the
Argentine Cinema." "We can now confirm it: we have found a director." "EXCELLENT. It comes to Argentina packed with international
awards and it deserves them all. Bolivia is the Argentine cinema
that we were lacking: without artifice, with characters that are
the real mirror of an Argentina that we do not want to see; exemplar
cinematographic narrative." "LUCID, TRANSPARENT, NOTABLE. A microcosm that reveals all
the tensions on a shattered society on the brink of exploding." Buenos Aires Herald, Friday, April 12, 2002 It's deeply satisfying to see that Argentine filmmaker Adrián Caetano's second opus , commercially released yesterday, though previously screened in February at the Critic's Week of the local branch of the International Film Press Federation (FIPRESCI), is the final proof that was needed to confirm Caetano as another brilliant auteur of the so called New Argentine cinema, which emerged back in 1992 with Martín Rejtman's wondrously mordant . By 1995, a handful of new talents surfaced in , a full-length film featuring 10 short stories conceived by local film students that hit the local scene with a bang. Six of those films were made by young filmmakers who would go on to become directors of feature films: Adrián Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro (, 1997), Daniel Burman (, 1998; , 2000; and , 2002), Lucrecia Martel (, 2001), Ulises Rossell (, and , 2001, yet commercially unreleased), and Sandra Gugliotta (, 2002, also yet commercially unreleased). Though Adrián Caetano's and Bruno Stagnaro's short film met with a glowing reception from the public and the press (as was the case with most of the shorts in ), the two filmmakers certainly did not imagine they would subsequently team up as co-writers/directors for their opera prima , which turned out to be a much-rewarding feature. The everyday life of young outcasts in a hostile Buenos Aires was depicted with a passionate, unflagging gaze, never condescending, yet filled with heartfelt empathy. It was one of the first films that proved there was another possible cinema in Argentina. A cinema that has been skillfully exploring and expanding the boundaries of the film medium while searching for what you could call a new realism. Just like his feature film debut was a privileged guest at many international film festivals, Caetano's second feature received an outstanding response at last year's Cannes FilmFest, where it won the Critics' Award; and at the London FilmFest, where it took the FIPRESCI's Award. That is among other awards from many renowned international film festivals, such as Rotterdam, San Sebastián, and Huelva. No wonder why. comes across as an unflinching depiction of xenophobia, racism, homophobia (all shades of prejudice, you name it) by telling the story of a young Peruvian cook and a Paraguayan waitress who work together in a two-bit bar and grill lounge in Buenos Aires. The whole film is articulated through the tribulations of the two main characters intertwined with those of Enrique, the lounge's owner; the regulars of the place, such as el Oso (a cab driver with a maddening debt and no money to pay it); Marcelo (the Oso's closest friend); Héctor (a young gay street vendor); and Mercado (another cabbie). Articulation is indeed the key word in since every single shot, scene and sequence of the film is there to ensure its flawless narrative that builds the oppressive universe these fully fleshed-out characters are immersed in. This is a film has been made with the outmost care to convey its seemingly simple, yet genuinely complex nature. Not only is wonderfully shot in grainy black and white (which gives the image the right harsh texture the story calls for) but also it deploys the most precise editing to build up the subterranean tensions that both slowly and relentlessly will blow up at any given time. Picture a sort of a local version of Spike Lee's in the shape of classic tragedy. As in Lee's notable meditation on the conditions that lead to social violence, there's no attempt in Bolivia to moralize upon the character's doings. They just do what they can do, and though that doesn't make them guilty per se, neither does it turn them into harmless creatures. As Caetano states: "I believe that the film's main theme is the collision among people of the same social class, they are workers about to be left out of any class at all, and thus they are intolerant towards one another. Basically, they are trapped in a situation they can not escape". It goes without saying that the universe depicted in closely mirrors the social degradation Argentina as a whole is sunk in. Granted, it's not a pretty sight to watch. Then again, its fierce beauty comes from Caetano's moral standpoint: sheer honesty as painful as it might be. |
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