Anthology Film Archives has announced the film series 'Matías Piñeiro Selects: Bridges over Argentinean Cinema,' which will take place October 15-26 in New York City. Curated by the famed filmmaker, the series will feature 13 films from the South American country, many of which have never been screened in the city before.
While the films of Piñeiro are remarkable for their delicacy, their fine-tuned sensitivity to the felicities of language and atmosphere, and their serene disregard for dramatic fireworks, Piñeiro’s career, by contrast, has been moving at warp speed. This past year alone saw the theatrical premiere run of his universally acclaimed third feature, Viola, a full retrospective at Lincoln Center, and the completion of his newest film, The Princess of France, which is currently turning heads on the international film festival circuit (it will grace the New York Film Festival this fall).
All this attention is richly deserved: Piñeiro is possessed of one of the most idiosyncratic, quietly confident sensibilities in contemporary cinema. To celebrate Piñeiro’s increasingly important place in the constellation of contemporary cinema, to take advantage of his presence in NYC (where he’s been resident for the past couple years), and to reveal his passionate and perceptive cinephilia, we’ve invited him to guest-curate this survey of Argentine cinema, past and present.
"These thirteen films expose the bond of kinship between different generations of Argentine filmmakers, especially those who were in their youth at the end of the 1960s and those who began to leave their youth behind around the mid-2000s. The selection is both limited and contradictory, comprising an unsystematic appreciation of a certain obliqueness in Argentine cinema," writes Piñeiro
"There are silent bridges stretching between all the films here, an interconnectedness that is the focus of this series. I invite you all to cross over these bridges, from film to film, in the hopes of broadening the definition of what a national cinema can be. And beware, it’s meant to be a bumpy ride: from Paris to Quilmes, from 1958 to 2014, from the studio system to the most guerrilla filmmaking of all, from the city to the desert, from open daylight to inner nightmares, from literature to dance, from sixty-minute-long chamber films to more than four-hour-long adventures," he adds.
The series will feature Edgardo Cozarinsky's (...) or Waiting for the Barbarians / Puntos suspensivos o esperando a los bárbaros (1971); Federico León's Everything Together / Todo juntos (2002); Alberto Fischerman's The Players Vs. Ángeles Caídos (1969); Alejo Moguillansky's The Parrot and the Swan / El loro y el cisne (2013); Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's The Kidnapper / El secuestrador (1958); Ignacio Masllorens' Marín Blasko III (2011); Santiago Palavecino's Some Girls / Algunas chicas (2013); Leonardo Favio's Juan Moreira (1973); and Inés de Oliveira Cézar's Foreigner / Extranjera (2007).
It will also feature José Celestino Campusano's Mud / Fango (2012); Hugo Santiago's The Sidewalks of Saturn / Les trottoirs de Saturne (1986); Rafael Filippelli's Crazy Bohemia, Five Days with Adrian Iaies / Loca bohemia, cinco días con Adrían Iaies (2014); Mariano Llinás' Extraordinary Stories / Historias extraordinarias (2008); plus Viola (2012) by Piñeiro.
