LACIS PRESENTS NEW ARGENTINE CINEMA
Since the appearance of Martin Rejtman's debut feature Rapado in 1992, Argentina produced one of the world's most distinctive national cinemas, introducing visionary new auteurs like Lisandro Alonso, Lucrecia Martel, and Pablo Trapero. Focusing on recent Argentine art cinema, this year's Festival de Cine kicks off with Alsonso's latest, a high-profile international collaboration starring Viggo Mortensen. Additional highlights range from "Godfather of New Argentine Cinema" Rejtman's first feature in over a decade to an award-winning microbudget indie by a first-time director. This series is fully funded by the UW’s Department of Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies. Special thanks to Alberto Vargas and Angela Buongiorno.
- Sat., Mar. 7 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
Mortensen stars in this majestic, visually stunning new work by one of Argentina’s leading art cinema directors. In an almost impossibly verdant 1880s Patagonia, a Danish general abandons his company to search for his 15 year-old daughter, who has eloped with a soldier. Exquisitely framed in the classic Academy aspect ratio and boasting a filmic texture and color pallet that evokes the richness of vintage Technicolor, this ravishing and mysterious quasi-western is among the boldest films of the year. (MK)
- Sat., Mar. 7 | 9:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
Widely acknowledged as the godfather of New Argentine Cinema, writer/director Rejtman is back in top form with this characteristically digressive and absurdist dramedy, his first fiction feature in eleven years. When sixteen year-old Mariano finds a gun in his family home, he inexplicably shoots himself—twice. Even more inexplicably, he survives, and the remainder of the film hops between narrative threads to track the impact of Mariano’s impulse on his friends and family. “[Rejtman has] one of the sharpest, savviest, and must humane comic sensibilities in contemporary cinema… his fatalistic, obsessive-compulsive, bone-dry jokes get funnier and more profound the longer they are kept up” (Cinema Scope).
- Sat., Mar. 14 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
This wry, literate, and existential comedy kicks off when a dying hit man flees his Buenos Aires hospital bed and embarks on a cross-country road trip to finish one last job. Along the way, he picks up a much younger woman, who, sitting shotgun in his Ford Falcon, becomes an object of lust, surrogate daughter, and de facto nurse. Fueled by dueling narrators, this shaggy, formally playful gem won multiple awards at the San Sebastian Film Festival. (MK)
- Sat., Mar. 14 | 8:45 PM4070 Vilas Hall
Two women meet for a job interview that spills over into an intimate dialogue that encompasses their secret loves, fears, and dreams. Filmed entirely in a single shot and over the course of a single conversation, this one-of-a-kind indie won Best Argentine Film and Best Argentine Director at the 2013 Mar del Plata Film Festival. “Arresting… a great, different, experimental and entertaining debut from a director that is worth keeping up with” (International Federation of Film Critics). (MK)