New Argentine Moviemaking by Richard Shpuntoff100-plus festival awards, great reviews and production costs to die for Aren't these people supposed to be in the middle of an economic crisis? by Richard Shpuntoff | Published March 23, 2004The film was Pizza, birra, faso (Pizza, Beer and Cigarettes). You've probably never heard of it, but it was the spark that ignited the New Argentine Cinema. When it premiered at the International Mar del Plata Film Festival in 1997, Adrin Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro's crude tale of a bunch of poor street-tough kids trying to turn their lives around with a small-time robbery generated more excitement than any Argentine film since Luis Puenzo's The Official Story (La Historia Oficial) won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1986. But the excitement of 1997 was a very different kind from the excitement of 1986. In 1986, Argentina was barely three years into rebuilding its democratic society after nearly a decade of dictatorship and state-sponsored terror. From 1975 to 1983, Argentina's military disappeared as many as 30,000 of its citizens, and when democracy was restored in 1983, moviemakers embarked on a mission. Films like Hctor Olivera's Funny Dirty Little War and Fernando Pino Solanas' Tangos, the Exile of Gardel weren't mere movies. They sought to recover a stolen history.By 1997 a new generation of moviemakers was facing a new set of challenges. Under the weight of an enormous national debt (another legacy of the dictatorship), Argentina's economy had spiraled into hyperinflation in 1989, and unemploymentespecially among young adults reached an all-time high. What little money there was for film was going to older, more established moviemakers, and even there the results were depressing. Sergio Wolf, film critic and documentarian, details the fall: If we are speaking about the key filmmakers, Luis Puenzo had a flop with Old Gringo (starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda); Carlos Sorin had a flop with Eversmile, New Jersey (with Daniel Day Lewis); Solanas' The South, likewise. Adolfo Aristarain had moved to Spain to film, and Maria Luisa Bemberg was filming one of her last pictures and was already quite old. Worse, Argentine movies had become stiff, mannered and clichd.In contrast, Pizza, birra, faso (though nowhere near as strong as Caetano's solo follow-up, Bolivia), had the three ingredients that represented a break with the old Argentine cinema: dynamic camerawork, an unmannered style using mostly non-actors and dialogue that could have rolled off the lips of people on the street rather than the tip of a writer's pen.

Ricardo Darin, Norman Aleandro and Hector Alterio in Son of the Bride (2001)

But Caetano and Stagnaro had not entered unchartered territory. Local underground hero Ral Perrone had already made 10 features on video, and Martn Rejtman, whom many consider the first director of New Argentine Cinema, had enjoyed critical success with Rapado. But the first to garner awards, receive positive reviews and actually bring moviegoers to the theater was Pizza, birra, faso.The film's very title generated excitement among young audiences. With its use of local slang rather than proper Spanish (birra instead of cerveza for beer, faso which means cigarette, or joint to anyone under 30), it suggested something exciting, something real, something of their own everyday experience. Add to this a pulsing soundtrack of cumbia villera music and a tale of unemployed youth, and it was clear that something was happening here.As Caetano went to work on Bolivia, a lean drama about an illegal Bolivian immigrant who comes to Buenos Aires to make money to send back home, two of his peers were already deep into their first features. In 1999, Pablo Trapero completed Crane World, an eloquent portrait of a middle-aged manonce the bassist for a one-hit-wonder band in the '70s, now unemployed, overweight and separatedat a crossroads in his life. The following year, Lucrecia Martel filmed La Cinaga (based on her Sundance Lab-winning screenplay), and raised the stakes for New Argentine Cinema. La Cinaga not only fit the rubric of the new cinema, but it was both profoundly Argentine and displayed a high level of technical virtuosity.Between these three projects, Argentine films won major awards at Sundance and Berlin (La Cinaga), Venice and Rotterdam (Mundo Gra) and Cannes (Bolivia). Most importantly, these films expanded the local audience, sending a message that this new cinema represented a diversity of young moviemakersnot just Caetano his followers. Eduardo Quintin Antin, editor-in-chief of El Amante Cine and director of the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Film, explains: What Pizza, birra, faso demonstrated was that a young director could successfully make an important film that dealt with certain issues and that brought different voices to the soundtrack, with a certain amount of artistic freedom. But it wasn't anything that, in formalistic terms, has had any continuity. There isn't a Pizza, birra, faso school.The recent devaluation of the Argentine peso has made filming in Argentina the best buy a moviemaker or producer could imagine

A cursory survey of any handful of films shows the diversity of New Argentine Cinema. Plots range from a woman who becomes obsessed with meeting others who share her name (Rejtman's Silvia Prieto ) to a pair of punky lesbians who pick up an overweight straight girl to prove their love (Diego Lerman's Tan de repente).

The influence of New Argentine Cinema's realistic dialogue and production styles can be seen in films like Fabin Bielinsky's Nine Queens, which did very well at the U.S. box office and is currently being remade in the U.S. by Gregory Jacobs as Criminal, as well as in Juan Jos Campanella's Oscar-nominated Son of the Bride.Of Carlos Sorin, whose Minimal Storiesswept festival prizes in Europe and Latin America and is coming to U.S. theaters later this year, Wolf says: There was definitely a change. Compared to La plicula del rey, which was Sorin's first film, Minimal Stories is a complete inversion. One is a megalomaniacal, gigantic project to create the story of the king of Patagonia and the other is a minimal story about a poor retiree in search of his dog.New Argentine Cinema has also increased interest on the part of American producers in filming their own work in Argentina. Faye Dunaway, who wrapped Jennifer's Shadow in Buenos Aires this past September, told Le Nacion she was attracted to the project because she was very interested in the innovative work of Latin American filmmakers.

Diego Lermans Tan de repente (2002) and Fabin Bielinskys Nine Queens (2000) show New Argentine Cinemas crossover appeal.

In the case of Imagining Argentina, it was the cause of the disappeared that brought director Christopher Hampton to the country. Hampton first received the film's script in 1989, after winning the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Dangerous Liaisons, and campaigned for 11 years before finally getting support from Myriad to make the film. When he arrived in Buenos Aires for the first time, he was surprised at the city's European-ness.' Says Hampton: I've been to a good number of cities in South America and Buenos Aires is unique. It is a dreamlike, displaced city.Moviemaker David Moreton first went to Argentina for a break from pre-production on his second feature, Testosterone, and was immediately taken with the city. Between the lower production costs and the city's very distinctive look, he decided to rewrite the script for Buenos Aires. Says Moreton: It has a great mix of sophistication and a sort of sultry, sexiness that fit the film perfectly,"Julia Solomonoff, an Argentine moviemaker who has been living and working in the U.S. for the past seven years, has opted for an Argentine producer for her feature-length Hermanas, which takes place in both Texas and Argentina, because she feels themost critical artistic decisions that I need to makethose places where I can't compromise the film without weakening its emotional impactwill be better nurtured by the kind of support and freedom that a director gets in Argentina.Further, the recent devaluation of the Argentine peso has made filming in Argentina the best buy a moviemaker or producer could imagine.rolo Azpeita, who produced Herencia, winner of the first prize at the Miami International Film Festival, gives a realistic idea of the costs: We made Herencia before the devaluation for around $750,000. But if we had to do it today, the total costfrom start to finishwould be somewhere around $500,000. Octavio Nadal of Patagonik Films, which produced both Nine Queens and Son of the Bride, says either of those films could be filmed today in Argentina for around $800,000. In terms of production services, a film that costs half a million below-the-line is our level of film... today's independent filmmaker is an important client for us.Axel Kustchevasky, publisher/editor of La Cosa and a programmer and creative consultant to Telefe (one of Argentina's largest TV stations), makes an even more dramatic claim: For $200,000 U.S., you can make a film in Argentina that looks like it cost $1 million.Even more impressive is that in 2003 alone, right in the middle of this economic crisis, Argentina produced a total of 61 films that have, to date, won over 115 awards in festivals internationally. In 2004 and 2005, almost all of the major players are coming out with films: Martel with La nia santa, Trapero with Familia rodante, Caetano with Despus del mar, Rejtman with Los guantes mgicos, Campanella with La luna de Avellaneda, Sorin with Le chien, Puenzo with La puta y la ballena and Bielinsky with El aura.Ironically, with so much production and all of its success in Latin American and European festivals, New Argentine Cinema is not well known in the U.S. While the Film Society of Lincoln Center has been promoting these films since 1997 (bringing films like Rejtman's Silvia Prieto to audiences through their Latin Beat and New Directors/New Films series), only now are some of these films getting American distribution deals. Marcela Goglio, one of the co-curators of Latin Beat, admits It has been a slow start, but points out that the audience for Argentine film has grown enormously and distributors are finally taking note. She confirms, a change is definitely happening.