Film Review(s): El último Elvis, Las acacias, and El Estudiante, by Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

Three recent Argentine films explore the social reality of marginalized communities.                                                                          

                                                                                    

Homo artis, Homo laborans, and Homo politicus

The Pursuit of Redemption in Three Recent Argentine Films

by

 Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

El último Elvis, directed by Armando Bo; 
Las acacias, directed by Pablo Giorgelli; 
El Estudiante, directed by Santiago Mitre

Film Review: 'La vida útil' ('A Useful Life') by Kristi Wilson

On the Decay of the Art of Going to the Movies

by Kristi M. Wilson

1. Federico Veiroj, La Vida Útil, Uruguay/Spain, 2010

In their imaginations they saw the cinema as a total and complete representation of reality; they saw in a trice the reconstruction of a perfect illusion of the outside world in sound, color, and relief.  ~Andre Bazin 

It is in the nature of analogical worlds to provoke a yearning for the past...The digital will wants to change the world. ~D. N. Rodowick

'La vida útil' ('A Useful Life') is simultaneously a cinephile’s dream picture, in its stylized look back at the history of cinema, and a biting satire about the fact that in the digital age of reproduction even the art of filmmaking has lost its aura. Uruguayan film buffs will recognize the film enthusiast and regular film festival patron Jorge Jellinek as the film’s central protagonist, Jorge, and the legendary film critic and real-life Cinemateca director Manuel Martínez Carril as a version of himself. Veiroj’s film captures the dying urban experience of going to the neighborhood movie theater—a collective encounter with celluloid and film history that, all over the world, is slowly but surely being replaced by private, digital, on-demand, and Hollywood multiplex practices of viewing. In this dark comedy about one man’s attempt to save Montevideo’s Cinemateca, an independent theater he has managed for 25 years, we get a glimpse of the many traditions that have helped shape the New Latin American cinema, a distinct film movement of which La vida útil can be considered a recent shining example.

Interview with Bill Nichols by Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

Bill Nichols is one of the most influential historians and theorists of documentary film.                                                        
He is widely cited in articles across the world. Some of his most important works are: Ideology and the image: social representation in the cinema and other media (Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1981), Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Indiana University Press, 1991), Blurred Boundaries (Indiana University Press, 1994) and Introduction to Documentary (Indiana University Press, 2001). He teaches film at San Francisco State University. His enthusiasm for documentary film comes through even in casual conversations and especially during this interview in Tijuana, in the first week of BorDocs, the documentary film forum. http://bordocs.com/?lang=en. A few minutes before the interview, Mr. Nichols had given a two-hour master class on the ethical challenges of documentary filmmakers. 

*This interview appears courtesy of Revista Cine Documental:
http://revista.cinedocumental.com.ar/5/teoria_01.html

Transcribed by January J. Coleman-Jones and Jake Nevrla