The Peddler

Showing at the San Francisco International Film Festival: The Peddler, directed by Adriana Yurcovich, Lucas Marcheggiano and Eduardo de la Serna

Synopsis from the SFIFF website:

Daniel Burmeister putts into the village in a beat-up red four-door, looking for the mayor. More prolific than Steven Soderbergh, more resourceful than Orson Welles, the avuncular seventysomething is both a filmmaker for hire and the definitive auteur. In exchange for food and lodging, Burmeister offers to make a movie in less than a month, using local residents as his cast. No contracts, no red tape, no grant proposals in triplicate—just a pitch and a handshake and he’s ready to roll. Choosing one of the half-dozen trusty genre scripts he’s been using for years, Burmeister sets about scouting locations, recruiting “actors” and spreading the word about his project. An act of community as much as a creative venture, the filmmaking process elicits varying degrees of curiosity and commitment. Some of the amateur thespians display remarkable natural ability, while the children are enticed by the lure of reflected glamour (and any escape from the boredom of backwater life). But Burmeister doesn’t trade in false hopes and empty promises; likewise, this endearing, generous portrait is uninterested in the tired clichés of deluded small-town dreams and fleeting fame. We are treated to the start-from-scratch optimism and on-the-fly problem solving that define filmmakers the world over, with Burmeister’s pushed-to-the-limit DIY credo generating delicious moments of inspired absurdity. There truly is nothing like the magic of movies, and as the lights dim in the makeshift theater for the premiere of Let's Kill the Uncles, our anticipation is as keen as if it were opening night at Cannes. —Michael Fox

La hora de la siesta / Siesta

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: La hora de la siesta, directed by Sofía Mora

Synopsis from the film festival's website:

Dad is dead and mom has locked herself in her bedroom to cry and sleep; she doesn’t want to see anyone. Franca and her younger brother guard the door of the room so none of the annoying relatives assembled in their house in the middle of the afternoon can interrupt her solitary mourning. Afterwards, while waiting for the funeral, they wander around the neighborhood, perhaps in search of fresh air to clear their weary heads. Their conversations seem to lack continuity, marked by a combination of innocence and cynicism, always revolving around the same subject: to believe or not to believe. From faith (and religious fear) to conspirational paranoia (and the myths and superstitions supposedly created by “the Yankees”: the landing on the moon in 1969, the bad luck of Friday the 13th, friend’s day!), agnosticism and skepticism. Almost teenagers, they are just two somewhat lost brothers trying to deal with one certainty (death) and the doubts it has brought about. Sofía Mora’s first feature film captures this limbo with a special sensitivity, portraying the quiet anxiety and silent uneasiness of a hot and grey afternoon in the middle of the week. This daily yet strange situation depicts the hard pain of growing up, announcing, with a stifled scream, nothing less than the end of childhood.

Carpani, Life and Works

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: Carpani, Life and Works, directed by Doris Carpani

Synopsis from the film festival's website:

Ricardo Carpani (obvious but necessary to say) was an artist who lived intentionally perceiving since adolescence, his transit through the planet. Knowing his work is to enter an overwhelming and consistent body of images among which unusual possibilities become intermingled. For example, a “porteño” (him) who reads the folded newspaper sustained in his left hand while he leans his shoulder on an elephant; or the surrounding forest with intermingling Indians, warriors, missionaries and the ineffable “carpaniana” zoology, or the Centaurs Gauchos, or series of lovers, or his honor in defense of the popular classes, or the shrill cries of anguish over the missing, or his murals in which the combat jumps of the canvas or the wall for us ... Critic Rafael Squirru considered Carpani´s work “transcendental.” And in another moment he said: “I have no doubt that Carpani has contacted his own cosmic force.” That view we fully share, appears in the film by his wife Doris and Jerónimo Carranza. The vital knowledge about the artist has turned into a film that, though it is, can not be regarded simply as a documentary work, because its resolution, the technique used and the precise effects make of this movie of about 90 minutes a reliable portrait and a great work of this author. Carpani was a man who took care of the destitute and downtrodden but not of the submissive. It is said that his figures seemed cut in stone. This must be the metaphor that corresponds to his oeuvre: “This work is indestructible.”

The Headless Woman

Opening at Film Forum today: The Headless Woman, directed by Lucrecia Martel

Synopsis from the film's website:

A mysterious and intriguing tale of a woman who may have killed someone or something while driving on a dirt road. Dazed and confused, she tries to piece together what happened, while her husband systematically tries to erase her tracks. From the acclaimed director of The Holy Girl, Lucrecia Martel’s third feature explores the intricacies of class in a male-dominated society. This official selection of the Cannes and New York Film Festival has been declared, “One of the great films of the decade” by Artforum Magazine, while Village Voice says “Martel’s strongest to date!” and the New York Times says, “The exacting formalism and beauty of The Headless Woman…is undeniable.”

The New York Times has a lot more to say about it here, and The Auteurs website has an interesting essay and interview with Martel. Looks very intriguing, even if you're not fascinated by Argentina (which I am).