Film Screenings / Programs / Series
MATÍAS PIÑEIRO SELECTS: BRIDGES OVER ARGENTINEAN CINEMA
October 15 – October 26
While the films of Matías 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.
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.
The series is dedicated to the late Argentinean filmmaker and scriptwriter Eduardo de Gregorio, whose films most deserve to be included here but whose damaged prints are unfortunately turning him into an invisible filmmaker. We declare that restoration is urgently called for!
So, without further ado, here’s a baker’s dozen of films that breathe joyfully from cinema’s impurity.” –Matías Piñeiro
Presented with the invaluable support of the Consulate General of the Argentine Republic in New York, and co-presented by Cinema Tropical; very special thanks to Eduardo Almirantearena (Deputy Consul General) and Carlos Gutiérrez (Cinema Tropical). Thanks also to Juan Crespo (3C Films Group), Laurence Millereux (Forum des Images), Maria Nuñez (INCAA), and Fernando Peña (Filmoteca Buenos Aires).
All films in Spanish with English subtitles unless otherwise noted. All film descriptions are by Matías Piñeiro.
Piñeiro will be here in person to present VIOLA on Sunday, October 26, and will also present selected screenings throughout the series!
Please join us for a special wine reception on Friday, October 17 at 8pm, following the screening of THE KIDNAPPER, organized in collaboration with the Consulate General of the Argentine Republic in New York.
