CULTURE-ARGENTINA: Homeless Actors Play Themselves

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 5 2002 (IPS) - An Argentine film that cast homeless men and women playing themselves not only drew large audiences for four months, but helped several of the amateur actors get their lives back on track.

”Even if it irritates professional actors, it was incredible to work with them, as they played themselves with virtually no self-censorship,” Baltazar Tokman told IPS with respect to his first feature-length film, ”La sombra de las luces” (The Shadow of Lights), about 16 people living in the streets of Buenos Aires.

Tokman said life has changed one way or another for all of the members of the group, who ranged in age from 36 to 70, after they took part in the film – in which three professional actors also appear – a year ago.

One of them, for example, turned out to have a special talent for acting, and was spotted by a theatre director who saw the film and who selected him for a role in a play.

Another of the amateur actors, Chilean national Alejandro Olivares, decided to return to his home town of Valparaíso this year after living in Buenos Aires for 15 years with no contact with his family. He is now back in Chile with his loved ones.

Yet another found an apartment, and a third successfully gave up drinking, said Tokman.

”Based on this experience, I hope to find work, for example, singing or acting in nursing homes or birthday parties,” said María Gómez, enthusiastic after participating in the film. ”The street makes you feel like an outsider and isolates you, but there are many things we are capable of doing.”

Tokman had a special remembrance for four of the homeless participants, who died this year.

Most of the amateur actors formed part of Argentina’s middle-class before ending up on the streets. ”One was a chef in a restaurant, another was an actor, and one of the women was married to a surgeon for years,” said Tokman.

The filmmaker added that people who live in the streets, like the homeless people who appeared in the film, ”do not only need a subsidy from the state, but basically a programme that provides them with emotional support and helps restore their self-esteem.”

Large, varied audiences came to see the film each week at a local centre that provides free meals for the homeless. After applauding it loudly, they took part in discussions with the homeless actors about the conditions faced by people living in the streets.

Many of the amateur actors were later interviewed by reporters and even invited to appear on television talk shows.

The idea for the film arose two years ago, after Tokman decided to direct a movie that required actors with the look of ”authentic” homeless people for bit parts.

He held a casting, even though ”the producer was not very pleased with the idea, and shortly afterwards, the project collapsed, simultaneously with the collapse of the government of Fernando de la Rúa.”

It was December 2001, the beginning of Argentina’s worst-ever economic, political and social crisis, and Tokman, forced to abandon his original screenplay, began to shoot another film in which the extras selected for the first project became the cast.

”I told them I could no longer pay them more than their bus fares and meals, and they all agreed.”

”La sombra de las luces” focuses on the trials of a young filmmaker whose relationship is on the rocks and who is about to lose his home due to financial problems – which are the result of his filming a documentary on the homeless.

”In the plot, the film director takes out a loan that he cannot pay off, and the bank manager says that to write it off, he has to help the bank evict a group of homeless people living on a lot that belongs to the bank,” said Tokman.

But as the director himself acknowledges, the plot itself is overshadowed by the phenomenon it generated.

It was in Manzana de las Luces, a well-known centre in Buenos Aires where many street people go for a free daily meal, that Tokman first caught a glimpse of those who would later become the cast of ”La sombra de las luces”.

It was also there that the filmmaker and his associates obtained the loan of a hall in which to screen the film once a week.

”For four months, the film was shown weekly in Manzana de las Luces. The homeless people handed out flyers, and drew in many people to see it. Once there were more than 400 people,” he said.

No tickets were sold. Instead, collection boxes were set out, for each spectator to drop in a donation ”at their discretion.”

Tokman does not know exactly how much the production actually cost. ”I didn’t pay the actors, I got the equipment on loan, my production team was a group of friends who worked for free…I think it would have cost around 300,000 pesos (85,000 dollars) otherwise.”

His idea now is to get the film screened in commercial theatres, although he is not hopeful. ”It’s tough, it’s not really clear how I could get a film like this into the commercial circuit.”

Meanwhile, Tokman continues his career in advertising, although without losing contact with the actors who accompanied him in the complex, risky process of producing his first feature-length film.

CULTURE-ARGENTINA: Homeless Actors Play Themselves

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 5 2002 (IPS) - An Argentine film that cast homeless men and women playing themselves not only drew large audiences for four months, but helped several of the amateur actors get their lives back on track.
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