Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/ FILM-ARGENTINA: The Crisis According to Solanas

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 10 2004 (IPS) - “Others make the decisions, we watch the children die,” a paediatrician, with an air of resignation, tells the camera, summarising the theme of the new film by Fernando Solanas, “Memoria del saqueo” (A Social Genocide), which made its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival this week.

At 68, the internationally famed director of documentaries such as “La hora de los hornos” (Hour of the Furnaces, 1967), and fictional films like “El exilio de Gardel” (Tangos: The Exile of Gardel, 1985) and “Sur” (South, 1988), is releasing “Memoria del saqueo”, a critical essay on Argentine history from the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) to the economic, political and social collapse of December 2001.

“What I was denouncing in ‘Hour of the Furnaces’ (class conflict and imperialism) is foolishness next to what we see 35 years later in ‘Memoria’. Poverty levels were just 10 percent what they are now,” Solanas told IPS, as he left for Berlin to receive an Honorary Golden Bear award for lifetime achievement in film.

The 54th edition of the festival known as the “Berlinale”, Feb. 5-15, this year focussed on Latin American and African films, and for the first time is recognising the film career of a Latin American. Previous winners of the Honorary Golden Bear are directors Robert Altman, Elia Kazan, and Oliver Stone, and actor Dustin Hoffman, all from the United States.

“Memoria del saqueo” (literally, “memory of the plunder”) is a first-person narrative, by Solanas, accompanied by images and interviews that support his thesis: that over the past 30 years Argentina was plundered by a “spurious association” of politicians, bank executives, trade unionists, judges, transnational corporations and multilateral lending institutions.

The two-hour documentary emphasises the devastating effects of Argentina’s foreign debt, irregularities in the privatisation of public entities (especially the energy companies), political and union corruption, and the impact of these phenomena – driving the Argentine people into unprecedented poverty.

“Social genocide occurred here, and the ones responsible should be condemned for crimes against humanity,” Solanas said before leaving for Germany. He said he would make that argument again at the International Film Festival on Human Rights in Geneva in March.

“Argentina suffered a new type of violence, without missiles or tanks; a silent aggression that caused more deaths than state terrorism or the Malvinas (Falklands) War. There are 35,000 people dying each year in this country from preventable causes. The ones who order these policies are criminals in peacetime.”

In 2001, Solanas was preparing to work on a film, a French-Spanish co-production with Argentina, but the financial crisis froze the funds for that project – so he changed plans, and thus emerged “Memoria del saqueo”.

The film opens with the image of tall buildings in downtown Buenos Aires. Shot from below, they appear overwhelming. Below, a little girl is eating from a pile of garbage.

Solanas captured these scenes when the crisis erupted and he took to the streets with his digital camera in hand.

The first part of the film portrays the economic and political chaos of December 2001, which prompted President Fernando de la Rúa to resign and a left a death toll of 37.

“Don’t you realise that you can’t kill an entire country!” shouts an indignant elderly woman at mounted police who are beating demonstrators and using their horses to push back crowds in the Plaza de Mayo, across from the presidential palace, the day De la Rúa stepped down.

With the tragic unfolding of the history of the past few years begins a story in reverse, accompanied by images of the empty interiors of the presidential palace (Casa Rosada), Central Bank, Ministry of Economy, the courthouses – the halls where history is decided, says the director.

“This film talks about power and records the scenarios of power. It is not a film of the people,” explains Solanas. He interviews politicians and experts, and there are moving testimonies by people from across the country who have lost their jobs and now find themselves living in extreme poverty.

The images and testimonies stand out in the scenes Solanas filmed about the energy companies, considered “poorly sold” by the state: the oil giant Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) and the state natural gas company.

The director visits Plaza Huincul, in the southwestern province of Neuquén, where the first oilfields of YPF were established in the Patagonia region. Former employees of the firm accompany him through what has become a veritable ghost town.

And then there is Tucumán, in the north. At the Children’s Hospital, two paediatricians say that for the past 20 years, each time the government announces a “structural adjustment”, they prepare to receive an avalanche of malnourished children in the following months.

One of the doctors says the hospital experienced something like an “atomic bomb” beginning with the 2001 crisis. The degree of indigence and malnourishment caused alarm even outside Argentina, a country long considered a land of plenty.

Solanas also took his camera to the outskirts of Buenos Aires. In La Matanza, just 25 km from the capital, children run barefoot in the streets and a desperate mother cries before the camera about the lack of work and the hunger of her two small children.

In another scene, a young mother cries alone during her son’s wake.

“Memoria” makes its premiere in Argentina on Mar. 18. And then will begin an effort to seek funds for a second documentary, “not a second part,” stresses Solanas, but he admits it will be a documentary that would complement the first in some way.

This next work is expected to make its debut in 2005, one of the Argentine producers told IPS, and will be a portrait of the resistance movements that emerged as a result of the crisis.

Solanas is no stranger to politics. His political views and activities led to his exile during the dictatorship, in 1991 he was the target of an assassination attempt for his criticism of the Carlos Menem government (1989-1999), and he served as a legislative deputy for the leftist Frente Grande from 1993 to 1997.