FILM-ARGENTINA: Ten Glimpses of Horror

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 16 2004 (IPS) - A group of 10 Argentine film-makers each produced a 10-minute short as part of a feature-length film in homage to the 85 people who died in the bombing of a Jewish community centre (AMIA) in the Argentine capital, ready for screening on the tenth anniversary of the tragic event on July 18.

The film has been named “18-J”, in allusion to July 18, 1994, following the formula of the French-produced 2002 film “11’9″01” on the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, made up of 11 segments each lasting exactly 11 minutes and nine seconds, plus a single frame, by 11 directors from 11 different countries.

The avant premiere of “18-J” is scheduled for Sunday, Jul. 18, the anniversary of the car-bomb blast that destroyed the Jewish community centre which had stood for more than a century, offering free social support to Argentina’s Jewish community, Latin America’s largest.

However, the screening will be limited to the film’s production teams and members of local Jewish organisations. The commercial premiere is planned for early October, and all money raised will be donated to 10 human rights groups.

On presenting the project at the international film festival in Cannes, France, the director of Argentina’s National Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA), Jorge Coscia, described the film as “a contribution to peace in times of terrorism and violence.” The Institute participated in the production and in selecting the film-makers.

Meanwhile, Fabián Blanco, INCAA development manager, told IPS it was a “magnificent project” by private production companies with Institute funding, that aims to “keep the memory alive.”

“Cinema is a great cultural vehicle for keeping historical events alive,” he said.

The film-makers involved in the collective undertaking are Daniel Burman, Adrián Caetano, Lucía Cedrón, Alejandro Doria, Alberto Lecchi, Marcelo Schapces, Carlos Sorín, Juan Bautista Stagnaro, Adrián Suar and Mauricio Wainrot, (a choreographer making his first venture into film).

The Alex Media production company came up with the idea and brought the other production companies together so each could propose a director.

The result is as varied as the wide range of film-makers involved. Burman, with such successes to his name as “El abrazo partido” (Lost Embrace) interviewed a doctor who that day was attending a birth in the Hospital de Clínicas – a teaching hospital close to the AMIA building – where hundreds of people injured in the bombing were treated for their wounds.

Then the camera pans around the Once neighbourhood, near the centre of Buenos Aires, the area where the Jewish community traditionally settled and where the AMIA building stood, and travels slowly along streets, through shops and amongst people going about their daily business in the area that changed shape so dramatically after the attack.

Caetano, director of the outstanding “Un oso rojo” (A Red Bear), chose to film without actors, focusing on the personal belongings of the victims, laundry hanging on washing lines and furniture around the AMIA building which fly into pieces during the blast. The unique aspect of his segment of the film lies in the footage of the explosion, which appears to stand still in each frame.

Cedrón, director of “En ausencia” (In Absence), tells the story of a Jewish couple who come to Argentina in 1930 fleeing the Nazis. In 1976, at the start of the seven-year military dictatorship, the couple send their daughter to live in Israel. We see the couple preparing for a journey to meet their grandson for the first time when the AMIA building comes crashing down.

Doria’s segment offers a monologue by actress Susú Pecoraro, in which fictitious episodes are mixed with facts from the legal inquiry into the attack, which has still not reached a definite conclusion. Doria’s other work includes such triumphs as the satire “Esperando la carroza” (roughly ‘Waiting for the Hearse’).

Lecchi, the creator of “Apariencias” (Appearances), looks at the attack from La Quebrada de Humahuaca, in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy, where a woman sees the bombing on TV and desperately seeks to find out the whereabouts of her son who lives in the Once neighbourhood.

Schapces presents the blast as a kind of punishment for the rebelliousness of a young Jewish man who refuses to hold his Bar Mitzvah because of his religious doubts, and for Sorín, producer of “Historias Mínimas” (Minimal Stories) the homage consists of presenting the happy faces of the victims smiling out from a selection of family photographs.

Stagnaro, director of “Casas de Fuego” (Houses of Fire) tells the story of a group of secondary school students preparing for an exam on The Divine Comedy just as the attack occurs. The descent into hell described by Dante appears to become reality in the scenes showing the collapse of the AMIA building, the victims, and the weeping.

Suar, a successful TV and film actor and producer, shows in his first-ever short the vicissitudes of a man who has gone to AMIA to search out documents on his family history, while Wainrot expresses his version of the tragedy through two dancers who personify pain and the passage of time.