The Argentinean Cinema 2000-2020 section at the Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci) was screened this Friday 29th October 20th, 2021. As they explained in their presentation, it is a selection of the last twenty years, made with the work of makers of short films in mind. “I humbly think that they can have an important career as feature film directors,” explained its presenter, in front of an almost full cinema hall.
Pablo Spatola, director of the short film Bajo la Superficie [Under the Surface] was present during the presentation. In the words of the presenter, it is “one of the short films that have surprised us the most in recent years.” During the short film we can observe the life of an industrial worker in Buenos Aires, “it talks about the reality of Argentina in the 1990’s,” said Spatola. He also explained that “subtly you will notice that it is set in 1994, when there was an attack focused on the Argentine Jewish community.”
“I didn’t spend 20 years filming it, but because I didn’t have any money, it was archived,” Pablo said with a laugh. He began to record it in 1995: “In a wind-up camera without sound, with takes that could last 20 seconds, with expired black and white film.” He himself affirms that he “forgot” about the film, but in his forties, locked up in his house, he decided to edit and digitalise it: “It became a totally new film, different from what I had thought at the time and that has the strange virtue of being a film recorded 20 years ago and a current film at the same time.” It is a short film, which in the words of its director: “Marks an epochal reference, in which a neoliberal policy destroyed the Argentine industrial reproductive apparatus.”
During this section of Seminci, six other short films were screened: Masí, Me Tiro by Sebastián Carreras, Luminaris by Juan Pablo Zaramella, El Mes del Amigo by Florencia Percia, La Prima Sueca by Inés Barrio Nuevo, El Record by Daniel Elias and Shendy Wu, un Diario by Ingrid Pokropek. “There are some intuitions that can be glimpsed in these works,” commented the presenter, referring to the promising careers of these directors.
