Historias salvajes, relatos extraordinarios. Cine argentino 2000-2020

At the end of the 20th century, a generation of filmmakers consolidated itself in Argentina which someone tagged as New Argentine Cinema (NCA by its Spanish initials): a multifaceted, disorganized and chaotic movement, yet fervent for new ideas, which never assumed its status as a film collective. The reasons for its coming into existence range from a series of factors that are economic (a country plunged into an everlasting crisis and a government that unexpectedly promulgated a Cinema Law that supported the production of debut films), educational (Buenos Aires is the Latin American city with the highest number of public and private film schools per square meter) and cultural (the controversial quality of cinephiles, film magazines and film critics).
The selection of this retrospective at Seminci involves a dialogue with Argentine films from the first twenty years of the current century, both from the mainstream industry and the independent scene, since even the most spectacular productions were infected with the vigour of the NCA. Within this framework coexist films by Lucrecia Martel, Juan José Campanella, Mariano Llinás, José Celestino Campusano, Israel Adrián Caetano, Martín Rejtman and Eloísa Solaas. The retrospective intends to showcase the richest cinematic output —in registers, tone and colour— of any Spanish-speaking country; and this is so because of the quality of its acting performances (closely linked to Buenos Aires’ intense theatre scene), the cultural training of its filmmakers, the specificities contributed by the directors of the country’s several provinces (each federation, a country) and the apparent ease with which the lack of resources was compensated by unprecedented aesthetic choices.