On Sunday, October 18th, at 17.30 hs, there will be an open interview to “Sur de Babel” in the auditorium. This month the selected book is “Resolana” by the Editorial Paradiso.

The piece in Sur de Babel

Voices, echos, aromas, vibrating calls; empty places y filled spaces that return in a continuing to and fro, in a new and infinite time.

Childhood, memory, unavoidable existential cracks, are the backbone and voice of a little firl that advances, in a paused and spiky way, the coming and going of a voice that plays between adulthood and childhood memories. The novel posses a single narrator, identity, that maintains itself firm from beginning to end. Time returns, and the past becomes present, but  history and time have converted it into something else: “childhood, a taste in the mouth, a flavor: the physical proof. What counts is what has been transformed, that arrives today, that power. A muslin dress, its crunch, its color. One can also pass for a corpse”.

The story? What to say. Only one voice, the flow of images, spaces, and again, the voice. The progressive narration almost unpaused, with a warm and original virtuosity. That is what glare is: the place where the sun poses and everything succeeds and is observable and at the same time evaded. That luminous mirror that makes the wind stop, time slow down, to allow for a sprout of sensations. Glare is, at the same time, exactly that: a splendid vibration of the sun: “Forgetting and memory are exactly the same: cracks. Holes. Enigmas”.

Sofía, the little girl that narrates, makes of the glare a story of voice, voices, echos, perpetual and endless journeys.

More information

The author

Lucía Mazzinghi was born in Buenos Aires in 1975. A psychoanalyst and writer, she started her literary career as a little girl and in the year 2005 published her first literary work: Paths by James Joyce’s Ullyses – Travel Guide. Glare was edited by the Paradiso editorial and it is her first novel. Currently, she is writing her second novel titled Carmelo o Fuga en mi menor.

The editorial

Editorial Paradiso was founded in the year 1992 by Américo Cristófalo.His main objective was to conform a catalogue that gives tale of the Argentine literary production.

The editorial posses a rich catalogue conformed over the years. Initially, the idea was to focus on Argentine authors. Currently, they publish not only national authors but also foreign writers with impecable translations.

On Saturday 1st at 18:00 hs. will be presented at Fundación Proa the artist Josep-Maria Martin to make a conference in the auditorium.

The artist will talk about his large experience. He lives and work in Barcelona, Perpiñan y Ginebra. Visual artist, that usual colaborates with another profesionals or “Citizens”, that could be on the projects: artists, architects, writters, social workers, designers, doctors, nurses, researchers, etc.

His work consists in open research participatives process in specific contexts searching ceacks on the personal or social systems. He negociates and creates prototypes making a revealing experience in the using of it.

Hi teachs at the Pole Arts Actión, HEAD – Haute École d’Art et de Design, Geneva University of Art and Desing, Suiza, and Pedagogic Responsable of the L’École Superieur de Beaux-Art of Perpiñán, France.

For more information about Josep-Maria Martin, click here

Reservations: recepcion@proa.org

On Saturday the 22nd and Sunday 23rd at 16 hs, Ludovico Pratesi will accompany the public on a guided tour through the exhibition Urban Spaces.
On Saturday the 22nd at 17.30 hs, the artist Thomas Struth and curator Ludovico Pratesi will be present at the Fundación Proa to dialogue with regards to the works being shown in Urban Spaces.

Photograph by Ayako Miyazaki 2004
In an interview done by Ludovico Pratesi, Thomas Struth comments with regards to the city “Ah! Cities! Once founded as commercial post son the shore of a river, as ports and fortresses.

Cities continue being stimulating melting pots of information and possibilities. Not withstanding, city-life has become increasingly difficult. The dependency on the automobile as a means of transportation dominates the quality of space in a destructive and unbearable way. It is surprising how the idea of Utopian urbanism – which emerged in the beginning of the 20th Century and promised leisure and happiness in an environment of apartment buildings and highways – has not been recycled or revised in our ecologically conscious era.

Cities from all around the world have ignored the imminent collapse of their structures due to greed, brutality, and incompetence of certain real estate developers that, with an alarming frequency, destroy important historic sites in urban environments. The politicians and urban planners almost always fail at the hour of controlling the interests of the private sector, and having a vision of the future of their cities.

The old, centric, neighborhoods of many cities in U.S have already been destroyed; China and Russia have copied this model, disregarding their urban history. But people want to be in Paris, London, and New York: three metropolis’ that represent the dream of the old city at a human scale”.

Some facts on his life
Thomas Struth was born in 1954 in Gelden, Germany; he lives and works in Dusseldorf. He began studying painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and later listed himself in the photography course of Bernd Becher. In 1978 he obtained a scholarship from the Academy to travel to New York, where he did his first black and white photos without any human presence.

He later takes on color and adopts a larger format. Towards the mid-eighties he takes on the relationship between man and environment in a series of portraits that, above all, show families in domestic environments. He later captures crowds and anonymous characters in the interior of museum exhibition rooms, exploring the intense dialogue between the public and the works of art. In recent years, he has extended his idiom to include in his work tropical landscapes.

He has shown work at the Kunsthalle in Bern and the Yamaguchi Museum in 1987, at the Portikus in Fráncfort, at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in 1990, at the Hirschhron Museum in Washington in 1992, at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg in 1993, at the ICA in Boston and at the ICA in London in 1994, at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn in 1995, at the International Art Palace in Pekín in 1997, at the Carré d’Art in Nîmes and at the Stedelijk Museum in Ámsterdam in 1988, at the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo in 2000, at the Museum of Dallas and the MOCA in Los Angeles in 2002, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2000, at the Prado in Madrid in 2007 and at the Museo Madre in Naples in 2008.

Ludovico Pratesi returns to Proa with two guided visits on Saturday the 22nd at 16:00 hs. and on Sunday the 23rd at 17:30 hs.
Ludovico Pratesi was born in Rome, city which he lives in, on April 15th 1961. He graduated in Law and Modern Art History at the University of Rome. He is an art critic for the newspaper La Repubblica. Between 1994 and 2000 he wrote for the French newspaper Le Monde. He was the Artistic Advisor for the city of Bari from 2002 to 2005. Since December of the year 2000 he has been the Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Pesaro. In 2009 he was named curator of the Palazzo Fabroni, a contemporary museum situated in Pistoia, Toscana. Since 2004 he has been the Artistic Director of the Fondazione Guastalla, whose headquarters are in Rome.

Between 1998 and 2008 he was taught Contemporary Art History at the University of Reggio Calabria. He has curated numerous exhibitions of international and Italian artists, among them: Candida Höfer, Giuseppe Penone, Enzo Cucchi, Tony Cragg, Marina Abramovic, Joseph Kosuth, John Cage, Domenico Bianchi, Mimmo Paladino, Cristiano Pintaldi, Francesco Gennari, Stefano Arienti y Vedovamazzei. He is president of the Italian branch of the IAAC (International Asociation of Art Critics).

Reservations: info@proa.org

On Sunday August 16th at 17:30 hs, as part of the cycle “Encuentros y diálogos”, Ricardo Piglia, in a dialogue with Graciela Speranza, will present “Literature and the city”, a dialogue in which literature approached within the urban frame and its different themes.

The cycle “Encuentros y diálogos” invites different specialists to reflect onto the urban and its connection to art, focusing on the city of Buenos Aires.

Some information on Ricardo Piglia…
Born in Adrogué, province of Buenos Aires, in 1941. Professor, narrator, literary critic, screenwriter. He has taught at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Currently teaches at Princeton University and at the University of California in Davis. He also directed the magazine Literatura y Sociedad.

In 1967, his collection of short stories La invasión was given the Mención Especial at the VII Concurso de Casa de las Américas (the jury was formed by Mario Benedetti, Enrique Lihn, Jesús Díaz and Dalmiro Sáenz).

In 1975 he published “Nombre falso”, a book of stories that has been translated into French and Portuguese. In 1980 appeared “Respiración artificial, of great repercussion within the literary environment, and considered done of the most representative novels of new Argentine literature. His following novel, “Ciudad ausente”, took twelve years to come out. Base don this novel, Piglia elaborated the 1995 script for an opera with music by Gerardo Gandini.

Piglia received, in November 1997, the Premio Planeta for his novel “Plata quemada”. It was a unanimous decision made by the jury, composed by Augusto Roa Bastos, Mario Benedetti, Tomás Eloy Martínez and María Esther de Miguel.

In addition to his fictional work, Piglia has worked in critique and essay writing, publishing on subjects such as Arlt, Borges, Macedonio Fernández, Sarmiento, among other Argentine writers.

The series of talks “Discussions and Dialogues” invites several specialists to reflect upon the city and how it is viewed by the arts, focusing in the city of Buenos Aires.
On each of the three sessions, Fundación Proa will present the thought and work of artists, filmmakers, and creators whose production entails a reflection on contemporary urban life.

Saturday 8, 5:30 pm
Intersections: city, art, film, literature.
Adrián Gorelik, David Oubiña, and Graciela Speranza

Saturday 15, 5:30 pm
Cinema and the city
Rafael Filippelli, David Oubiña, Guillermo Saavedra, and Eduardo Stupía.

Sunday 16, 5:30 pm
Literature and the city
Ricardo Piglia in conversation with Graciela Speranza

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Intersections: city, art, film, literature.
Adrián Gorelik, David Oubiña, and Graciela Speranza

“Intersections” sets out a dialogue in which the crossings between city, art, film, and literature will be examined.
If modern art is made in the city, how does the urban matter to art? The city can stimulate art, it can be the surface of its intervention, and a cultural riddle to be solved as well as an urban issue that finds in art a way to think around it different from what can be done in architecture and urban planning.
It is unquestionable that in the last decades all of those possibilities were activated in artistic and cultural millieus. How are those practices modified by the transformations experimented by the city?
Cinema and the city
Rafael Filippelli, David Oubiña, Guillermo Saavedra, and Eduardo Stupía.

Ever since its inception, cinema has been linked to the city. Art of the industrial era, privileged modern discourse, the cinematographer has evolved through the century together with the transformations occurred in our conception of the urban. The interdisciplinary discussion will try to unravel the conceptual implications of that relationship: in what ways has cinema represented the city and how have the forms of the city contributed to shape the language of cinema.

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Literature and the city
Ricardo Piglia in conversation with Graciela Speranza.
From his readings of twentieth century literature and cinema all the way to his own narrative, the city has been a source of critical reflection and a trigger for the fiction in the work of Ricardo Piglia. On the occasion of the exhibition Urban Spaces: Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth Ricardo Piglia will talk with Graciela Speranza about the urban imaginary in art and literature, and about the cities that create or anticipate their own fictions.

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Rafael Filippelli
Was born in Buenos Aires on the 24th of November 1938. He is a filmmaker and scriptwriter. He has worked in several films of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and has also worked in advertising. His first short film, Porque hoy es sábado, from 1961, and his short feature film Opinaron (1970) were his first films before his exile in Mexico in 1976 and in Los Angeles in 1982.

Back in Argentina, he staged The Brig by Kenneth Brown and did El fin del viaje for TV based on the story by Ricardo Piglia. The plot of the film was developed by Antonio Dal Malsetto who collaborated in the writing of the script with the directors. Nevertheless, a few years later Dal Masetto used the same story line to write a novel with the same name as the movie. His first feature film was Hay unos tipos abajo, which he co-directed with Emilio Alfaro in 1985. His works include: El ausente(1987), Imágenes más sonidos (1990), Buenos Aires I (1991), Buenos Aires II (1992), José Aricó (1992), Buenos Aires III (1993), El río (1993), Retrato de Juan José Saer (1996), Lavelli (1996), Una actriz (1997), Notas de tango (2000), Una noche (2002), y Esas cuatro notas (2004). He is considered one of the most important intellectuals of Argentinean cinema.

Adrián Gorelik
Was born in Mercedes, Buenos Aires, in 1957. He is an architect and has a PhD in History, both from Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is a researcher at Conicet and Professor at Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. He is an Editorial Board member of Prismas. Revista de Historia Intelectual and has been a deputy director at Punto de Vista. In 2003 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a Visiting Professor at CLAS, Cambridge University in 2002 and at GSD, Harvard University in 2005. His main Works are: La grilla y el parque. Espacio público y cultura urbana en Buenos Aires, 1887-1936 (Editorial de la UNQ, 1998) y Miradas sobre Buenos Aires. Historia cultural y crítica urbana (Siglo XXI, 2004).

David Oubiña
Was born in Buenos Aires in 1964. He holds a PhD in Literature from Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is a researcher at CONICET and teaches at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, at Universidad del Cine, and at New York University. He was visiting scholar at the University of London and at the University of Bergen. He is member of the Editorial Board of the journal Las ranas (artes, ensayo y traducción) and of Cahiers du cinéma, Spain. He was awarded scholarships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the British Council, the Fundación Antorchas, and from Fondo Nacional de las Artes.  He has worked as a script consultant for different films and as an assessor of cinematographic projects for Fundación Antorchas and Fundación TyPA. He has written together with Rafael Filipelli Música nocturna, Asesinato y muerte, and Notas de tango, amongst other films. His last books are Filmología. Ensayos con el cine (Manantial, 2000, Fondo Nacional de las Artes: First Prize for Best Essay Book); El cine de Hugo Santiago (Festival de cine de Buenos Aires, 2002), Jean-Luc Godard: el pensamiento del cine (Paidós, 2003); Estudio crítico sobre La ciénaga, de Lucrecia Martel (Pic Nic, 2007), Una juguetería filosófica. Cine, cronofotografía y arte digital (2009), and El silencio y sus bordes. Discursos extremos en la literatura y el cine argentinos (forthcoming).

Ricardo Piglia
Was born in Adrogué, Buenos Aires, in 1941. Writer, essayist, and screenwriter he has taught at Universidad de Buenos Aires and at University of Davis, California. He is currently Professor at Princeton University at the Walter S. Carpenter Department. He has published three novels: Artificial Respiration, The Absent City, and Money to Burn; three books of stories: The Invasion, Assumed Name, and Perpetual Prison, all of them translated to several languages and acclaimed internationally. His books on Criticism and essays Criticism and Fiction, Brief Forms, and The Last Reader can be read as first steps towards a future autobiography.

Guillermo Saavedra
He was born in Buenos Aires on October 7th 1960. He is a poet, cultural critic, and editor of vast trajectory. He was editor of the cultural supplements of La Razón, Clarín, and La Nación newspapers. He worked also as a correspondent for El País of Montevideo, and was one of the directors of Babel magazine and director of the magazine of Teatro Colón. He created and hosted the radio show El Banquete. He was editor of Grupo Aguilar, Taurus, Alfaguara, and of the publishing houses Tusquets, Manantial, and Losada. He has written the poetry books: Caracol (1989);Alrededor de una jaula (1995), El velador (1998), and La voz inútil (2003); the book of interviews with Argentinean narrators La curiosidad impertinente (1993); and of two children books as well as several anthologies. His poems were published in numerous Argentinean and foreign anthologies and were translated to English, German, Italian, Portuguese. He received a scholarship from The Guggenheim Foundation to start a book on poetry. Currently, he is the Publishing Director at the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires and at the cultural magazine Las ranas.

Graciela Speranza
Is a critic, scripwriter, and narrator. She holds a PhD in Literature from Universidad de Buenos Aires where she teaches Argentinean Literature. She has published the books Primera persona. Conversaciones con quince narradores argentinos, Guillermo Kuitca. Obras 1982-1998, Manuel Puig. Después del fin de la literatura, Fuera de campo. Literatura y arte argentinos después de Duchamp and a novel, Oficios ingleses, among others. She collaborated in Crisis, Babel, Página 12, and Clarín, and currently she is joint director og the magazine of arts and literature Otra parte. Between 2005 and 2007 directed the Encuentros Internacionales de Pensamiento Urbano.

Eduardo Stupía
Was born in Buenos Aires in 1951 and studied at the National School of Fine Arts Manuel Belgrano. He teaches visual arts since 1986, and has been a jury in municipal and national awards. He exhibits his work individually and collectively since 1973, and participates frequently of group exhibitions, awards, and in national and international art spaces. In Argentina, his work is part of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo de Arte Moderno, Museo Sívori de Artes Plásticas, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) collections, among others. Internationally, his work was part of the exhibition New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930-2006: Selections From a Decade of Acquisitions at MOMA (New York). Amongst the many awards he has received, we can find the Great Honor Awards from two of the most important Art Institutions in Argentina: Salón Nacional and El Premio Municipal, he has been recognized twice as one of the Hundred Most Important Figures of Argentinean Visual Arts of the Decade.

Sunday, August 9 at 17.30hs. will be the next open interview “Sur de Babel” in the Auditorium of the Foundation. This month the book chosen is “Síndrome de Rasputín”, of Editions Aquilina.

The work in Sur de Babel: “El Síndrome de Rasputín”

Sur de Babel defines “El Síndrome de Rasputín” as “the fog that covers everything in a Buenos Aires full of Bicentennial bombs with two obelisks, buildings destroyed, with a constant set garua makes the cold even in deepest bones, three characters as strange as the context, are moving from La Boca to Once in attempts to solve a bizarre murder which has as the main accused party one of the three friends. The three are victims of Tourette’s syndrome, and this surviving of the devastated city in the middle of nervous tics creates a sort of friendship between them, or just maybe a mutual understanding of the discrimination they all feel.

“Sometimes a good novel is its history, other times its characters, or how well it is written. When the same work is in these three categories together, it is cause for celebration. Our greatest tribute, then, is that all partners in Sur de Babel can enjoy these lines that catch the reader knows from the beginning until the end”. This are the words that Sur de Babel cose to define the novel.

In this wonderful novel by Romero, those three types are rare, three friends, socially and affectionately marginalized by the disease, the compulsive repetition of gestures, exclamations or movements that identify Tourette syndrome, are vulnerable prisoners of tics . Clinical cases lost, the lovable Abelev, Maglie and Muishkin will be involved, for the sake of solidarity, in a removed adventure.

The author

Ricardo Romero was born in Paraná, Entre Ríos, in 1976. He graduated in Modern Letters from the National University of Cordoba in 2002 and lives in Buenos Aires. In 2003 published his first novel, “Ninguna parte”, and from that year directed the literary magazine Oliverio. In 2006 published his first book of stories, “Tantas noches como sean necesarias”. In 2007 his story “Visigodos” and “Habitación 22” was published in several anthologies dedicated to the new Argentine narrators. It has at present an unpublished novel, “Perros de la lluvia”. Is a member of the “Quinteto de la muerte” and editor of Gargola Publishing, where he directs the “Laura Palmer no ha muerto.”

Aquilina Editions

In 2008, Ediciones Aquilina opened its doors with a collection focused on four modern polices of Buenos Aires, our: Absolute Black collection, directed by Juan Sasturain and Ricardo Romero. The editorial also publish and make known the works of authors, is aimed at the development and the search for new writers, emerging, novel, to show the reality of living and a national literature itself.

Reservations: info@proa.org
Admission free.

The renowned architect Jorge Silvetti will present “Architecture, Cultural Heritage, and Landscape” on Wednesday August 5th at 7 pm, at the auditorium. This is a joint endeavor of Summa+ and Fundación Proa.

“Architecture, Cultural Heritage, and Landscape” brings together a series of projects developed by the firm Machado and Silvetti Associates, located in Boston. Given the variety of cultures and historical places of high patrimonial value in which the firm has intervened, this presentation turns out to be an excellent opportunity to analyze the resources employed.

Fernando Diez, Editor in Chief of the magazine Summa+, states that “In cultural heritage projects, architectonic and urban design interventions call for a mediation between culture, landscape, and the demands of contemporary programs. Issues in which Silvetti’s work represents a point of reference worldwide.”

Jorge Silvetti
Partner, Machado and Silvetti Associates

Jorge Silvetti was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received his diploma in architecture from the University of Buenos Aires and completed his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he got his Master of Architecture degree. He founded Machado and Silvetti Associates together with Rodolfo Machado in 1974. Since then, the firm has developed special expertise in Art Museums, educational institutions, and urban design and planning worldwide.

Mr. Silvetti has taught architecture in different institutions and universities. From 1995-2002, he chaired the Department of Architecture at Harvard, where he continues to teach.

In addition to his architectural practice, Mr. Silvetti has served as a juror for the Pritzker Architectural Prize since 1996, and in 2000 he became a juror for the Mies van der Rohe Prize for Latin American Architecture.

Machado and Silvetti Associates’s designs have been published in all major international professional magazines and displayed in numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, most notably at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Biennale di Venezia, at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., the 1984 I.B.A. Exhibition in Berlin, and at the XVII Triennale di Milano.

Amongst the most recent projects of the firm, the renovation and expansion of The Getty Villa, in Malibu, California stands out. It consisted of a remodeling of the existing J. Paul Getty Museum (a re-creation of the Villa dei Papiri, a first-century Roman country house) to create a new home for the Getty’s permanent collection of antiquities of Ancient Greece and Rome. The project of Bowdoin College Museum of Art, in Maine can be highlighted as well.

Nowadays, Mr. Silvetti is working on other important projects such as: The Dartmouth College Visual Arts Center in New Hampshire; the Arts Complex and Gymnasium for Shady Hill Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachussets; New York University’s Center for Student Religious Affairs in New York; Beirut Citadel Square, Lebanon; the restoration of the great Oasis of Al Ain, in Abu Dhabi; the Master Plan for the Cultural Campus of Al Ain city, in Abu Dhabi that includes: the projects for the National Museum of Al Ain, the International Research Center for Islamic Music, the Tourist Center, and the Souks of Al Ain.

More about Jorge Silvetti: www.machado-silvetti.com

Season of Argentinean films
August – Saturdays and Sundays
General Coordination: David Oubiña
Reservations 4104-1000 / auditorio@proa.org

Buenos Aires on the screen is a season of Argentinean films coordinated by David Oubiña. It presents the work of Argentine filmmakers that undertake the theme of the city from different perspectives, discovering a renovated view of Buenos Aires. The season will run from Saturday 8 until the 30th of August.

The program goes through different moments of national cinema. It starts from the renowned “Invasión” directed by Hugo Santiago dating from the sixties all the way to the urban geographies of young filmmakers of today, as in “A propósito de Buenos Aires” – a series of stories by directors that stem from Fundación Universidad del Cine. The season will present as well: “Notas de Tango” by Rafael Filippelli a combination of fiction and documentary that examines the relationships between Buenos Aires and Tango, and “Oscar” by Sergio Morkin, a documentary of an artist/cab-driver whose urban interventions mark a view of Buenos Aires before the 2001 crisis. Finally, “Castro” by Alejo Moguillansky, a tour through urban chaos at high speed, closes the series.

The Program

“Invasión” (1969) Hugo Santiago. 123′
Monday 17 15:00 hs. / Saturday 29 13:00 hs. / Sunday 30 17:00 hs.
Tells the story of a city under siege, Aquilea that resembles Buenos Aires. There, a group of men commanded by an old man – civilians- tries to resist the city’s invasion. The invaders, powerful men dressed in gabardine, introduce a machinery to generate a mass invasion. During the film, the spectator understands that the invasion is absolute and impossible to define, hence the defeat of the defenders is evident.
The script of the movie was written by Hugo Santiago in collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. The plot starts from a detectives’ story and evolves towards the fantastic genre, showing a progressive estrangement of the situations.

“Notas de Tango” (2000) Rafael Filippelli. 88′
Saturday 15 15:00 hs. / Sunday 23 15:00 hs. / Saturday 29 19:00 hs.
It is a combination of documentary and fiction that shows a movie director trying to shoot a film on Tango.  It follows him through the search of the main actor till he works on pre-production and interviews dancers, musicians, and critics for his research. The movie asks what are the implications of making a film on Tango.

“Oscar” (2004) Sergio Morkin. 61′
Saturday 22 15:00 hs. / Sunday 23 17:00 hs. / Sunday 30 13:00 hs.
A documentary that portrays the life of a man who, after the economic crisis finds himself having to drive a taxi 12 hours a day in order to earn a living. During his trips, he is constantly drawn to the high level of visual exposure found in the city of Buenos Aires. In the truck of his 504 Peugeot he carries bottles of glue, painting, and cuttings of banners. Whenever the taxi is free, he stops the car, gets a stair and intervenes a street advertisement using painting and collage techniques.

“A propósito de Buenos Aires” (2006) VV.AA. 80′
Sunday 16 15:00 hs. / Monday 17 17:00 hs. /  Saturday 29 15:00 hs
A collective experiment centered on Buenos Aires, shot by 11 directors with 32 characters. It is organized in five parts: the trap, money, the desert, the lights, and the dead. Edited by Alejo Moguillansky, the different sequences follow each other without a cut hence each author cannot be identified. Black and white images build an urban perspective that stands outside the conventions of today’s cinema. Two themes organize the film: work and state terrorism.

“Castro” (2009) Alejo Moguillansky. 85′
Sunday 30 19:00 hs.
A group characters are searching Castro but we don’t know why: Samuel, Willie, Rebeca Thompson and, keeping its distance, Acuña. The fact is that Castro has left the city with Celia. He’s escaping and believes that if he finds a job that will jeopardize his relationship. It is a movie about the speed of cinema that has two constants: persecution and confinement. With the perfect timing of slapstick comedy and using speech and narrative secret as in film noir, Castro goes on sorting obstacles through urban chaos.

Los directores

Hugo Santiago Muchnik (Buenos Aires, 1939)
Has developed an experimental and avant-garde aesthetic, characterized by its deepness and rebelliousness in respect to the classic montage. He began his studies focusing on music, literature, and philosophy. Then he started his career in cinema assisting Robert Bresson in France. “Invasión” was his first film. It was followed by: “El lobo de la costa Oeste” (2002), “Las veredas de Saturno” (1985), “Les Trois Couronnes du Matelot” (1982), “El juego del poder” (1978), “Colloque de Chiens” (1977), “Los Otros” (1974). He is considered a cult director that has created a secret and influential filmography.

Rafael Filipelli (Buenos Aires,1938)
He is a filmmaker and a screenwriter. He has work in several films of Leopoldo Torre Nilson and, has also work in advertising. His first short film, “Porque hoy es sábado”, from 1961, and his short feature film “Opinaron” (1970) were their first films before his exile in Mexico in 1976 and in Los Angeles in 1982. His first feature film was Hay unos tipos abajo, which he co-directed with Emilio Alfaro in 1985. His work includes: “El ausente” (1987), “Imágenes más sonidos” (1990), “Buenos Aires I” (1991), “Buenos Aires II” (1992), “José Aricó” (1992), “Buenos Aires III” (1993), “El río” (1993), “Retrato de Juan José Saer” (1996), “Lavelli” (1996), “Una actriz” (1997), “Notas de tango” (2000), “Una noche” (2002), y “Esas cuatro notas” (2004). He is considered one of the most important intellectuals of Argentinean cinema.

Sergio Morkin (Buenos Aires, 1969)
When he finished high school, started studying Psychology at Universidad de Buenos Aires. Three years later, he quit that to study cinema. In 1992 he graduated from the Contemporary Cinema School of Vicente López and, in 1996 he started teaching there. He has taught acting and actors directing courses, and has directed fiction short films, institutional films, and advertisements. “Oscar” is his first feature film.

A propósito de Buenos Aires – varios autores
Manuel Ferrari, Alejo Franzetti, Martín Kalina, Cecilia Libster, Francisco Pedemonte, Clara Picasso, Matías Piñeiro, Juan Ronco, Andrea Santamaría, Malena Solarz, and Nicolás Zukerfeld are all part of  Fundación Universidad del Cine (FUC).

Alejo Moguillansky (Buenos Aires, 1978)
He is part of the group of filmmakers known as El Pampero Cine together with Mariano Llinás, Laura Citarilla, and Agustín Mendilaharzy. His filmography incluyes: “Un modo romántico de vivir su vida” (1999), “Lola / Gonzalo (C/S)” (2001), “La prisionera” (2006), and “Borges/Santiago. Variaciones sobre un guión” (2008).

“The significance of the School of Düsseldorf in the contemporary art panorama”, is the dicussion and investigation theme proposed by Valeria Gonzalez for the organization of this round table. Together with Ana María Battistozzi and Daniel Molina, she proposes an approach to the the exhibition’s photographers’ reach with contemporary art.

Daniel Molina has commented on the exhibition: “ Urban Spaces is an exceptional exhibition. No so much for what these works can say regarding the theme of the city, but for everything that goes beyond speech, that whispering of the meaning that rests between the limits of the image. Gursky, Höfer, Hütte, Ruff and Struth are five intense visual poets. Beneath the mask of objectivism give free reign ti the exultant cold sentimentalism. That sentimentalism that bursts a few seconds before the tragic is made visible.” (Nota completa http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1145190)

Ana María Battistozzi wrote an extensive article titled “Empty Spaces, absent subjects”, from which we take the following fragment: “In the exhibition Urban Spaces, showing five photographers of the Dusseldorf School at Fundación Proa, a new way of transmitting the world in the global era can be seen, with a scenic emptiness and a way of looking guided by the supposed absence of the author.” (Nota completa http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/notas/2009/07/04/_-01951187.htm)

This meeting of specialists in contemporary art and photography opens the cycle Meetings and Debates that will be held throughout the month of August. The cycle aims to explore the theme of the city through art. Films, rounds tables, and interviews offer a panorama of the incidence of the city in contemporary life.