This show (at Anthology Film Archive in NYC Feb 21) was a huge success: sold out, chock full of experimentalists, interested Argentines and who knows who else. We served Yerba Mate (and left a gourd with Anthology house manager and supreme avant garde maker Bradley Eros) and churros from the Buenos Aires Bakery in Queens. Liliana Porter generously answered questions about her wry and witty film For You/Para Usted (which closed out the program) afterwards. Some in the audience were worried about sharing the mate gourds before the program, but most dove right in, passing the tea and thumbing their noses at the notion of sharing germs. They say mate doesn't have caffeine in it, but it has SOMETHING, and it seemed to add to the experience of the night. I noticed in Collete's "The Pure and the Impure" a woman in an opium den makes a big show of drinking mate.The show was comprised of super 8, video and a single 35mm film, carried straight from Buenos Aires by our film mule, Sofia Gallisa. It was wonderful to see this varied, vibrant work crackling on the screen in the East Village. This was not meant to be a definitive snapshot of the zeitgeist of Argentine experimental film, more like a sampler, a disparate mix of films that lead us into unfamiliar worlds. More on the show at invisible cinema.
