Antonio welcomes us in the garden of his house punctual and spotless, as always when I see him. He takes advantage of the morning sun that is not yet burning and is excited to start teaching film classes in the auditorium of the MALI. There is no doubt that they will be a luxury for those who attend. I have never encountered more detailed and enriching analyzes than Antonio's, whether it be cinema, literature, music or the visual arts. He is a cultured, contemporary guy with formidable eloquence. Every explanation of his contributes to those who want to understand art in greater depth or to those who are developing an artistic project. The talks will take place on Tuesdays from February 27 to April 16. Each week, a different film will be analyzed, alternating genres, directors, eras and aesthetics.
What is the importance for you or to what extent do you think it can positively affect watching movies?
Consume good movies It opens you to critical thinking. There are many fields that open up there: the philosophical, the historical, the sociological. That's why I always work with films that are already known classics. I don't want people to go see a movie for the first time, but to watch the ones that most moviegoers have seen, to try to delve deeper and go further. I am always going to talk about acting techniques, lighting, editing, etc. But there is an added value that I always try to give. Let's think, for example, of Pulp Fiction. It is a film that everyone has seen, a film that was filmed at a time when modernity was dying and postmodernity had not finished consolidating itself. And what happens? That worldviews have the function of ordering the world for us, of being an anxiolytic against chance, something that allows us to have a certain security that we are not toys of destiny. The Christian narrative, the modern narrative, is always telling us that with technology or with God or whatever there is a certain control over what can happen to us. When a worldview collapses, as happened in the 1990s with modernity, a vacuum is created. Consequently, the fear of chance or the importance of chance becomes important. If you watch Pulp Fiction carefully, the entire movie is a hymn to the games of destiny. The film begins with two of the characters planning in the most rational way a robbery of a coffee shop, considering the pros, cons, etc. But due to a series of totally fortuitous twists of fate, of chance, in that cafeteria there are two gangsters who are dressed in the most casual swimwear, who thwart their entire plan. So, throughout the movie there are a series of events that are basically fortuitous, random. Mia finds the package of heroin in her pocket, which was a coincidence because he could have kept it in her car, in her pants, anywhere else. And then that sexual tension that was growing suddenly collapses due to a completely fortuitous event. The whole movie plays with that. And that interests me because the film is made at a time when there were no worldviews that ordered the world for us. And like that, I can give you other examples from other films. That is the added value that I try to give to my analysis of these films.
I have the impression that for those who are not close to art, cinema is a more recognizable and representative access route, because it is what most formally resembles everyday life, memories, dreams, memories.
Yes, but there are also quite abstract films. I do believe that the cinema It is probably more accessible than high literature or painting, etc., but there are also extremely elaborate and complex films.
There are those who believe that in some way cinema inaugurates an audiovisual era that threatens literature.
Well, there we should put before that the idea of Piglia, who said that new technologies always force fictions to become more complex. For example, in the 19th century most novels had fairly linear narratives that sought to capture a large audience. But when cinema appeared and assumed that role, Joyce, Woolf, Proust, etc. appeared, and the novels became more complex and they gained depth. Then the same thing happened with cinema when television reached almost every home. It was there when directors like Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni, Godard, etc. appeared. Then, when the Internet appeared with all its immediacy, it was television's turn to become more complex and today we have series like 'Breaking Bad''Succession', etc.
What excites you most about teaching film?
The public response. That's what I love. In other words, suddenly it's that spark of someone who is understanding something, who is seeing something new, something different. And one of the reasons why I want to take these film appreciation sessions to an auditorium like the one at MALI is because I will once again have direct contact with the audience, something I didn't have with Zoom.
Who would you recommend this course to and why?
I recommend it to all those film buffs who want to learn a little more. As I told you, I'm going to choose very important classic films by very good directors and I'm not going to show them in full. That no longer makes sense because anyone can download the movie on amazon or on any other platform. The added value is that I show a relevant scene and alternate it with my comments. Obviously, I'm going to talk about acting techniques, lighting, editing, all those things, but also things that go beyond, that have to do with the historical, anthropological, sociological, like what I just told you about. Pulp Fiction. That is the added value. So anyone who is interested in cinema, but also interested in culture in general.
Why in MALI?
The thing is that for many decades the MALI was a reference for film buffs who discovered many important films there. There have been people who in that auditorium discovered Bergman oa Almodovar. There were several generations of people who discovered great films there. But lately the auditorium had almost no activity. On the other hand, since the pandemic began, I had been asked, both in Peru and abroad, to create film appreciation courses, so I had any amount of content created. The synergy occurred that Sharon Lerner, the director of the museum, wanted to reactivate the auditorium and I wanted to find new audiences for all that material that she had already created. So we agreed that it would be a good idea to relaunch the auditorium, give a new space to the movie buffswith the possibility of watching not the complete movies, but this new alternative in which scenes alternate with comments, so that you have a better appreciation cinematographic.
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