First modification:
'El Polvo' is the most recent film by Argentine filmmaker Nicolás Torchinsky (Buenos Aires, 1984) in which he addresses the mourning for the death of his aunt July, in a very particular way: filming the disarmament of her apartment. The film is competing at the Paris Latin American Film Festival, CLaP, which is held from April 2 to 7 in the French capital.
'El Polvo' was selected at the Mar del Plata Festival and now is the first time that the European public will be able to see it. It is screened in one of the most legendary independent cinemas in Paris, the Cinéma Saint-André des Arts, in the heart of the French capital, within the framework of the CLAP.
The film takes place while friends and family are emptying the apartment where July Regina Romero, a trans artist, lived. Through the objects and the conversations between them, we discover who July was, her loves, her pains and also her exile to Brazil, during the military dictatorship, and her struggles.
The idea was born as a proof of Torchinsky's love for his aunt, since before her death they were working together on an audiovisual project about her life.
“In 2015, with July still alive, we met in this same apartment, in the Almagro neighborhood, a very small apartment, on the 12th floor, to record our conversations with the idea of one day writing a script about her life and with that to make a movie,” explains the director.
But July Regina Romero falls ill and that project is cut short. “Two days after her death, with a camera borrowed from a friend, I went to this same apartment and searched the house as it had been left the last time she was there. I can't say why I did it. It was just an impulse. I think it's for love,” he tells us in Escala in Paris, before 'El Polvo' is screened at the ClaP Festival.
“Those glimpses of a life that are present through objects”
What he records are his aunt's objects just as he left them the last time. Jewelry, letters, photos, medications and the clothes she wore on stage for her performances. “The film takes care of what is impossible to tell anyone,” says Torchinsky. “What there is are these partialities that, suddenly, are like those glimpses of a life that become present through objects and stories,” he adds.
In addition to the objects, the conversations of family and friends, who are helping to empty the apartment, show a kind of collective mourning, which each one goes through in their own way. Some in a more nostalgic way, others sometimes more pragmatically.
With 'El Polvo', Torchinsky signs a third film in which memory has a central place. In 'La Nostalgia del Centauro' (2017) he addressed the question of the survival of the gaucho way of life and in 'Once upon a time in Quizca' (2021), he spoke about lonely death in the rural world.
“I think that in 'The Nostalgia of the Centaur' and in this film there is something of rescue, when something is about to go, it is a good time to approach and try to catch what is left,” he explains when we ask him if he is specializing in a kind of tribute portrait cinema. “I feel that cinema is a fascinating instrument of memory,” she acknowledges.
Milei and the cuts in Argentine cinema
The ClaP Festival is held a few weeks after mobilizations by the Argentine film sector against the cuts of President Javier Milei. For Torchinsky “Argentine cinema is in danger.”
“At this moment production is paralyzed, there are 700,000 direct and indirect jobs affected. What does that imply? Many families depend on it and it is completely paralyzed. And on the other hand, there are indiscriminate layoffs at the Film Institute (INCAA ),” says the director. “The Film Institute is basically the reason why national cinema exists, defunding it is putting work and cinema in danger,” he denounces.
“Things are said like that no one cares about Argentine cinema or because we make films, there are people who don't eat because they say that, supposedly, we use State funds, when in reality INCAA finances itself,” concludes the director of ' The Dust'.
#Stopover #Paris #Nicolás #Torchinsky #Cinema #fascinating #instrument #memory