Panamericana – Young Latin American Cinema on the Move

updated: November 25, 2009

Panamericana – Young Latin American Cinema on the Move. Fernando Eimbcke Pablo Fendrik, Juan Pablo Gugliotta, Christian Valdelièvre, moderated by Peter Cowie. Berlinale Talent Campus, February 10, 2008.

YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IT!

Peter Cowie: Welcome to this panel, which I think will convince all of you that there is life after the Berlinale Talent Campus because both of our distinguished guests this afternoon were sitting where you were sitting, one in 2003 and one in 2006, and now they have made films that have been to Cannes and to Berlin and are now well set into their careers. But the wider context of this afternoon’s programme is really the situation of young Latin American Cinema, which is really on the move now. Our guests are Fernando Eimbcke from Mexico, who’s film LAKE TAHOE (2008) was shown yesterday to great acclaim in the competition, and Pablo Fendrik from Argentina, who’s film THE MUGGER (EL ASALTANTE, 2007) was shown at the Critics Week in Cannes last year. I would like to welcome first, their producers, those key people, without whom no films are made. Juan Pablo Gugliotta, who is the producer of THE MUGGER. Juan Pablo has trained in different independent films, and advertising production companies in Argentina. He produced POSSIBLE LIVES (LAS VIDAS POSIBLES, 2006) by Sandra Gugliotta, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival last year. He produced THE MUGGER by Pablo, and is now working on post-production on BLOOD APPEARS (LA SANGRE BROTA, 2008), also by Pablo, a co-production with France and Germany.

Christian Valdelièvre is the producer of LAKE TAHOE. He has been in movie production for ten years. He was the originator and co-producer of the movie SEX, SHAME AND TEARS (SEXOR, PUDOR Y LÁGRIMAS), directed by Antonio Serrano in 1999, which became the largest box-office success in the history of Mexican cinema. He also produced LUCIA LUCIA (LA HIJA DEL CANÍBAL), directed by Serrano in 2002, and he produced the two films of Fernando, DUCK SEASON (TEMPORADA DE PATOS, 2004), which was a huge success and of course LAKE TAHOE. He is also a co-producer of LA ZONA, directed by Rodrigo Plá (2007), which won a Golden Lion at Venice at the Opera Prima section last year.

Pablo Fendrik was a participant here in 2006 and made his first feature film, THE MUGGER, in 2007. It won the main actors award at the Buenos Aires Film Festival, and was chosen for the Semaine de la critic in Cannes, which is no easy category to get into because they only screen seven films. His second feature, BLOOD APPEARS, was shot in October last year and is now in post-production.

Fernando Eimbcke is currently on everyone’s lips because of yesterday, LAKE TAHOE. He was here in 2003, one of the first alumni of the Campus. I think the motto then was, “you always remember the first time”, and I am sure Fernando remembers that. He went back and made his first feature film the following year called DUCK SEASON, and that too, by coincidence, was also chosen for the Semaine de la critic in Cannes. It won the Critics Award, it was sold to some 30 countries, and as a result he has been able to make LAKE TAHOE which is now in competition, which means that along with BALLAST (Lance Hammer, 2008), there are two films made by Campus alumni in this year’s competition.

THE TRADITION OF LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA

Latin American Cinema is not exactly flavour of the month. I say that because buyers, sellers and critics, when they come to a festival like Berlin or Cannes, they tend to hone in on the South East Asian films, just as they honed in on European films 20 or 30 years ago. But I think that is all about to change. And we mustn’t forget that Latin American cinema has got some great traditions. It has produced movements like cinema-novo in Brasil, with directors including Glauber Rocha and Nelson Pereira dos Santos. It has produced individual filmmakers of great stature such as Leopoldo Torre Nilsson in Argentina and Miguel Littin in Chile or Arturo Ripstein in Mexico, now Walter Salles in Brasil, and I think due to political turmoil, perhaps to a lack of will on the part of the authorities to really invest in a logical way in film, there has been a kind of organised chaos until quite recently, and the success in Mexico particularly of directors like Iñarittú and Cuarón, and del Torro, has transformed our image of Latin American cinema, and the two films that we will be discussing this afternoon are completely different in style and background and yet they both show a vivid talent at work.

TWO FILMS AND THE ROLE OF THE CAMPUS

Fernando, I would like to start with you if I may. When you came back from the Berlinale Talent Campus you then set up DUCK SEASON. Was that already in your mind when you were here in Berlin? Were you already planning your first feature film?

Fernando Eimbcke: Yes, when I first came to Berlin Talent Campus, I had a first draft of DUCK SEASON, and I hated that draft. I had a big conflict with that draft. Then I came here and I changed it a lot.

Peter Cowie: You were a screenwriter before I believe?

Fernando Eimbcke: Yes, I went to the film school in Mexico and I wrote around five scripts.

Peter Cowie: But you always wanted to direct?

Fernando Eimbcke: Yes. I always wanted to direct.

Peter Cowie: Pablo, you were here only two years ago. I assume you made THE MUGGER a few months after you got back from Berlin? Again, had you planned that film by the time you came to the Berlinale Talent Campus?

Pablo Fendrik: No, not at all. I came to the Campus for the other project, BLOOD APPEARS. After being here and being so well received it encouraged me a lot, really. It gave me a lot of confidence. And a few months later when the finance on the BLOOD APPEARS project was delayed, we decided to shoot something else. And we made THE MUGGER right away.

Peter Cowie: It is a film, which is around 68 minutes long. It seems like half-way between a long short film and a short long film. I wondered, did you leave it open ended because it was like a very long exercise for you, or did you always see it in that length and form?

Pablo Fendrik: I had no length in mind when we started, I just wanted to do this thing. To get closer to the equipment, closer to the actors, closer to the idea of being a director. It was like an experiment that turned out to be a film.

Peter Cowie: For those who haven’t seen THE MUGGER, it is a very striking picture because the main character is not the kind of person you would expect in this context. He is a middle-aged, rather well-dressed respectable looking man who goes around holding up schools and offices in a very discreet way with a toy-gun, and you wonder why he does it and what it is that drives him to do this. It is all done with a hand held camera that tracks this character obsessively. It is a very hermetic film and a sinister one at the same time, and it is certainly very distinctive. Were you able to distribute that film to local cinemas widely in Argentina?

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: In Argentina we hope to bring out the film next month, in March or April.

Peter Cowie: And would you choose art-house cinema rather than a large commercial cinema?

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: We are looking to do an alternative movie release, because there is no such thing as an art-house circuit in Buenos Aires.

Peter Cowie: Could you sell this film to television afterwards?

Pablo Fendrik: Maybe… It is not that easy. In fact, the thing is, we have no time to think about it because we have been involved in the production of the next film.

[Extracts from LAKE TAHOE are screened.]

Peter Cowie: Seeing that again, Fernando, I saw the whole film yesterday and loved it, but seeing this again I realise how carefully crafted your film is, for example in that last scene where the camera is zooming in very slowly, almost like THE GODFATHER. I only noticed it now, I didn’t notice it yesterday, it is almost subliminal. And it is clear to me that you used the widescreen with great deliberation. I haven’t seen DUCK SEASON. Was that also made in widescreen?

A MEXICAN FILM IN ITS SPIRIT

Fernando Eimbcke: No, DUCK SEASON was shot on the normal 1:85, and this one was shot on widescreen, and it was really useful, this format for this story because in this way we can see the character and all the big space and blue skies.

Peter Cowie: I think it was Fritz Lang who hated scope and who said, it is just made for snakes and parades. But I wonder if you could say something about the mood of the film, or the fact that it is 100% Mexican film, not just financially and production-wise, but in its spirit. What you are saying in this film is that there is a way of life, there is a way of living life without “snap, crackle, pop” all the time, without this incandescent energy we assume everything from MTV to whatever, we assume everything must be energetic. In this film you are showing an alternative way, where a man can go to sleep in a hammock during the day, his dog is lying peacefully beside him, the girl can just sit on the doorstep and let the hours pass. That seems to be fundamental to the film, this kind of pace. Was it hard to set that kind of pace, and establish it when you were shooting, or was it all in the editing stage?

Fernando Eimbcke: No, it was already established in the set. I like this kind of pace a lot. The same in DUCK SEASON, which also had this kind of pace.

Peter Cowie: Did you improvise, or was it very carefully scripted? Could the actors change things as they went along?

Fernando Eimbcke: Yes, they changed the dialogues, but they didn’t improvise much. The script was quite tight.

FINANCING ARTHOUSE FILMS

Peter Cowie: Christian, after the success of DUCK SEASON, which got sold to all those countries, was it easier to get the finance for LAKE TAHOE?

Christian Valdelièvre: Sure. I mean, I know it goes a bit counter to what everybody says, but it wasn’t really too difficult to raise the money for DUCK SEASON either. There are government entities in Mexico that help, and so we got the budget for that like half from the government, and half from private financing. But of course, with the name of DUCK SEASON, and the success it had with the press, with the critics, with the festivals, it was a lot easier to do a larger movie like LAKE TAHOE. And I am sure it will be the same for the next one. I mean, obviously, as it builds up and people become more aware of Fernando and more interested in being part of the movies that he does.

Peter Cowie: How important are foreign sales to you, or can you get all the money back on the Mexican market?

Christian Valdelièvre: Even in the case of DUCK SEASON, it has been sold in more than 30 countries, it has gone to maybe 100 film festivals around the world, and we have rejected probably another 100, even with the success of DUCK SEASON, and even though it is a small movie, we still haven’t got the money back on it. This film is a larger movie, double the size, and I think it is going to be hard to get all the money back. We are using some fiscal incentives so there is some benefit on that. But you know, these kind of movies which are more arthouse, end up having very small markets in very many places, as opposed to very big markets in one particular place. I think LAKE TAHOE will be the same. I think we will sell it in many countries, I think many more than 30, but it is still going to be art-driven in those particular countries. So you get a little bit of money from many places as opposed to a lot of money from one place.

Peter Cowie: What is good is that you haven’t made it obviously for television. You have used the widescreen, and a lot of long shots, which traditionally television producers never use. I think that is good and bold of you to say this is not a film made for television, this is aiming for a cinema public.

Christian Valdelièvre: Once I decide to work with somebody as a producer, I am a big believer in letting the directors do whatever they think is appropriate for the movie as opposed to the market, and that is how I like to do things. So, we never sit down and think about the market really. We do the movie that Fernando wants to do and I help him do whatever he wants, and then we see what we do with what we have. But it doesn’t go the other way round, where we try to see what the market wants and then try to produce it. That would be a very different type of movie, which I could do, but that is not my interest.

SHOOTING IN BUENOS AIRES

Peter Cowie: Pablo, your film, I would imagine, was made on a much smaller budget than LAKE TAHOE, and you used a hand-held camera almost throughout I think. What kind of camera was it?

Pablo Fendrik: It was a compact HD Panasonic camera, very light and small, and works with the memory slots, not tapes.

Peter Cowie: How did you find this main actor, who looks as though he could be an amateur, but on the other hand he could have been a theatre actor. Where did he come from?

Pablo Fendrik: I had already cast him for BLOOD APPEARS, a year before this project, so I had him already in mind. He is quite a discovery because he is a 63-year old man, and he was always a theatre lover, but for his whole life he was an economist. He used to work for the UN and things like that. When he retired from his work he started studying singing at Oxford. He has this life inside him. When I actually met him for BLOOD APPEARS he was quite suspicious about the script and then when I told him about THE MUGGER, this fast project that we wanted to do now, and we were going to improvise, he said, yes, let’s do it now. After Juan Pablo, he was the first person to get on board.

Peter Cowie: Juan Pablo, this film is shot entirely on location in a part of Buenos Aires. Could you say which part of Buenos Aires it was shot?

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: It was shot in various barrios, neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, quite near around Palermo.

Peter Cowie: Because it seems like a place where people actually live, rather than work. That was I think one of the unusual things about the film, that the locations were very special, and I don’t know how you managed to clear the streets, but…

Pablo Fendrik: It was our intention to do this. First of all in Buenos Aires you don’t have this distinction between residential and working places. Everything is in the same place. And we didn’t clear the streets or anything like that. We blended into the crowds to shoot. We shot with a hidden camera and a very small crew. We had no extras, all the extras in the film are the people in the street, and the people in the crew. For example in the indoor places we used three or four of the crew members as extras.

IT IS ALL ABOUT WHAT YOU FEEL

Peter Cowie: The extract we are going to see actually is in one of the indoor locations, but it ends with the lead character going out, where you can see the typical look of this film, which is the camera at head-height following him. Let’s watch the extract and then you can talk about it.

[A clip is screened.]

Peter Cowie: It is interesting that he doesn’t attempt to disguise himself at all, he doesn’t attempt to hide his face, he must know he will be caught eventually, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

Pablo Fendrik: He doesn’t care I guess. There are so many people in Buenos Aires. There are like 10 million people. You barely cross the same people twice. This was also part of the logic of this character. He knows what he is doing quite well. He seems to be very well prepared for what he is doing, and the film is about just witnessing the execution of the plan. You don’t see the preparation, you don’t see the consequences, you just see what he is actually doing.

Peter Cowie: We also know nothing about his background or his future either.

Pablo Fendrik: Not at all. Arturo, the actor, and me, we tried to talk about it a couple of times, but we also didn’t know for example why this character wants the money. We just didn’t want to know.

Peter Cowie: The theme of this year’s Campus is “screening emotions”, and I think in a way, that film if it was here would fit in very well because this man is desperate to live his emotions but because of his background and respectability, he cannot let himself go in the normal way. He has to find another way to get his kicks.

Pablo Fendrik: Yes, he seems to hold his emotions pretty well. Although, there is another robbery in the film where he cannot control his feelings or what he is doing. He is out of control and suddenly a dark side of this guy is revealed, and then you see the other side of his emotions. I think it is all about what you feel, what emotion you can provoke in the audience at any minute. That was part of the exercise we were doing. All the time, we were thinking, what kind of reaction are we going to get from the audience in this moment of the scene.

FACING DEATH WITHOUT CRYING

Peter Cowie: Fernando, in a way, “screening emotions” also applies to LAKE TAHOE because for me the two really great things about the film is the humour throughout… I saw the press screening in the morning and people were laughing and enjoying the humour but at the same time they took it seriously as a film. And when finally you do see a love scene, it means infinitely more than most love scenes do in most films because it is so spontaneous. Was it hard to get to that moment where suddenly the boy and the girl suddenly realise they want to sleep together, and that they need each other, and instead of making love you see them embracing and sort of just weeping with relief that they found each other. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Fernando Eimcke: Talking about emotions, it is a very strange film because it talks about death and yet there are no tears in the film. You never see a tear in the film. Even when the character cries, he cries not to the camera, but hidden. I think this attracts me a lot, and it was almost like a rule. I wanted to make a story about death, the death of a father, but I don’t want tears in the film. Because I think in a lot of Hollywood films, they taught us how pain must be in terms of death. People cry a lot. But I myself had a very different experience. I had a loss in my family, and I didn’t cry for many days, so I wanted to explore that. How a character can face death without crying.

Peter Cowie: And how refreshing it was to see a film that does not depend on violence. There is very little violence in the film, if any in fact. And it is ironic that the only hint of violence is in the Bruce Lee ENTER THE DRAGON noises off screen. And the young man who your hero meets, loves martial arts, but you know he is actually a nice, gentle person at heart, just as your dog is a nice gentle dog. If you compare it to the Coen Brothers film (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, 2007), which I just saw after yours, and the Erick Zonca film (JULIA, 2008), both of which show extreme violence on the part of Mexicans, it is rather nice to find a film that shows there is another side, and that you don’t need to have violence to have a successful film.

Fernando Eimbcke: When I see a film with a lot of violence, with cars and aeroplanes crashing etc., I don’t live that kind of life. I live this kind of life, more simple, with not so much violence. For me it is more honest to do a film with no violence because I don’t live with a lot of violence.

THE RIGHT FESTIVAL FOR THE RIGHT FILM

Peter Cowie: Christian, how important is a festival screening for a film like this? What made you choose Berlin… obviously they chose you, but there is a two-way street, and you obviously decided this was a good place to launch the film. What tangible results can you get from a festival like Berlin?

Christian Valdelièvre: I mean, I think these kind of arthouse movies like this rely tremendously on festival presence, so decisions on where you screen it and when are incredibly important. We had thought that the movie DUCK SEASON was going to be ready later, so we thought the logical candidate would be Cannes. But then the editing went faster, so Sundance became an alternative, because this film already has the Sundance Award and also Fernando worked at the Sundance Lab, so Sundance was the logical alternative. But then we realised we were not going to be ready for them. We had actually told them we were going to be ready and then had to backtrack on it, which they didn’t like very much. So then between Sundance and Cannes, the logical alternative was Berlin, so we presented it to the people from Berlin. I would say, the decisions on festivals, on which festival, and which section of the festival, are incredibly important for this kind of movie. So, we were very careful about it, and when we showed it to Dieter Kosslick and the people here, Dieter called me and told me, “I suppose you want it for competition, right?”, and I actually told him, if it is not in competition, we are not going to give it to you. So there is a bit of a back and forth negotiation. It depends of course on the quality of the movie that you have, and I think you have to be very aware, and put your feet on the ground and know what exactly you have as a movie and accept that. Not every movie should be in competition in Berlin, or in Cannes. Some movies should, and some should not. I think we always want the biggest things all the time, but I think you have to be realistic about what you have. And I think here, I was perfectly aware that this was a very important artmovie, and being the second movie of Fernando, who had been in Semaine de la critic in Cannes, so you know, Berlin was only going to be an alternative if it was in competition. So if Dieter had said they will not take it in competition, then I would not have given it to Berlin, and we would have waited for Cannes. And if Cannes had not worked, then we would have waited for Venice. And again, it depends on the movies. If you do a very commercial movie then this doesn’t matter so much, but the kind of movies that we tend to do are more arthouse, and then the decisions that you end up making I think are vital. You know, now we have this seal of the Berlinale on our posters, and we are going to use them all the time. We will always be able to say we were in competition here, no matter what happens with the results. It is already an award just to be here in competition. It creates tremendous awareness amongst buyers to be in competition. It generates noise among other festivals. Obviously the moment we were in Berlin in competition, a lot of people already called us to invite us to other festivals. Again, going back to the strategy, I think now we are working very hard on what festivals to go to, for example, a very big decision that we have to make right now is where to show it in North America, and there are a couple of possibilities there, which we have to think about. How much you spread the decisions. Do we go out quickly and do a US festival quickly, or do we wait for another one later on. There are no rules. I think you have to think about it, I think you have to accept what you have. We have a good sales agent who helps us, and we go back and forth to make decisions like that. I would also say that not all films can get sales agents and I think that we are fortunate that we have one, and it is very helpful for the whole process, to be able to think about this decisions and to discuss them. To finalise your question, I think it is incredibly important for this kind of film.

Peter Cowie: I think also there are two things about this screening, one is being in competition you will get a lot more reviews than if you were in another section, because I know when I was at Variety, every film that is in competition had to be reviewed first and foremost, and only later would you go to the other sections, and I think that applies to the main newspapers of the world as well. The editors all say, cover the competition and then cover what else you can. The other thing is, a film like LAKE TAHOE, will have a more sympathetic public here than it would in Cannes, where things have to move a bit faster, where people are very impatient, they want to get out to their lunches on the beach, and on the whole traditionally, slower moving films have not done that well in Cannes. So, I think you made a good choice.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING A TEAM

Pablo, going to the Critics Week in Cannes, which is the other extreme really, with just seven feature films being shown, a very small section but one which is incredibly important in the history of the festival. I remember Georges Sadoul getting up in the 1960s on the stage with his stick and (he founded the Semaine de Critic), and introducing people like Dusan Makavejev. A lot of well-known directors have made their start in the Critics Week. Did you get reviews from all over the world as a result of that, or did you find it was only rather limited because it wasn’t in the Competition?

Pablo Fendrik: We had excellent reviews much to my surprise. I was the most surprised of all. I think in Cannes, the experience for me was like it isn’t just one festival, it is like four festivals running at the same time. You have the Official Competition, you have Certain Regard, and then La Quinzaine, and the Critics Week. They all run parallel and all have their own atmosphere, and I feel for this little film of ours it was perfect, because they take care of you a lot more. I had some friends in Certain Regard and other bigger sections, and they didn’t get treated so well as we were lucky enough to be treated. Because there are only seven films, so you have all this attention from them, and they really care about you and your crew and your actors and your film, and if they like it, they really show it. They work a lot, and it makes you feel good and well covered and contained. So for me I prefer if I am in a huge festival to be in a small section like this prestigious one, where you feel content.

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: I also feel it is more polite for this kind of film.

Peter Cowie: One of the things that the Talent Campus encourages is teamwork, building a team such as Ingmar Bergman built a team, that you work with year after year after year. Have you used the same technicians on both your films? Are you building a team and is that important to you?

Pablo Fendrik: Yes, for me it is important. To build up small teams or a bunch of accomplices. It is the way we shoot without permissions, without any film commissions or unions on our backs, and not needing to ask anyone anything. We are like a bunch of thieves, assaulting places, you know. And this is the most fun way to do it for us. We shoot in all those forbidden places like banks, casinos, private schools. It is impossible to get permission, unless you have loads of money and a huge production crew, but we were seven people, and a small camera. So, we shoot a lot in this way, with a hidden camera, with a car waiting for us in the next block just to getaway in case the police come. We do a lot of these things. For example we tried to shoot one scene in a bank, the police came and told us to leave. So, we walked around the block and waited for the police to go, and then we shot our scene. We did lots of these kinds of things. Another example, we shot a scene in a bus, there is a long shot where we are following this character in the bus for about five blocks, and then he gets off the bus and takes a cab. And we did all of this just simply in the bus. We just went into the bus with the camera. It was very funny to see five guys getting into the bus, the actor, the cameraman, then me, and then my assistant who paid all our bus tickets. Then when the actor gets off the bus, the camera follows him, and so do we, and then he calls a cab. The cab was already prepared. And I sneak into the cab before them and to give the actor time to get to the cab and the cameraman passes the camera to me through the window… there is no cut for about ten minutes.

AVOIDING MUSIC

Peter Cowie: Now neither film to the best of my knowledge uses music in any way. Was that deliberate to have no music at all, even over scenes where there is no dialogue, there is no action, but you almost deliberately avoid music.

Fernando Eimbcke: Yes, whilst I was writing the script I was reading a book by Robert Bresson, “Notes From A Cinematographer”, and I read a lot about the use of sound and to avoid music, and this is what I tried in this film, and I used the sound to create a sort of music, for example with the wind. We used different kinds of winds in the different scenes. If we wanted to transmit some kind of dark feeling we used winds with a lot of bass, and in the scene with the steps we tried to design music with the sounds around the character.

Peter Cowie: So, natural music really, rather than composed music.

Fernando Eimbcke: Yes.

Peter Cowie: And obviously music in your film would have distracted completely from the claustrophobic atmosphere.

Pablo Fendrik: Absolutely. One of the main purposes of the exercise for me was to reach the people sitting in the audience without any other superficial thing, if you can use this word. I know music is not superficial but… I wanted to use just what the camera shows you. No music, no voiceover, no editing tricks, just what you can see. The actors, and the dramatic situation and the camera, that is it. Music was completely out of the question from the very beginning.

Peter Cowie: And in your next film too?

Pablo Fendrik: Ah no, the next film is full of music, voiceover and stuff like this.

IS THERE A THING LIKE LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA?

Peter Cowie: Before we open this up for questions from the audience, I would like to ask both of you: Is there such a thing as Latin American cinema? Every December here in Europe, there are the European Film Awards, and there is a body called the European Film Academy, and people get up on stage and accept their awards, and they say how happy they are to be part of the family of Europe. I wonder, is there any sense of that in Latin America? Do you feel a bond at all with each other even though the languages might be different and the geographical distances so huge, do you think we can arrive at something called Latin American cinema. Fernando, what do you think? Do you see yourself exclusively as a Mexican director and nothing to do with Latin America?

Fernando Eimbcke: No, sure, I learn a lot from Latin American directors, from Argentina, from the guys who made WHISKY (Juan Pablo Rebella/Pablo Stoll, 2004), and DUCK SEASON and LAKE TAHOE is like talking with them. I don’t know them but there are a lot of things in common. I respect them a lot, and I like a lot of Latin American cinema.

Christian Valdelièvre: The funny thing about Latin America is that at the end of the day, weirdly enough, our movies don’t travel so well in Latin America, so it is hard to see Mexican movies in Argentina, and it is hard to see Brazilian movies in Columbia and it is hard to see Peruvian movies in Mexico. You would think from afar that our movies travel well within Latin America. It is not true. So it is actually the case that we haven’t seen your movie, and you haven’t seen ours. It is easier for us to see those movies in festivals around the world than to see them in Latin America.

Peter Cowie: Actually that is the same in Europe. A Finnish film is not released in Sweden.

Christian Valdelièvre: I think this makes it hard to think about Latin American movies if we are not even able to see them. It might be that we end up following them but we actually just have problems seeing Argentina movies. There is a lot of production in Argentina and Argentina movies are more shown in Spain than they are in Mexico.

Peter Cowie: And I think you have more financial help in Argentina don’t you? Don’t you have subsidy programs at various levels?

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: Yes, we have the INCA, Institute of National Argentina Cinema, this is the father of all Argentina movies. But in this specific case we didn’t receive the subsidy for our shoot, that is why we shot it so low budget.

Peter Cowie: What about you, could you ever see a Latin American film academy being founded, and would you be a member of such an academy?

Pablo Fendrik: It never occurred to me, even the idea of such a thing, but it sounds good.

Peter Cowie: Well, I think it is now time to hear from you the audience. Do we have any questions?

THE MEXICAN FILM INDUSTRY

Question: My name is Elan from Lebanon. I would like to know, what is a low-budget film in Mexico?

Christian Valdelièvre: The average price of a Mexican movie now is about 1.6 million US dollars. So when you compare it to Argentina, their average price is probably about 600,000. I don’t think we are very cheap actually. We do about 30-40 movies a year in Mexico, which is less than in Argentina even though it is four times the size of it.

Peter Cowie: Could that situation be changed as you produce bigger and bigger stars like Gael García Bernal?

Christian Valdelièvre: Yes, I think part of the problem is actually that we need to produce more. If we produce more quantity then we create more demand, and with more demand we create more of an industry. I mean, we are talking about the Mexican film industry. I don’t actually think it exists. I think it has been more of a workshop. Four years ago we did eight movies in Mexico, eight features in a country of 105 million people. That is nothing. So, economies of scale, better packages, all kinds of things you could do with a bigger industry, will be able to happen only once we start to produce more. It is a chicken and egg kind of thing. We need to produce a lot more. Things are happening. We now have four US studios, which are producing Mexican movies for the Mexican market and this is creating a bigger demand. And I think you have to get the demand from the public. Now in Mexico probably about 85% of what people see is US films, and we need to create more of a demand in the people who really want to see a Mexican movie. This will create more of a balance, and then hopefully will create more of an industry, and hopefully that will then get to lower prices.

SHOOTING WITHOUT PERMISSION

Question: My name is Nancy and I come from Greece and I am now living in Berlin. I wanted to ask Pablo about the short clip that we just saw, the rhythm of the actors and the camera movement and everything, it looked quite well planned. So, if you say you are shooting without permission in places where they don’t expect you to be, how do you do that, for example without rehearsals?

Pablo Fendrik: No, there is a distinction between the indoor locations like the one you saw, which was not very much rehearsed but we did it about twice to know the movements and stuff like this. But the real problem was in the streets, when you have lots of cars and trains and people. In fact we pre-produced the film in three weeks, and then we shot for nine days for the entire shoot. This scene you saw was shot on the first day. We had no camera rehearsals, but I had rehearsals with the actors for a week or two. So, we improvised a lot during the rehearsals, and then we finally built the scenes. But to really answer your question, the secret is the crew. I had this amazing cameraman for example, maybe the best in my country. We had this perfect communication between each other. We also had a great communication between the cameraman and my main actor, who as you saw, is close to the camera all through the film. That was the key, because when you are all perfectly in communication with such a small and tight and well-tuned team, then you can do almost anything I guess. We tried everything we could imagine.

Peter Cowie: I would also like to add, was the fact that the questioner also had in mind was that if you get onto that bus as you described with all five of you, how do you know that is going to work? What if you have to do a second take? Do you have to queue up and get another bus?

Pablo Fendrik: Yes, you just wait for the next bus. Sometimes you get lucky and the bus just comes. We would run through the street and the original plan was to take the cab, but then I saw the bus coming so I shout out, “hey, take the bus”, and everybody took the bus. Then in the bus I said, “hey, everybody get off the bus”. It was like this. And then we managed to get the cab into the scene with amazing luck, very well coordinated. The thing is, you have to be open for these things to happen. The main problem for this kind of shooting is that the crew to be mentally prepared to do these kind of things. That is the problem with professionalism. Professionalism can kill a film like this. I mean, we made this film with our credit cards. We made it with so little money. It was more expensive to go to Cannes than the money we used to actually shoot this film. That is a real fact. So, what you need is to be open-minded. This thing can be done. The ten people that were in the crew, we all believed in this. We believed that we can make a film in ten days. And this is the main thing: You have to believe it!

Peter Cowie: Fernando, although your film is on a much bigger scale, I had the same impression about LAKE TAHOE, that the people in it just believe that scene can work. They all seem to radiate a belief in the scenes working. Something else, before we have the next question, I am struck by the absence of people. I think the only scene where we see any extras is in the cinema, but otherwise it is almost like a lunar landscape. This must also have been deliberate on your part?

Fernando Eimbcke: Yes, I like to work in empty spaces, to have just the character walking with no people around.

GETTING A FILM INTO ANOTHER COUNTRY

Question: Hello, my name is Max. I have a question about your ability to get your films to other parts of Latin America, and then beyond that, what sort of barriers do you have in getting to, for example, the US or other foreign markets?

Peter Cowie: In other words, what obstacles are there between getting the film into another country in Latin America or beyond?

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: It is difficult. It depends on what kind of film and what kind of market.

Question: Let’s say you want to bring your Argentinian film to the Mexican market, is it quite difficult for you?

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: Yes, between different Latin American markets is difficult in my opinion. It is not impossible but difficult.

Christian Valdelièvre: I think both the films presented here are arthouse type of movies, so they go to smaller markets and then you have to find the right kind of person in that country who would be interested to push for an arthouse movie from a not really well-known director from a country like Mexico or Argentina. The barriers are created by the projects we are doing. We don’t have famous actors, our directors are new, so why would somebody want to buy this movie from Argentina if they have so many other options from so many other places, with much more sellable elements? So in a way we are creating our own barriers. But it is not like there is a search for Latin American product in our countries. They are more interested in French arthouse, or US independent movies. In terms of going to the States, to use the example of DUCK SEASON, we had already sold the movie in about 29 countries, so we sold all the major markets in the world such as Japan, France, not Germany by the way, Spain, England, Switzerland etc. And we had an incredibly difficult time selling it in the States. Even though the movie had been in lots of festivals and had won lots of prizes, the issue that came up was market related, and that is that the movie was in black and white. In the US a lot of the distributors have their deals with TV stations, and those deals specifically state that the movies have to be in colour. So that then limits a lot the distributors who are willing to buy your movie because then one of the windows they need to sell to, they couldn’t in this case because they wouldn’t fulfil the contracts that they have signed with the television stations. So, we ended up selling the movie for zero to Warner Independent, and the deal with Warner had a clause that says if they want to change the black and white film to colour, we will let them do it. Not that this was something that Fernando liked very much, since the project was conceived as a black and white movie, so it created a bit of a stir in terms of our discussions. But it was the only way that Warner was going to be willing to get the movie, if they had the chance to put it into colour because they thought maybe they might want to put it into colour for the DVD. They haven’t done that, and they never will, I think. So, in that particular case we had a lot of problems. With LAKE TAHOE I think the film is more known, people started seeing the movie yesterday. I think we will end up having offers from the States, but you know, the art-house market in the States is a very difficult market to get into because everybody tries to sell there and there is a lot of competition. It is very hard.

CINEMA AND POLITICS IN LATIN AMERICA

Question: My name is Evelyn, I have two questions. The first is that Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna announced a foundation of independent film production in Mexico. Do you know something about this? And to Pablo: The new Latin American cinema perhaps has some relationships with the new or different government situation, who is more left-wing than before?

Pablo Fendrik: I don’t think there is such a thing as a left-wing… I mean, if you compare it with the 1980s when we had a dictatorship, then yeah, okay. But I don’t think it has anything to do with governments or state policies in our country. It has to do with the insistence of two generations of filmmakers, or people who want to shoot films, who insist on having a cinema law in Argentina, which allows the government to give subsidies to make films, and there is a sort of a protection. So this helps a lot to produce films in the last ten years, when we were able to produce more. But there is also another factor, which has to do with film schools. We had no film schools until ten years ago. There was just one official film school. It was very poor. So, with the arrival of private film schools in the early 1990s it gave way to a rise of new filmmakers. The so-called “new Argentinian cinema”, which you have probably heard about. About 90% of these guys came from film schools. So now we have film schools and this cinema law. Both were created in the early ‘90s and so I don’t think it is all just to do with the government.

Peter Cowie: And it is true, Gael García Bernal said last year that there was going to be a setting up of some sort of institute in Mexico.

Christian Valdelièvre: It is really a production company that they have set up, and Gael and Diego, apart from being very talented in many different aspects, are also very smart and forward looking, and they have created a company, which is a production company and has also done distribution. They are doing mostly independent films, they were thinking of doing a larger one, which I think is currently pending. But when I was saying we need to produce more in Mexico, they are very much doing that. They are doing very intelligent projects and they are using their knowledge and their many contacts to be able to produce stuff. They have a first-look deal with Focus Features, so whenever they do a movie, they first show it to Focus, which up till now has rejected all their projects presented to them by the way. There hasn’t been one project that has been accepted by Focus. Because they have chosen certain kind of movies that are not necessarily very commercial. But I think they are fantastic, and very intelligently using their talent and contacts to do things. They are doing production, and of course each of them both directed a movie.

Fernando Eimbcke: They also have a distribution festival, which goes around all of Mexico, and this is also something very interesting. They use their fame to promote documentaries, and more difficult films. It is called Ambulante.

Christian Valdelièvre: They also go on TV and say you should go and watch documentaries, and so then a lot of people go and see documentaries, because they are very known and visible people.

DISTRIBUTING FILMS IN LATIN AMERICA

Question: My name is Cecilia, and I am from Argentina but live for many years in Berlin. I have the feeling that I see a lot of Latin American movies in Berlin, and always a lot in the festival competitions. My first question is to the directors: How is your feeling and are you happy for your film to be shown in these competitions, or are you also expecting your film to be shown in your own countries? How is it in your own countries with distribution? For example will your film be shown only in Buenos Aires or also other cities?

Peter Cowie: I think part of that question has already been answered, where you said that THE MUGGER will be released in a couple of months time. And yet, the film was made a year ago. So the implication there is that it takes a long time to get a film like that distributed.

Pablo Fendrik: If we manage to release THE MUGGER in a month from now it is actually pretty quick, just a year later. This is a very good length of time for an Argentinian opening. There are films that take two or three years to be released after being made. There is a huge problem in Argentina with distribution. We don’t have so many problems now with production, but distribution is a total mess because the market is fully occupied by Americans.

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: But also our intention to release THE MUGGER in Buenos Aires and in other cities and states in Argentina is not easy, not only for us, but also for most other young directors and producers in Argentina.

Question: But would you like to?

Pablo Fendrik: Sure. But there is a difference in what you like to do and what you can actually do. There is a huge difference sometimes. And we have to keep on moving. We cannot wait for some state policy to allow us to release the film. We have to keep on moving, keep on shooting, and keep on showing the film wherever we can show it. Of course we made this film for an audience, we didn’t make the film for ourselves.

CO-WRITING – HOW DOES IT WORK?

Peter Cowie: Fernando, there have been four years between both of your films coming out, the first in 2004, now this one 2008. Do you think it will be another four years before your next one? Or was it just because of the project itself, that it took all that time to get LAKE TAHOE off the ground?

Fernando Eimbcke: It took a long time because we worked very hard on the promotion of DUCK SEASON. As the director, you don’t finish work when you finish the film, you have to promote it too. And only once I finished the promotion I started on the new project, on LAKE TAHOE. It took a long time. It was a difficult process, the screenwriting. My co-writer and I shared a similar experience of losing our fathers, so it was a really difficult process.

Peter Cowie: Could we go off on a side-track there because so many people over the years at the Campus have asked directors about how they write. When you work with a partner like that, do you work in separate rooms, work alone, then meet up and go over what you have done, or do you both write simultaneously together… How does it work?

Fernando Eimbcke: We design on paper the events of the film. In this specific case we agreed that I write the script. Once every week we would meet and talk about the things that I wrote. That was the process.

Christian Valdelièvre: If I could go back to the previous question, I think seeing Fernando over the years working, I think we tell people all the time it is very difficult to do a first movie. But I think you should never underestimate how hard it is to do a second movie, particularly when you have a movie, which is very successful. I think in a way, DUCK SEASON was a big weight on the shoulders of Fernando, or at least that is how I see it. With a small movie that makes a lot of noise, I think Fernando gave himself high levels of accomplishment for his second movie. Independently of the fact that it was a very personal-related story, I think that the weight of the success of the first movie, made it really hard for the second one. I mean, I could almost wish people could move from the first movie to the third one, without doing the second one, but I don’t really know how you could do that. I think it is very difficult to do the second movie because you have had a very successful first movie and so you are worried that people are going to compare it, no matter how different they are, and if you have worries about something it blocks you from going forwards.

THE FILM’S RELEVANCE

Question: I am Anna from Denmark. What is the social and political potential of films in your countries? What is their relevance to the audience?

Pablo Fendrik: For me it is completely out of limits to think in those terms. Maybe there could be some sort of impact of our films on a few individual minds in some way but this is not my intention to do that. I am aware for example that THE MUGGER has some social topics, especially at the end of the film, and there were some discussions and controversy about that in the Buenos Aires film festival when we first showed it, but it wasn’t my intention. It was just something that happened. I mean, it is completely surreal to think that a film that maybe, I don’t know, 10,000 people will see, in a cinema, between all the other films such as SPIDERMAN and stuff, will make any difference at all. For instance, in my country, we don’t have this arthouse circuit, so…

Question: Exactly, so what is the relevance of your film?

Pablo Fendrik: Relevance? What relevance? Why should it have relevance? Why is relevance so important? Not for me. I don’t need to be relevant. I just want to shoot.

Peter Cowie: I think there is a social kind of cinema, the kind that you are speaking of. For example, the films of Francesco Rosi, which are being shown here in retrospect, you should see those because there is a man who consciously tried to change the society and reflect the society, and to say, this is wrong, this has to be changed. But I don’t think either of our guests today fall into that category. I think you are more into the imaginative fantasy type of cinema, and therefore it is irrelevant I think to ask if they are relevant.

A DIGITALLY CREATED NEW LANGUAGE IN CINEMA?

Question: My name is Yashira and I am from Bolivia, but I have been living in Argentina for almost four years. The question is about the digital new cinema. Do you think that for the reason we don’t have much money in Latin America that we have the possibility of using digital? Is this a way to make a new language in cinema?

Juan Pablo Gugliotta: Yes, I think so. We don’t have a lot of money but we have a lot of talent or energy to shoot in new ways. Production design for example is very difficult. We tried it in THE MUGGER and we will try it in our next films.

Pablo Fendrik: In fact, THE MUGGER could not have been made without digital technology because there was no other way to do it. There was no other way to finance it nor to shoot it.

Question: But being a digital project, it is making a new language. I know you have to do it in digital because you have no other options. If Latin American filmmakers had access to real film, it would be different.

Pablo Fendrik: Slightly. I’m not totally sure.

PC The big problem too is the digital distribution. Digital production is not the problem, you can make films every day of the week, but can you show them digitally in many screens yet? No. Because to equip each scene costs 80-90,000 dollars, and this is a big problem. Even in multiplexes where one screen is digital and devoted to art-house cinema, it is very hard to get into. I think that is the revolution that lies ahead. Once the cinemas can be equipped digitally, then these films can be distributed properly. Otherwise the danger is you will make a film digitally and it will go to somebody’s computer screen rather than a cinema. The great thing about LAKE TAHOE is that it looks great on a cinema screen. Therefore digital distribution seems to me the real issue right now, not digital production.

Pablo Fendrik: The time when I was at the Berlinale Talent Campus we talked a lot about digital verses film. It is not important, it is just a medium. I don’t think it will change the language. We made this film in digital but I think if I were using 16mm or 35mm cameras I would try to do it in exactly the same way. In the same language cinematically.

Fernando Eimbcke: For example, when we shot DUCK SEASON, I made a very simple script, and I wanted to make the film that I wanted to make. I went to Christian, the producer, and said I want to make the film in this way, and if he had said no, he was not interested, then I was sure I could also shoot the film with video in an apartment with friends. But it is just a medium.

Christian Valdelièvre: Yes, I feel the same. Nothing is going to replace the importance of the story and how you tell a story. You can have many ways to do that story in all kinds of media, but if at the end of the day you don’t have a good story to tell, it doesn’t matter what medium you choose. I am sure now with digitalisation we are going to see a lot more filmmakers, and probably out of the thousands there will be some that will be good, but not because it is simpler to produce a movie in digital that the relevance of what you are wanting to say and how you are going to say it goes away. I think in a way it is kind of risky because now everybody can make a movie, but that doesn’t mean everybody can be a director.

Peter Cowie: On that note I think we must draw proceedings to a close, but thank you so much Juan Pablo, Pablo, Fernando and Christian, thank you for spending this time.