We begin a new "Thursdays of Chilean Cinema" with daring works that have marked Chilean cinematography, as we move forward in opening up new spaces that showcase moving and exciting stories, which you can enjoy every week from your home through www.cinemachile.cl
This week we are accompanied by two film that have had international repercussion in interesting niche circuits, and today are available to audiences around the world. Las Plantas, by Roberto Doveris and ALTIPLANO by Malena Szlam, are films with particular ways of seeing and understanding the world, with narrative and formal elements that push the limits of the avant-garde. Doveris' feature film fuses live-action and animation techniques into an immersive tale of desire; while Szlam's short film captures the Atacama Desert, engaging in the material and affective dimensions of analogue film practice.
Las plantas was produced by Mimbre and Niña Niño Films, and premiered at the Berlin Festival in 2016, in the Generation 14+ section dedicated to youth audiences, obtaining a Special Mention from the Youth Jury Generation 14plus and the Grand Prix of the Generation 14plus International Jury. The cast is made up of Violeta Castillo (who also composed the movie's soundtrack), Mauricio Vaca, Ernesto Meléndez, Ingrid Isensee and Juan Cano.
Described by Variety as a "a sexually souped-up teen psycho-thriller…an original coming-of-age tale laced with pop culture" the film focuses on Florence, a 17-year-old teenager who has to care for her brother who is in a persistent vegetative state. Trying to survive without money or anyone to take care of them, the young woman discovers a comic called "The Plants" that deals with the invasion of plant spirits during the full moon, and which pushes her to explore her own sexuality.
In Las plantas, elements of pop culture, such as comics, become the tool through which Florence is able to escape her reality and forge a new identity outside of victimhood. She becomes empowered through a sexual game that is dangerous, but at the same time time might be the only way to survive in a world where everything is falling apart. In this way, the film subverts the male gaze, mixing routine and fantasy in an ode to sexual awakening and feminism, an unusual approach in Chilean cinema. An intelligent film that mixes film genres to reflect on gender roles in our society, “Las Plantas” should not be missed.
Roberto Doveris is a talented and multifaceted Chilean director, producer, critic and teacher. With his Niña Niño Film company, he has participated in the creation of various films and more than 50 video clips, forging a particular vision that explores the intersections of pop, pastiche and sexual dissent. Since the premiere of The Plants at the Berlinale, Doveris has co-produced two films: “Potential Victim” by Nicolás Guzmán, which had its premiere at the Tallinn International Film Festival (Estonia), and “The Prince” by Sebastián Muñoz, winner of the Queer Lion in the Venice Film Festival 2019. He is currently post-producing “The Patient” by Constanza Fernández and preparing his second feature film, “Becoming Vixen.”
CLICK HERE TO WATCH "THE PLANTS":
Filmed in the Andean Mountains in the traditional lands of the Atacameño, Aymara , and Calchaquí - Diaguita in Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO takes place within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and coloured lakes. Fusing earth with sky, day with night, heartbeat with mountain, and mineral with iridescent cloud, ALTIPLANO reveals a vibrating landscape in which a bright blue sun forever threatens to eclipse a blood - red moon.
Named as one of the most powerful and surprising landscape films in recent years by the important magazine Film Comment, ALTIPLANO by Malena Szlam has transformed the way we look at our environment and the abilities we have in capturing our surroundings. Using in camera editing to create visual rhythms evoked through the collision of color and shape, desert landscapes that pulse and stutter, Szlam reflects on the heart of an ecosystem threatened by a century of mining exploitation.
Produced by Szlam and Oona Mosna, this film was selected in the prestigious Wavelengths experimental film section of the Toronto Film Festival, and was selected in the Rotterdam International Film Festival, New Directors / New Films (MoMA, Lincoln Center) and the Valdivia International Film Festival. It was named as TIFF’s Top Ten Canadian Short Films 2018, Best Experimental Short Film at the Melbourne Festival; Honorable Mention at the Punto de Vista Documentary Festival, among other recognitions.
Malena Szlam is a Chilean artist and filmmaker currently living in Montreal, Canada. Working at the intersection of cinema, installation, and performance, her practice explores the relationship between the natural world, perception, and intuitive process. The poetics developed through her time-based works and in-camera edited films—35mm, 16mm, and Super 8mm—engage the material and affective dimensions of analogue film practice.
Something she has explored in her extensive body of work, in pieces such as “Morfología de un sueño” (2018), “Lunar Almanac” (2013), “Anagrams of Light” (2011), among many others. Her films are distributed by CFMDC in Toronto and Light Cone in Paris Distributeur films.
The sound design of ALTIPLANO was created by James Benjamin, Mamo Koba, Malena Szlam, and the direct sound by Carlos Arias, James Benjamin, Susannah Buchan, Jacob Kirkegaard, Clive Oppenheimer, and Ben Russell.
