Of course not.

And yet, of those four notable figures, most Canadians will only definitely be familiar with the NFB, because its films are aired on television. I’d be reluctant to call even Cronenberg a household name. There is a tremendous lack of awareness among Canadians that a national cinema even exists here, or what it looks like. Our video rental stores stock our own films in the foreign film section.

The only province where this is a non-issue is Quebec, which has its own respective and rich history. Francophone-Canadians will watch Quebecois films because it’s an act of cultural preservation. Anglophone-Canadians, on the other hand, suffer from cultural cringe.

There are a few reasons why Canadians are sceptical of our own talent. Canadian films never receive ample distribution and exhibition. Canadians equate “cinema” with “Hollywood” because that is the diet force-fed to us. The Canadian government has a track record of refusing cultural protection measures that would solve this problem. Our close relationship with Hollywood has made defining a film “Canadian” difficult to do, because so many American films are shot in Canada or with Canadian production crew. We’ve also remained quite ambivalent about defining Canadian identity, to the point that our ambivalence has actually become a cultural emblem. We’re not quite sure what would make a film “Canadian” (those are indeed, scare quotes, because conversations about national identity regularly raise the hairs on the back of our spines).

As a Canadian critic with a film studies background I find it difficult to discuss cinema with many Canadians that travels outside the well-known “movie lore” of Hollywood. But the optimist in me also sees an opportunity for education. Sure, there are information gaps. That should give Canadian film critics a sense of purpose then, to inform our countrymen of exciting new foreign films – even when they’re from our own backyard.

By engaging with movies, we engage with things as abstract as societies and cultures, but also as concrete as actors’ bodies or physical objects shown upon the screen. Having grown up in communist Poland, I can still remember vivid impressions made on me by Hollywood films – literally everything in them seemed exciting and colorful. For me, the biggest special effect in Ivan Reitman’s GHOSTBUSTERS II wasn’t the walking Statue of Liberty at all, but a plain delivery-pizza box seen in one of the scenes. How I dreamed of a pizza like that; how I mythologized the world in which pizza like that even existed…

Polish cinema of the last twenty years has been trying to come to terms with the 50-year period of communist enslavement, and so far has achieved only partial success. As we still wait for great Polish movies that would help us understand our collective identity, the world of Polish film criticism is divided by a sharp generational split: the older critics rely almost entirely on print outlets, whereas the young cinephiles eagerly embrace social networking as means of making film criticism a communal experience.

We are witnessing a time of enormous change in film criticism – and I firmly believe it is one for the better. The mere fact that I can discuss new movies via Facebook or Twitter with my friends from around the world is incredibly enriching. The whole world seems to have become one huge round-table, capable of seating thousands of people passionate about cinema. It’s strangely comforting for me to think that our conversation goes on every hour of every day and night, bringing us all together and inviting to shape the world in new, exciting ways.

I wasn’t aware of those calamities when I started writing about films on my tiny blog which turn out to have thousands of readers. My sole motivation was that “a massive tradition of filmmaking is logically blind without a balanced response of film appreciations.” There are many potential films made in Indonesia, but there is no one there to write about them and to later capture and place them into some frame in our history. This is where I wish I could do my task.

The scene of film criticism in Indonesia has been fading in and out for many decades. Andjar Asmara, the oldest known Indonesian film critic started his magazine before facing bankruptcy in the late 1940s. Heretofore, there is no media that specializes in film criticism. Articles on films are usually written on small and unimportant columns in cultural magazines and newspapers. This era was marked by two of the most-remembered Indonesian film critics, Armijn Pane and Rosihan Anwar.

That “hitchhiking tradition” continues until the early 2000s when a magazine called “F” started to publish reviews focusing on cinema. Unfortunately, “F” had to close not so long after its initiation. Today, Indonesian film criticism is dominated by catalogue-like film magazines that are mainly used to promote the upcoming Hollywood movies aimed at popcorn eaters and loitering couples.

Something changed when blogging became a trend. Blogs with their costless feature provide possibilities for people to write what they want freely. That trend led me and my colleague to an idea of making a weblog on cinema. Alongside us, there are more than 200 active film blogs in Indonesia. The sad thing is, most of these blogs are not critical hence not influential to the audiences and film goers. This becomes my biggest disquietude. Most of these blogs don't go beyond showing which part is pleasing and displeasing before their eyes, in many cases leaving holes which they suppose to fill with plausible insights. There has been a change in modes of film criticism in Indonesia, but it’s only on the form and not the content.

I always learn to avoid the writings that merely commend and condemn films, especially films from a manifold cultural ambience like Indonesia. The majority of Indonesian films nowadays are repealed from the social story that they speak about yet serve just as amusement for the audiences before they go back to their hard life. This is where my wish lies, I wish to keep spreading thoughts to people that (Indonesian) films are actually (could be) a binocular to observe their own reality, not a dark wall that stands between them and their reality.

The position of a film critic today cannot remain unquestioned. Not only does the proliferation of all kinds of public opinion expressed on films (enhanced by web technologies that open potentially infinite platforms) work towards undermining the authority of the film critic, who can no longer be considered an arbiter elegantiae of this relatively new art form or of the entertaining quality of film as a work of mass entertainment. And I am tempted to write: rightly so. Even though knowledge of film history and theory certainly enables one to consider more contextual factors when analyzing a film-text, there can be no unequivocal set of norms that would enable us to “objectively” assess a film’s value.

Why then engage in film criticism at all? In a country like Slovenia (but as far as I know this is the tendency elsewhere in Europe as well), where film (and other) critics are by and large precarious workers that have to entertain several other occupations to make ends meet, this is not exactly a prospect for a nice and easy career, certainly not for the young generation. Why perseverating then, if not with the belief of separating what is good from what is bad?

“As Spinoza had said, it is a problem of love and hate and not judgment; 'my soul and body are one .... What my soul loves, I love. What my soul hates, I hate... All the subtle sympathizings of the incalculable soul, from the bitterest hate to passionate love '” (Deleuze).

By this I do not mean to romanticize this profession and turn it back into a naïf cinephilia or quasi-democratic subjectivism. Film criticism might be grasped also as an opportunity for public analyses of cultural objects that we cherish, an opportunity to produce knowledge about them (not to discern the Truth in the form of a value judgment), as well as an opportunity to raise certain issues we deem important, to (ideally) encourage a public debate. Film criticism might be used to turn the attention of the public towards works that might otherwise go unnoticed or to raise issues that are generally overlooked. This might be of some help especially to young filmmakers making their way towards film audiences.

After long periods (or waves) of difficulties in film production in Slovenia due to an obscure system of state financing (the main financial source for Slovene filmmakers) and political games within it, which made it very hard for filmmakers to get to do their first, and made it even harder to do their second feature, they are slowly finding their way out, also by resorting to low budget or independent productions. At this year's national film festival in Portorož, two young filmmakers with their first features overshadowed the already established middle-aged generation. While this had gone unnoticed by the main jury, the film critics' jury chose to point to these nascent talents. Of course this will not completely turn the tables; but if it helps them gaining at least a tiny bit more public attention and references for next projects, maybe this is good enough.

Film criticism is thus, not as a matter of absolute judgment, but of passion love and hate; not a war for Truth, but a combat for knowledge-making and awareness-raising. But, more than anything, a (very Deleuzian) meeting between the writer (the critic, the journalist, the theoretician) and the film, a meeting that might generate new concepts, percepts and affects.

Therefore, within the world scenario of criticism, I see myself as someone looking for space to share ideas and reflections. Inside the Brazilian sphere, however, this work is not so easy. Even though we have some excellent cinematic thinkers, it is very hard to find or keep printed magazines with space for deep reflections about cinema. Most Brazilian criticism only maintains their existence through the Internet, with online magazines and websites. The common media such as daily newspapers and weekly magazines don’t usually publish real criticism, but only some kind of cultural journalism, based on grades and short reviews. From time to time some specialized magazine appears, but usually only those that make intellectual concessions are able to keep going.

However, I see the situation of Brazilian cinema with optimism. The incentive laws (based on tax deduction), are contributing with our cinematographic production – which had been suffering with a monetary shortage, that may had delayed it. Nowadays directors can look for this aid, which enables the process of making a movie. That, further then bringing us some young and new filmmakers, gives the possibility of great directors to develop their works and improve it with each new film. The fact that these filmmakers are able to regularly make new movies is, without a doubt, a very positive aspect of Brazilian cinema today.

When I first began reviewing, my audience mostly consisted of a void, the chaotic void of the Internet, where you can write anything you want, but find no one to read you. Only those who insist, who visit forums, and who connect with fellow cinephiles, can, at long last, start finding a readership. And most of these kindred souls will likely be scattered around the globe.

Film critics and bloggers now have an international audience, and their interactions are equally cosmopolitan. Those who have grown up online can sometimes feel like they have a border-less cinephilia. From an isolated house in Los Angeles, I honed my film love with an Englishman living in Italy, a French-Canadian who mixed brilliant insights with hilarious typos, a New Zealander who had apparently seen every film in existence, a Portuguese restauranteur who would write every other word in italics, and an Australian who preferred men but would make an exception for Audrey Hepburn.

These interactions had the benefit of being multicultural, but the drawback of detaching me from my national context. First in the United States, and then back in my country of origin, Argentina, it would seem to me as if I were leading a double life: local student by day, globe-trotting movie critic by night. Buenos Aires, where I now live, redresses this problem to a degree. Its cinephilia, like its culture and politics, is something physical, something that gestates in its streets. Film clubs abound, projecting movies in secret rooms, neglected theater attics, and roofs under the night sky, where crazed neighbors yell and complain about the midnight soundtrack.

Like modern cinephilia, the Argentine film industry is similarly varied. There is no adequate manifesto to explain the sinister banality of Lucrecia Martel, the intense observation of Lisandro Alonso, the grandiose storytelling of Mariano Llinás, and the talky humanity of Daniel Burman – the term “New Argentine Cinema” is so woefully inappropriate by now – just like I can hardly mend the schism between my double identities as global, English-language Internet critic and twenty-something film lover who walks down dark hallways to watch movies with fellow porteños, as the people of Buenos Aires are called. Maybe there's no mending to be done, only celebration of fragmented joys.

At first, I teased my newfound appetite for film analysis as a writer for The University of Adelaide’s student magazine “On Dit”, each trip to the cinema offering welcome respite from my double degree in Media and International Studies. Next, I took to the internet where I began to develop my critical voice as an editor, contributor and video presenter for the website “Cut Print Review”, using humour as a means to lure the movie-going masses into thinking critically about film. Since then, I’ve been accepted into the Online Film Critics Society and have become an award-winning member of the Australian Film Critics Association, granting me the credence necessary to turn my passion into a career.

Admittedly, film journalism is hardly the most sensible career path to undertake in Australia, a place where local critics tend to be the first shown the door during any mass media restructuring, and local filmmakers tend to seek out international approval before daring to take on the Hollywood-obsessed market back home. In my stomping ground of Adelaide, South Australia, I could count on one hand the number of film journalists who attend the weekly press screenings, and on one finger the number of whom earn a comfortable living doing so. But while the scarcity of critical voices in mainstream media is discouraging, the rising number of young and talented film conversationalists emerging online is nothing short of inspiring. Embracing and enabling this new generation of e-critics is vital to the continued existence of film as a platform for stimulating discussion, as is keeping film discourse an inclusive activity, not an exclusive one. The way I see it, we’re lucky enough to be writing about a medium that billions enjoy watching, so what’s stopping us from developing it into a medium that billions enjoy discussing?

An early introduction to motion pictures influenced my interest in film theory and practice. I became a film “critic“ because I simply could never keep my opinion on films to myself. Working as a culture reporter and editing a film magazine have also greatly broadened my interest in international cinema and film criticism. Notwithstanding the absence of a Film Studies programme or proper appreciation for film critics/criticism, as Nigerian cinema grows, so should I be many steps ahead by providing informed, constructive, critical commentary.

Unfortunately, more film reporters exist here than do full-time critics. Some reporters, rather than appraise the local cinematic art, choose to focus more on celebrity gossip. Some depend more on press releases from a production company, and end up giving every movie a positive, half-hearted review, much to some producer’s wrongful delight. Critical exposure from academic scholars, foreign researchers and critics, who take the time and effort to deconstruct these productions, has however contributed in no small way to a recent spurt of quality productions in Nigerian cinema. This new deviation from primarily commercial films to the arty is an improvement that has resulted in local productions premiering in Nigerian cinemas plus screenings on the international festival circuit: a detour from the era of films going straight to DVD rentals for home viewing.

There remains the argument about whether or not Nigeria’s film industry (popularly called “Nollywood“) constitutes a form of “national cinema“. The indigenous and English language sub-sections take drastically different approaches to representing national issues in their art, refusing to be seen as the same. Nonetheless, each has garnered an impressive following even outside their origins; making an especially huge impact across the African continent and with Africans in diaspora. The sprouting of more locally-organised international film festivals embracing features, shorts animation and documentaries, also gives a wider and better portrayal of nationally-relevant issues in more nuanced productions: better stories and better technique that can compete in a global context.

Despite my critic’s instinct to hunt for the bad and the ugly, I myself have a few favourites. Alas, I remain generally undecided about the greatest movie ever made.

The internet provides an escape from the restrictions of mass media: limited space, rigid editorial guidelines, and deadlines. On the web, space is – at least, in theory – endless, and the limits – time and style – are chosen by the writer. Digital media seem to enjoy almost absolute freedom. But how does the need for immediate satisfaction combine with solid and well-founded writing and the need to sift through first impressions? Are limits negative? Can’t they, to a certain extent, feed creativity?

How about the almost unrestricted access to texts and films? There is no doubt that exposure to other kinds of writing, close and distant, is rewarding, and that the amount of materials circulating on the Internet is blissful to film lovers. But does quantity make a better critic? If we consume non-stop, when do we stop to think?

Another point that was discussed was the word "democratization", so widely used when talking about the digital era. While film criticism used to be exclusive of a few people, it is now available to everyone. How do we find our way around so many voices? How can we differentiate? How much room is left for today’s critics, whose "authority" has somehow been lost? And how democratic is that democracy? Have old hierarchies really disappeared? Aren’t "qualified" voices and revered names still more popular?

When it comes to digital media, there are more questions than answers, because we are dealing with a living and evolving phenomenon. Neither critics coming from paper nor writers initiated in the virtual world can predict the outcome. Uncertainty is scary for some people, while the frenzy of change provokes blind faith in others. The only certainty is that film criticism has been shaken up: its role, place and demand are no longer obvious. However, since destabilization obliges us to reflect, this process is leading, or should lead, critics to sooner or later rethink their position in relation to films, readers and writing itself. It may be uncomfortable, but questioning oneself is a good exercise. No definitive conclusions can be reached, but the debate is still open.

The imaginary script should be abandoned once the shooting starts, because the shooting is “a trip, an adventure” where the world is rediscovered and the "dramatic atom" is recognized. This atom is the smallest fragment of reality from which the director creates his phrases, and ultimately his poetic vision of that reality. Guzman is convinced that the objectivity / subjectivity debate is not only outdated but also unproductive. Documentary filmmakers shape their views out of the reality being portrayed. This becomes very obvious in all of this Chilean director’s work.

Of course, many questions were brought up by the audience with regard to ethics (respect for the interviewee), the responsibility of the documentary maker (Guzman said: "The ultimate responsibility of an artist is to be creative"), the impact of new technologies (more advantages than disadvantages, though the latter still exist), and of course, comments on Guzman’s latest film, being shown in the Bafici, LA NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ.

The event was marked by both the filmmaker’s wisdom and charisma, and his professional clarity, something not to be missed in today's world.

In the film, the director of THE STOLEN MAN and EVERYBODY LIES sets the stage in Delta del Tigre, where a group of youngsters rehearse the play “As You Like It”, by William Shakespeare, and the boundaries between the characters' lives and the theatrical world begin to fade.

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players", says the most famous soliloquy in Shakespeare's play. Through a sober staging and a musical performance that sets the pace, Piñeiro (who is now making incursions into theatre direction with the play “And when I stop loving you, it will be chaos again”) reflects on performance and lets his characters engage in seduction and role-playing games, where capturing the fleeting moment continues to be his trademark.

Jorge (Uruguayan critic Jorge Jellinek) works in the Uruguayan Cinematheque. Anyone who has frequented these worlds will immediately recognize the character as a mirror image, though slightly deformed, of the individuals that dwell in the shadows of archives and projection booths. Not much is revealed about his life: just that he is 45, has been working at the Cinematheque for 25 years, lives with his parents, and does not know how to approach a woman who regularly comes to "his" quarters. However, the information is enough to understand that the character has no life beyond those aisles. In fact, the climate of the first part of the film is very oppressive, despite the tender feelings that such a universe can evoke in the participants of a festival.

The monotonous balance given by little rituals (trying out seats one by one, recording commercials that resemble calls for help) is broken by a central point that has been announced from the beginning: the Cinematheque is "not profitable", as one of the characters puts it. Due to lack of budget, support and viewers, Jorge loses his job. This destabilizing event for the character also splits the film structure and tone down the middle. The breakpoint, highlighted by a powerful musical sequence to Leo Masliah’s “Los caballos perdidos”, forces the character to make a radical change which, little by little, brings him closer to life. Together with Jorge, the second part of the movie finds more freedom and, almost imperceptibly, suggests its distance from realism.

The black and white photography is the first dividing element that becomes evident; the use of music is the next. What first appears to be an incidental accompaniment gradually becomes complement and counterpoint to the images, triggering new directions and leading into the character’s subjectivity. The introduction of the Uruguayan composer Eduardo Fabini’s work was a perfect choice. Given that Jorge may leave the universe of cinema, but cinema will never leave his life, the film is filled with numerous quotes and references that make up the soundtrack of a life where Jorge will gradually become a protagonist.

THE USEFUL LIFE is pure “film within a film”, and literally speaking, a film that deals with a different type of cinephilia, not the one that bathes in the glamour of celebrities and festivals, but in the recesses of a projection room. A homage to a world that discusses not only the events on screen but also the projectors, where an audience of five spectators can be worth as much or more than a full theatre. Nevertheless, as we mentioned above, there is no eulogy in this homage. THE USEFUL LIFE is, on the contrary, a statement in favour of freedom.

As for our dear Jorge, the collapse of his magical world, which has held him captive, forces him out to discover that, yes, there is a life beyond the movies! Better yet, films give him the best excuse to seduce a girl.

Having arrived in the United States, and being dumped by an American girlfriend, with whom he had experienced the typical romance between a foreigner and a Chilean citizen, Tazo decides to settle in Nashville to try his luck and discover the world. In truth, Tazo has no direction or plan for the future. All that’s clear is the resentment he feels about his girlfriend, and the fact that he does not want to return to his home country in such emotional turmoil.

But what can he do in Nashville? He starts by looking for a cheap place to live. Then, he tries to find work, cleaning toilets in a hotel, doing some plumbing and working as a salesman at a music store. Music is one of his passions. The city poses challenges. He decides to explore its hidden corners in an attempt to find answers to the million questions that crowd his head. Charm is his best tool.

In a strange way, the film has a road movie feel; perhaps we could call it a city-road movie. The protagonist wanders around the city spaces, the bars and its people. He tries to blend into a culture that is so alien to him; a culture he both hates and loves. Contrary to travel films, it is not the environment, but the traveller that changes here. The city remains the same.

Tazo wants to be accepted by a society that he does not entirely like. He changes his body and his clothes. This ultimately portrays him as a pathetic figure desperately looking for acceptance (or perhaps trying not to stand out). His English is poor, and he goes to school to improve it. But his brain is usually tired and prefers to switch back to his mother tongue. Tazo is actually between two stools. He is suffering the pain of having been uprooted.

Fuguet shows this feeling through a couple of excellent dialogues between Tarzo and a waitress and some of his roommates (he rents a coach in a house), as well as through long silences and actions by the protagonist. The way he moves around the city, or the places where he lives, suggest that he does not long for his previous life, but for a life he is still unable to figure out.

The first 15 minutes of the film are evidence of this. There are no dialogues, and the focus is placed on Tazo, his gestures and the choices he makes, to show his need to have a home (the way he organizes his toiletries in the bathroom of the first house is revealing). The director’s intention is also disclosed by the staging. The long shots (some longer than three minutes), the extensive silences, and the slow motion of the camera (because Tazo is really not moving anywhere) express much more than the (few) words of the protagonist and the passing characters he encounters.

In the end, Tazo discovers that he has always carried his country with him. At a “bring-your-guitar-and-sing” type of bar, he declares himself to be Chilean and sings a song from his homeland, in Spanish, which defines his entire life, and his goal. As expected, the streets of Nashville are waiting for him for another night of rounds.

Pablo Cerda’s excellent performance in the role of Tazo is something to celebrate. The whole movie is on his shoulders, and he carries it to the end. Also, the soundtrack and the sound design are excellent. The melody during credits is unforgettable, at least for me.

The focal point of the film are those songs that we are very familiar with, even though we may never actively listen to them; the songs that fill up our days almost imperceptibly and come back to us when least expected. The movie is a flow of chance and free association, but it wittily stops to observe and explore surprising angles. Its structure, describable as non-narrative despite some minimally outlined pieces, consists of small segments, each framed by one of the songs from the title, presented as situations that are more or less common and more or less predictable, but always redefined by the intervention of music. Bryan Adams, Gilda, Queen, reggaetons, classic boleros, and even a national equivalent of Elvis Presley impregnate situations and places as diverse as a motel, a nursing home, the Line B subway in Buenos Aires, a choir rehearsal, a strip show or a taxi.

Unlike high-speed video clips, the camera works like a watchful eye revealing details that are sometimes unpredictable and sometimes beyond predictable (for instance, the scene of a striptease is paradigmatically un-erotic). The songs are not intended to "overshadow" the world, but rather be in the midst of it: the sound is not "clean", and we are aware of its intensity, proximity or distance. Contrary to MTV’s flawless sounds, we are reminded that music is just one more ambient "noise".

Analysing films that move away from structured storytelling is always a challenge. But if a conclusion is to be drawn, we could say that, somehow, LOVE SONG shows what music does for us and the world: it transforms our views and the colours of the most banal realities.

This question is as old as the film industry itself. The top French film theorist of the twentieth century, André Bazin, placed it at the core of his queries. But the fact that the response has varied over time is a sign that not only the film industry has changed, but also the intellectual thinking around it. At a time when audiovisual means inundate our lives, the answer to the question of what cinema is seems to escape us.

One of the current trends being discussed is the displacement of film viewing from the traditional movie theatre to computers and mobile devices, and even places such as museums and art centres, which seek to replace traditional projection spaces with audiovisual facilities. Well-known individuals such as Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Pedro Costa and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, among others, have contributed to this debate. Therefore, classical movie theatres can be considered as one more possible facility that has been conventionalized, but now is brought into question by postmodernism.

In addition, Danto’s theory about the end of art seems to nevertheless bring about a resurrection, which somehow vindicates the notion of film aesthetics: in today’s hyper-speed world, individual film viewing on computers bears a closer resemblance to Edison's kinetoscope than to the big screen of the Lumieres.

Does this shift away from movie theatres modify the film experience? Yes, it does. However, through mimesis we still feel part of the experience, since discourses remain intact despite the switch from one means to another and their intrinsic characteristics.

An evolving and yet young concept, the film industry constantly seeks redefinition, though always maintaining its inexpressible ability to capture the sublime.

Considering the good quality of these films in terms of picture and sound, promoters believe that users preferred to spend a few extra dollars for this service instead of watching low quality or pirated movies.

Of the 177 countries having access to the site, the U.S., the UK, Scandinavia, Russia, India, Australia and Turkey are the largest consumers. The site currently has about 2000 films, but not all are available to all countries with access. New releases are usually in higher demand, but classic films by renowned directors also find a considerable audience. Agreements made with companies committed to the preservation of the film industry, such as The World Cinema Foundation, led by filmmaker Martin Scorsese, or The Criterion Collection, provide access to restored copies or copies with historic value.

It sounds like a dream.

However, the difficulties posed by this type of viewing in the different countries where it is available were recognised. Among them, obstacles in acquiring distribution rights in some regions of the world. In addition, technological diversity hinders access due to Internet connection speeds or availability of appropriate hardware. This business is not profitable yet, but there is hope that some day it will be. This may be achieved through extending the scope to include more commercial films, or by offering the service via other entertainment formats, such as the Sony Playstation, with whom MUBI signed an agreement in November last year.

But what about that wonderful experience of going to the cinema?, wondered some Talent Campus attendants, not without some trepidation. “Nobody is saying that cinemas will disappear," said Costantini. "We are not interested in replacing cinemas," added Cakarel. This is a new alternative, which still appears to be somewhat controversial. The convenience and level of comfort, and the speed of growth of this business are dealing with the ideals associated with independent or artistic filmmakers. But over time, as these changes are addressed, this issues will become less significant.

The event was conducted at the Universidad del Cine’s facilities as part of the 6th edition of the Talent Campus Buenos Aires. It addressed the emerging conflicts over the use and appropriation of technologies applied to art. In La Ferla’s words, “mimesis” is in conflict with “replication and translation”. Longinolli, in turn, reflected on the “means of recording” which are to “bring about change” in the film industry.

According to La Ferla, the means for image reproduction and recording are swiftly transforming all forms of visual arts and generating new “emotional” and “existential” “experiences”, to the point of changing the level of truth and plausibility of reality. Longinolli also spoke about the need to educate on “technology access and use”, and to create spaces that encourage “new experiences”.

Both experts agreed that the “design of experiences” through the “establishment of roadmaps” and the “reconfiguration” of places and objects should be the duty of today’s cinematographers and artists.

Having received recognition in festivals and reviews, Pablo Larrain’s 2010 film POST MORTEM has caused the discussion of the dictatorship in Chile to be sustained and echoed throughout the region. It does so with tools that are increasingly latent in the new generations of filmmakers from the continent. I refer here to the contention, expressiveness regulated by a certain de-dramatization of narrative recourses, as well as the disconnect of great social discourses away from grandiose eloquence and macro histories, but rather taking said events from the intimacy of more personal conflicts in order to directly enter into a dialogue with spaces and massive public phenomena.

In this way, history in POST MORTEM takes an apparently more simple path, with more dialogue. It follows the path of the micro story that imposes a particularized, and paradoxically more plural, point of view. We have here a delicious deconstruction using memory and toeing the fine line between fiction and reality. A true story is born, that drinks both from the false chronic and the bloodiest and most disturbing passages from the days prior to the coup d’état in 1973 that imposed a dictatorship in Chile.

Based on the reality of the world that he lives in, and the one that he, a common and gray man, dedicated to the informative anatomical annotation of the cause, mentally constructs, nature and other elements tied to the death of the subjects, a devastating dissection of Chilean reality appears. Through the eyes of the empty existence of Mario Cornejo, we arrive at a social and political situation as lacerated and void of true motivations as that of the poor insignificant hero. This public servant becomes a metaphor for a diagnostic “doctor” of the sick psyche who stirred up the historic role of the nation towards the unearthing of freedom. Larrain establishes parallels between subject and history from the evermore-famous anonymous heroes, affording a lesser known, richer and looser artist, who is free of a transcendent process. Apparently “sinflictivo”, this is a de-centered being much like the very society, and plays the same preponderant role of the Chilean destiny after the coup d’état: the belief in a substantial change that only a life eternally related to death has imposed.

The footage is consumed like a precise autopsy, from the most minute details, to close a case that remains open in the collective memory of a people. The director plays, intensely and piercingly, with all the tools of tragedy that one should remember as it is recorded in the memory of an entire people. However, the past, as Hegel would say, is no more than another present, and it contains that which we constantly live; only the past and future exist in the present which we consume and dignify, or deconstruct from our moment. In this sense, Larrain builds a Chilean reality from the present, coming from the memory and disenchantment of the past.

It is essential that we never hear the voice of true power. Everyone is, in one way or another, a being without name, importance, social rank. The figure that most stands out is the soldier, and even then he is just another vehicle to greater circles that are never named. The two big political figures in Chile at this moment, antagonists par excellence, are Pinochet and Salvador Allende. Allende, in his fight for more inclusive thought, only really speaks from the grave, in the most terrible and quotidian anatomic dissection. Pinochet never speaks explicitly. The role of the dictator is present in the entire film, but, he is not mentioned nor appears, not even linguistically in adjectives and pronouns that refer to him as a subject of relevance. He is simply the receptor that from an active point of view beyond ”complitud” and film information, resolves this apparent presence-absence with clear codes about the history of a nation. Now, the character who in reality assumes this dictatorial role, the true power, is the insignificant Cornejo; through whom the true despotic and criminal condition of the human being is exposed.

POST MORTEM is a love story with prophetic breath. A heroic journey towards desertion of subject and history, rescuing these once and for all with historic accuracy. This use of the truth structures the whole film. More than half of the narration constructs, as it appears, with the genius of all truth-creating mechanisms. This supposed logic imposes an accurate point of view on those things that occur only in the mind of the main character. The doubt, the illusion, and the ambiguity between discourses, become perennial narrative recourses. POST MORTEM is an enormous and intense apocrypha of an arid reality, that imposes a “before” on the Chile of today, but is recounted from the pages, and at these heights is not any less true.

NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT, the documentary by Patricio Guzman, expresses the knitting together of uncontainable emotions throughout the film. One word clearly defines it: it is immense, as immense as the universe itself. The metaphors that the Chilean director makes use of to try to understand one of the most shameful episodes in the history of his country, and the world, are based on recounting the complexity of human existence through the atrocities of military dictatorship, with an untiring (and even beautiful) search for answers by sciences like astronomy or archeology.

In Chile, in the same area where one the world’s most important telescopes for the investigation of space is located, thousands of bodies of disappeared politicians were buried and dug up. The remains of these people, today, keep reappearing thanks to the moral stubbornness of some women that have classified and hidden for years, every dismembered cadaver, and every particle of calcified bone of their family members in order to sleep (some in order to die) in peace.

This apparent coincidence of events is chosen by the director in order to develop a critical posture about the impossibility of undoing the past, while at the same time he uses it as an example to build on, no matter what, whether as a mode of liberation for life, or as a driving force to continue living. Guzman admirably exercises his office as filmmaker to sensitize beyond victimization. The testimonies of every scientific collaboration, those of the children of the disappeared that have found strength and comfort in astronomy, those of the political prisoners redeemed by the stars, are all on a path to building a type of human dignity before the random events of the universe. NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT would have to be in the future, the remainder of a compelling social necessity.

The humanity of the director and the intimacy that he manages to transmit impress, building a discourse of how history is constructed from the most intimate fiction. There is no plane, nor silence, nor anecdote, nor smile, that is not meant to say something, including the Tarkovskian rhythm that introduces the film. His own personal story about an innocent Chile and its radical change to a nation that still looks for the dead in order to have the certainty that they are gone, is earthshaking. This cinematographic discourse fuses with the personal desire of an author, who is capable of leaving behind his own nation's pain in order to explain to the world a tragedy both present and forgotten.

The film enthuses a vision, so very close to science, as it sparks an impetus of the Chilean nationality to reflect theoretically the social conflicts in academia. It suffices to remember the theory of biological love expressed by Umberto Maturana, who conceives love as the acknowledgment and respect for the existence of the other. He supports a theory so enormous that it becomes one with that which is here visualized by Guzman: societies without love, as also happens to the body, become sick according to Maturana. Sick societies shatter. NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT, beyond being a potent visual discourse, an Official Selection in Cannes, is a noble attempt at redeeming a nation that stumbled, and now recognizes the need to keep moving forward.

In THE CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, Werner Herzog describes the hidden secrets of the cave where the oldest cave paintings known to man are to be found; images that report the events of daily life, like battles of wild beasts or the gallop of horses, or the contours of the naked body of a woman. Thanks to the contrasts and ingenious graphic solutions that suggest movement, the figures revive and appear to feel the impetus that inspired successions of artists to paint them: their fury is revealed in their eyes, the emotion in their muscles, and they return in these images to their eternal struggle for life.

One of the things that make this movie really extraordinary is Herzog’s ability to momentarily disconnect from what he describes. The true beauty and essence of the paintings is not revealed until one looks away for a moment. Cadavers of animals, bones swept in by water, trampled gigantic fossils, calcified sculptures of unknown origin adorn the floor of the cave and document the experiences of human and animal life that they have witnessed. The paintings are not isolated creations, as they usually are in most caves known to date, where time has continued to pass and the past has only been preserved in the paintings. Here the images are expressions of the life that created them in what is for us an incomprehensible reality, but which has left traces that like suggestions leave room for speculation.

For Herzog the scientific evidence is less important than speculation. When the historic data is obscured, his questions are asked through his aesthetic impression; he follows the path prescribed by written theory, but enlightened by emotion. He asks a scientist to explain archeological arguments, but then allows an expert in perfumes to interpret the smells of the cave. He accepts that he is not allowed to approach a painting in the interest of preserving the cave floor, and only observes the side of the drawings. Then, however, without explaining how, he shows the hidden side, the piece inaccessible to science.

The cave was never inhabited, only a place for people of the plains to visit, where tools, sculptures and weapons have been found. Outside of the cave there is no remaining trace of human life, but the description of the caves would have been incomplete if the film crew had not at least walked along the paths that were once walked by those that frequented the caves, or if they had not tried their weapons and interrogated their sculptures.

Herzog goes beyond himself. On the one hand, he interprets signs of an ancient life expressed in a cryptic language. On the other, he questions his own capacity to interpret. The present is not a finality, but rather only one layer of history and not necessarily even a progression within it. For example, as is mentioned in the documentary, reality was more porous for prehistoric man than it is for us: a man could fly and a tree speak. For Herzog, interpreting the remains of an ancient life from a modern point of view is a profound paradox. His candid perspective reminds us that our will and our tools for comprehension may be totally inefficient when approaching prehistoric life. This not only lends credibility to the documentary, but also conditions our attitude towards it, and it gives our view a tension and drama not often associated with the genre, and this stimulates the establishment of relationships between passersby and the complexities of reality.

The documentary was filmed in 3D, a technique that allows us to touch the cave, push into the background unnecessary information, and focus our eyes on the significant and attractive information. The three dimensional image is less arbitrary in cases like this one, when it does not attempt to attack or surprise, but instead illustrate and help explain.