2001 has not been a great year for Argentina. The country is facing a grave economic crisis as a result of its inability to pay the interest on its foreign debt. The poverty and unemployment rates are extremely high, and no one can trust in the economy to recover in the short term. Due to the blind application of neo-liberal policies during recent years, the citizens are no longer a priority but, instead, are left sinking deeper and deeper into desperation. Paradoxically, however, 2001 is a good year for Argentinean cinema, the revival of which is making itself felt through its reappearance at international festivals, even though this prosperity occurred at the same time as the deterioration of the economy and its negative effects in the field of culture.

If the conditions mentioned above constitute Argentinean cinema fragile and its future uncertain, its recent past still merits a closer look. Above all, because there continues to exist a present: there is a group of films that prove that, during a time which is not especially bright for world production, Argentinean cinema is sending out significant signs of life and the message that there is a new generation of directors that are reviving an exhausted tradition.

Things were different in 1993, when Martίn Rejtman directed Rapado, a film that today can be seen as a landmark in new Argentinean film. Filmed during a weekend, on an insignificant budget, it provoked little more than indifference. The film is a minimalist story, featuring reticent, inexpressive actors, which went totally against the aesthetic traits that had dominated Argentinean cinema for two decades: folk literature, the opportunist chronicles of the period of the dictatorship, magic realism, forced optimism, and conventional shots free of any aesthetic exploration. Rapado is a difficult, repressed film, in which the expressiveness of the characters is replaced by the need to cling to objects, as if they were the only source of truth in the face of human incertitude. Retrospectively, the film can be seen as the refusal of a filmmaker to speak the language of his contemporaries, as the affirmation of the need to create a real cinema and of the difficulties of doing so in an artistic wasteland.

Rejtman's solitary work was to be rewarded by two developments that proved decisive for the emergence of a new generation. Both of these were paradoxical. On the one hand, after 1991, there was a considerable increase in the number of film students and new schools were founded. Among them, the Cinema University, which was to play an important role in the years that followed, as a hotbed for new directors as well as in its capacity as a producer of films. What is curious is that this eagerness to pursue film studies coincided with the worst moment in the history of Argentinean cinema in general, in regard to both quantity (annual production was down to five films a year) and quality. A possible explanation for this contradiction may lie in the fact that the near disappearance of the country's film industry (which was further weighted down by its production routines and conventional results), ended up being an incentive for change. The second factor was the passing of a new cinema legislature which established an annual fund of 50 million dollars for the subsidizing of national cinema and reset a minimum annual production of fifty films. What is paradoxical is that this protective legislature went against the trend of the time towards global deregulation. Perhaps it is because even governments that enforce the most unpopular measures, ultimately believe that cinema can help them if they help it.

Thanks to this legislature, as of 1995, the production of a film in Argentina has become much easier. Nevertheless, subsidies are not directed towards the young but towards the traditional sectors that are supported by the large communications companies. Another Argentinean paradox is the founding of a company entitled Patagonik, which is made up of, among others, Telefόnica Espa~na and the local subsidiary of Disney. The films produced by this company are funded by the Argentinean State, perhaps the only one to finance filming in a Hollywood studio (yet another interesting contradiction).

In this way, during the remaining term in office of the Menem government (up until 2000), many films by the younger generation were made using legal avenues, such as converting a TV movie into a theater screening. During the past few years, many directors finished shooting with less than 50,000 dollars. This money (which, in general, derived from the modest funding of a foundation) was used to buy new 16mm film and to feed the crew during filming. The rest was all ad honorem work by the actors and technicians, equipment which was borrowed or rented from a film school and a generous dose of good will. The same legislature allowed later on for the blowing up of these films to 35mm, including labor costs. It was in this way that films such as Crane World, Silvia Prieto, Freedom and Saturday were made, the creative freedom of which was as great as their budgets were precarious. On the other hand, as of 1996, the Cinema University produced three films and participated in numerous others. The first one was Moebius, but the school entrusted the film's direction with Gustavo Mosquera, a filmmaker that had emerged during the previous decade, even though the technical crew was made up of students. Moebius marks a point of transition: it is a science fiction film (a new genre for Argentina) that explores interesting visual concepts. However, the dramaturgy, the acting and the allegorical nature of the plot belong to a film of a past time. The University charged its students with carrying out all subsequent productions.

At this stage, the young graduates were competent technicians and had begun to work in both film and television. However, the idea that an important change could be brought about and that what had begun as a game was actually a rift rather than the reestablishment of a continuity within the industry, only emerged after "Historias Breves". This is a film consisting of ten shorts, the screenplays of which were winners in a competition held by the Film Institute and received 40,000 dollars for filming. This collective work was very successful commercially and astonished many of Argentina's film critics: not only did certain ones display quality and talent (Lucrecia Martel's Rey Muerto reveals an important filmmaker in the space of thirteen minutes), but also, the best ones had a surprising trait in common: a decidedly refreshing look at modern-day Argentina that feature young characters and which was not so much elaborate as sincere in its quest for precision and authenticity. From that moment on, it made sense to expect something important from this group of directors.

Six of these filmmakers went on to make at least one feature film. The first to do so were Adriάn Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro, with Pizza, Birra, Smokes, a police film which caused a sensation at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in 1997, thanks to its powerful narration, the presence of the city and to its "ear" for contemporary language. Caetano would go on to direct Bolivia, having already proved through both his short and medium-length films that he is a filmmaker who has already created an oeuvre, in which the taste for narration and the visual elegance are accompanied by an interest in more marginal sectors, free of the condescension with which film usually treats them.

In 1998, Martin Rejtman completed Silvia Prieto, his second feature. Already emerging as a mature filmmaker, who hones his sober style in a comedy in which its practically autistic characters speak a language empty of all meaning. Meanwhile, Roberto Trapero makes Crane World, a film witout a script, which is in fact a continuation of his short film Negocios, a profundly original work, its cast consisting of the director's relatives and neighbors. In both these films, Trapero uses a pseudo-documentary style, thereby paving the way for a new genre of fiction in Argentinean cinema. Crane World admits of various interpretations and has been classified as a "neorealist" film when, essentially, its protagonist seems to have woken up after thirty years of sleep, as in a fantasy film. Crane World explores nineties Argentina through the naivetee and astonishment of Rulo Margani, a unique character. But more than the story of a jobless man narrated from a above, the film is in fact the gaze of the protagonist; a gaze at once distanced and affectionate, thanks to the subtle poetics of Trapero. At the same time, Crane World accurately represents the change in Argentinean cinema: the certainties of the previous generation are confronted by the incertitude of one who acknowledges that there is a need for a new language in the face of a country that has deteriorated to the point of beginning not to recognize itself. Finally, a ray of freedom and creativity came to shine upon prematurely aged Argentinean film.

Crane World and Silvia Prieto were screened in April 1999 in the newly-established Independent Film Festival in Buenos Aires, and marked the moment of stabilization following the transitional period. From that point on, new Argentinean films began to be screened at festivals (after a long absence), to win awards and attracting the attention of international critics. For the first time in years, films from a Latinamerican country appeared to be escaping from the ghetto of exoticism in order to be considered based on their singularity.

In the next two years, one can speak of a blossoming, which is reflected in Thessaloniki's film selection. This proliferation of films is the result of a renewed confidence in young directors and their capablities, a better administration of public resources, and also the interest that this generation begins to awaken in the national as well as the international film industry. Thanks to this latter factor, new cinema no longer needs to rely on insignificant budgets.

The Swamp is the most convincing proof of this. For the first time, the film of a debuting director had secured its financing from the moment shooting began. The film's screenplay won an important prize from Japanese television at Sundance and a subsidy from the French Fond Sud. In Argentina, the project manager was Lita Stantic, a producer of great experience who contributed personal funds. The film lived up to everyone's expectations and was selected for the Berlin IFF 2001, where it won an award. The Swamp is a film that also delved into an unknown Argentinean reality, that of the provincial bourgeoisie, stagnating as time goes by. Martel reintroduces a tradition of Argentinean cinema forgotten since the films of Torre Nilsson and Leonardo Favio, by intimately exploring a claustrophobic world on the way to extinction. An ambitious film, The Swamp covers the space of a week and tells the story of three generations of one family. Great care has been taken in every detail of this production.

By now, even Patagonik, the powerful company mentioned earlier, began to take an interest in young directors and held a screenplay competition. The winner was Fabiάn Belinsky, an assistant director in advertising who, at forty, had very little chance of ever making a film. Nine Queens became the box-office hit of the year 2000. But contrary to the rest of the commercial successes of the local market, this was an intelligent, extremely well-made film. This detective film, that features no guns and no explicit violence, is more than a rivetting story: the masterful accumulation of swindles and criminal acts creates a vague sense of vertigo which also alludes to the almost metaphysical horror of an unrecognizable Argentina, which was never referred to in the films of the past. Moreover, Nine Queens is a product of the industry which allows for the appreciation of certain standards of production (as, for example, a huge improvement in the quality of image and sound), which have improved in the past decade. Despite the local success of the film and its potential as regards other audiences, Nine Queens only just began to be screened at film festivals, following over a year of silence. The reason for this is that it never occurred to its producers to screen this film which has now achieved international distribution. As in other cases, from Italian Neorealism to Brazilian Cinema Novo (even though the comparison is somewhat irreverent), it is the arthouse films that pave the way for the exportation of the rest.

At the same time, the new generation forges different links with the cinema of the past. Even though the majority of their stories involve young protagonists, a fact that has brought new actors to the fore, the presence of Graciela Borges in La ciega and Ricardo Darίn in Nine Queens proves the possibility of revitalizing popular figures. The last interesting role for Borges, the last diva of Argentinean cinema, goes back to the sixties, while Darίn, a fine actor who was assimilated by television, last had interesting work in the seventies.

At the present time, all those involved in Argentinean cinema realize that this is a good time and that many possibilities are opening up for more contact with the local public, as well as opportunities for international recognition and foreign sales. From now on, as was the case with other developing film industries (Iran or Korea, for example), the temptation will become increasingly stronger to use the prestige of certain films in order to produce others for the national or international market, the method being to make them as similar as possible to Hollywood productions, but without losing a certain local color. We can expect such films from Argentina, with the consequent risk that repetition and opportunism soon exhaust all possibilities, thereby cancelling the reasons that had initially provoked the current revival. Because the most notable feature of the new generation is that it has not copied other formulas and that its best works derive from a wish to make films in absolute freedom, without adopting a formula; that is what distinguishes them from the majority of contemporary films.

The diversity and risk-taking of these films are the factors that allow us to think of the future, and these features can be found in the most recent films. It is enough for one to see three films made in 2001 in order to measure the potential that exists at the moment. The Faith of the Volcano, by Ana Poliak, is an openly political film, which links what is wrong with Argentina today to the unspeakable heritage of the military dictatorship. This is Poliak's second film, arriving after a spell of almost ten years. Her ideological radicalism both opposes itself to the other films and complements them, since none of them responds to the conservative comformism of traditional cinema. Under different circumstances, a film like Juan Villegas' Saturday would be an exception, but this Rohmer-type comedy is as extreme in its rigorous mise-en-scene as The Faith of the Volcano is in its political identity. Freedom, by Lisandro Alonso, is, in its own way, another admirable example of a journey to the outer limits of cinema. The film presents twenty-four hours in the life of a solitary woodcutter and its argument ca be encapsulated in a single phrase. The film walks a fine line between fiction and documentary, provoking fierce discussions among critics and challenging the public like no other film had in years. If the economic crisis in Argentina doesn't drag cinema along with it, there is every indication that more films of this standard will be produced in the future. But, as we have already pointed out, Argentina is a paradoxical land and may very well attempt to "assassinate" its cinema just as it find itself at its best moment.

Quintίn
Film Critic, Founder of "El Amante / Cine",
Director of the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival