Tag: Paraguay

The Heiresses (Las Herederas)

Posted on by victorfraga

Chela and Chiquita are a middle-aged and wealthy Lesbian couple living in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. Chiquita is cocky, moody and bossy, while Chela is quiet and reserved. They have been together for decades, and they suddenly are forced to part as Chiquita is imprisoned on fraud charges. Chela is left to fend for herself, having to earn money and find a new purpose in her life. This, of course, is no simple quest.

The film title refers to the fact that both Chela’s and Chiquita’s wealth is largely inherited. Chiquita has always been more pragmatic and in control of finances, while Chela spends most of her time secluded at home painting. She also sings and plays the piano, despite visibly lacking talent. The two ladies lead an aristocratic and sedentary lifestyle, indifferent to the impoverished society outside. They have a black maid who can’t read, and who they treat with a mixture of polite disdain and cordial arrogance. “We gotta buy this girl some deodorant”, Chiquita urges, letting the sheer racism/classism out of the cage. The maid is uniformed, almost invariably obscured in the background. The enslaver’s mentality prevails, as in many Latin American countries. The Brazilian movie The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2016) provides good insight into the servile relationship of the upper class and their “domestic employees” in South America.

This is not a film about LGBT rights, which it could have easily done. Paraguay is one of the least developed countries in South America in terms of equality legislation, with LGBT people virtually devoid of legal protections. The words “homosexuality” and “Lesbian” are never uttered in the film. Chela and Chiquita are called “senorita” (“miss”). Yet none of this seems to concern them. They are far more preoccupied with their status and class privilege, plus keeping their lifestyle.

Selling their expensive heirloom seems like the easiest way of making money, but finding buyers isn’t always easy. Even rich ladies are unwilling to pay U$6,500 for a dining set and U$3,000 for a painting. Chela takes up a job as cab driver for a group of elderly ladies in order to improve the cashflow. She uses her old and run-down Mercedes Benz, the most symbolic element of the film. The haggard Chela hangs on to a decadent symbol of status while also seeking to make ends meet. She has to face the motorway for the first time, a very menacing prospect. She sits in her car and tries to merge with the incoming traffic, but it’s not entirely clear whether she succeeds.

While the strength and the length of the relationship of the two female protagonists is extremely liberating, everything else in The Heiresses is oppressive. Not just the lingering racism and classism. The camerawork is subtle, and lighting is scarce. The film aesthetics are Brechtian, yet the performances are low-key and naturalistic. The outcome is a poignant and humanistic portrait of two females in a very conservative society, which has both bestowed a certain class privilege upon them and then unexpectedly removed it. Overall, a very impressive feat for a first-time director.

The Heiresses is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 10th (2018). It’s available on VoD on Monday, December 3rd (2018). On Mubi in July/August (2020).

Zama

Posted on by Alasdair Bayman

To say Lucrecia Martel’s latest feature Zama does not need to be slowly processed would be akin to hastily consuming a Michelin star dish composed of the finest ingredients and culinary imagination. Through adapting Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 novel, Martel cinematically rewrites the Orientalist and Westernised notions of colonial history. Comparable to Lynne Ramsey’s long absence from film, Martel’s previous failed project in transferring Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s graphic novel El Eternauta has fortuitously benefited her filmmaking- kaleidoscopically merging science fiction and period drama.

Counteracting preconceived notions of giving the audience an establishing shot of the historical surroundings of a period drama, Martel’s first shot depicts Spanish officer Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) looking out across the sandy banks towards an ocean of nothingness. Allusive, he is a figure lost in the natural landscape and incapable of driving himself forward towards loftier political standing in Latin America. Ridiculed by the native women of Asunción (Paraguay’s capital) surrounding him on the shores, the diegetic laughing of such women permeates the initial soundscape, seemingly driving Zama to the fringes of insanity and an act of violence towards one of them. Connecting the past and present together, these laughs linger even after they have evaporated into thin air.

Flowing to the courtly world of 18th century Latin America, Zama seeks to use the power Luciana Piñares de Luenga (Lola Dueñas) to gain favour in Spain, thus achieving his dream of relocating to Lerma. On his quest to gain favour, he desperately accepts the Governor’s (Daniel Veronese) requests for him to hunt down and kill an outlaw of the state; Vicuña Porto. In time, it becomes evident that Porto appears to be a ghostly omnipresence in such surroundings.

Non-linearity, in the case of Martel’s fifth feature, distorts one’s interpretation of the titular character. Cacho’s performance, fused with the director’s writing, leaves a great deal down to his physicality and facial acting. Costumed in the first frame with a vivid red jacket, its corrosion underwear and tear holds a mirror toward the slow decay of Zama’s inner being. Operating in a socio-political atmosphere imbued with a distinct lack of civility and proper bureaucratic governance, the colonial regime in Asunción is a discombobulated as the narrative itself. An evident outcry to the biases of history, Martel’s voice seeks to uncover the barbarity of colonial mindset.

Coalescing sound in its true natural form, the wavering fans inside colonialist’s extravagant homes, barking dogs and distorting insects clicking fill the world of Zama with a tangible pulse. Participatory with human dialogue, layering compositions engulfs one’s presence in this world. Away from diegetic sounds, plucking Brazilian guitar strings of Los Indios Tabajaras juxtapose the ambient noises of sound designer Guido Berenblum’s tones. Creating a distinct scope, the sci-fi elements of El Eternauta have clearly infected the filmic brain of Martel, impacting proceedings of narrative and sound.

A means of another distinctive cinematic element, the cinematography of Rui Poças’s compositions divide the frame into divisions; helping to expand the density of the screen. Positioning a character internally, only to have the background of an exterior location, forges a backdrop of otherness. Poças and his masterful director in this medium expose the inner desires of Zama; to transgress beyond this desolate place.

At times tentative and deeply opaque, Zama searches to truly interpolate one into the shoes of this barren human soul. Positioned in a purgatorial state, Zama’s liberating escape can only occur through submerging himself in the disorder of the world. Stories such as Martel’s, thanks to the aid of di Benedetto, help inform a new generation of filmmakers and creatives away from the trite phrase, introduced by Churchill, that “History is written by the victors’’. Stated by the director herself during a Q&A at the BFI, her latest feature is a cocktail- one that you just drink and see what happens. To that call, I can only proceed to pour myself another serving of this impervious feat of filmmaking.

Zama is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, May 25th and then available for streaming online on Monday, June 4th.

Memory Exercises (Ejercicios de Memoria)

Posted on by victorfraga

The Paraguayan politician Agustín Goiburú disappeared without a trace while living in exile in the Argentinian province of Entre Ríos. He was the most prominent and vocal opponent of Alfredo Stroessner, the military dictator that ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. The documentarist Paz Encina found a very inventive way to recreate the Paraguayan political context through the memories of three children. These young desaparecidos (missing) reveal intimate memories of a country for the past 35 years without ever appearing on-screen.

The rhythm of the film is very slow. The camera brings to sight an old house in the countryside, its objects and its surroundings. Most of the time, the film portrays children from the Guarani tribe, playing in the river or riding horses. Encina relates Goiburú’s opposition and death to the killings of native indigenous people. The strength is that the feature is profoundly critical of a very violent political regime without ever displaying graphic violence.

One of Agustín Goiburú’s son, Rolando, was just a kid when he and his father were kidnapped by the guards of the president. His memories are of a stolen childhood. He was fishing with his father when the men arrived and asked for their documents. Still on the boat, the guards obliged them and another man to row until they reached a Marine post. The guards carried weapons that were used 30 years before during Chaco War, a conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay over a territory.

The other son and daughter explain how they learnt to use weapons and always to be suspicious of strangers. Goiburú was a doctor who publicly denounced the torture and violence carried out by Stroessner’s regime. He was also a founder member of Mopoco (Movimiento Popular Colorado) in 1958, a resistance movement that infuriated the dictator.

Stroessner unsuccessfully tried to capture Goiburú for many years. In 1976, Argentine suffered a coup d’etat, and as a consequence Stroessner had the enthusiastic support of the neighbouring country’s new leader. The United States provided technical support and supplied military aid to members of governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, in the intelligence operation known as Operation Condor. The dissident doctor was quickly located and murdered.

The most aggressive way to portray history is by comparing the young Guarani kids living in freedom with the the official photos and documents taken by the intelligence service. Goiburú’s family never found the body and were never able to bury him. There is no closure, and so they are still mourning. There is an illusion, an incomplete memory, that consists of a terrifying aspect of life.

Memory Exercises is Encina’s second feature film. It was presented in San Sebastian International Film Festival in 2016, when this piece was originally written. It’s showing in September 2017 at the Open City Docs Film Festival in London.

You can watch it right here with DMovies and Eyelet: