[2018] Difficult Convivialities: Film director Lucrecia Martel

Image: Lucrecia Martel

In her films, the celebrated Argentinian film director Lucrecia Martel explores universes characterized by dense and often difficult interactions: gender oppression, congested kinship, silent conflicts. Her most recent film, “Zama“, based on a novel published in 1956 by Antonio di Benedetto, explores multicultural interrelations in colonial Argentina several centuries before the word multiculturalism was coined. The 2017 film has already received awards in various countries, it displays the interactions of Spaniards and Argentinians, indigenous, enslaved and free persons, as well as men and women from different social strata, highlighting the abject normality of colonial contact.

Lucrecia Martel discussed these colonial dystopias with Claudia von Alemann, film director and film scholar; Julia Roth, expert on gender and postcolonial studies; and Peter Schulze, film and literary scholar, at the LAI (Lateinamerika-Institut), on July 6th.

Read the full programme.

Impressions from Dr. Clara Ruvituso, sociologist and event participant: (English translation below)

“La experiencia audio-visual que compartimos durante la visita de Lucrecia Martel al LAI el pasado viernes 6 de julio puede resumirse en la certeza, siguiendo sus palabras, de que “no estamos separados” y que la historia experimentada desde el punto de vista de una espera y atendiendo al sonido puede invocar inquietantes perspectivas contrahegemónicas. La película “Zama”, última producción cinematográfica de la directora salteña, puede leerse entonces como el intento constante de quebrar la educación visual e histórica, personal y colectiva, del occidente colonial. Después de la proyección de los primeros 20 minutos, en diálogo con preguntas de Claudia  von Alemann, Julia Roth y Peter Schulze y en inusual interacción con todxs lxs presentes, Lucrecia Martel desplegó una filosofía de la historia, de las arbitrariedades de la percepción y del narrar. Para terminar de ver “Zama” o volver a verla, vale la pena pensar desde el sonido y estar dispuestxs a quebrar la propia educación.”

The audio-visual experience that we shared during Lucrecia Martel’s visit to the LAI on Friday, July 6th can be summarized in the assertion, in Martel’s own words, that “we are not separated from one another”, and that experiencing history from the point of view of waiting and by paying attention to sound can invoke unsettling counterhegemonic perspectives. The film “Zama”, the Saltenian director’s most recent production, can be read as the constant attempt to break with the visual and historical as well as the individual and collective education of the colonial West. After screening the first 20 minutes of the film, Lucrecia Martel expounded her philosophy of history, of the arbitrariness of perceiving and narrating, in a dialogue with Claudia von Alemann, Julia Roth, and Peter Schulze, in addition to an unusual interaction with all those present. When watching “Zama” again or at least to the end, it would be worthwhile to think about the film’s sounds and to be willing to break with one’s own education.