In the 25 years since Lucrecia Martel premiered her directorial debut \u201cLa Ci\u00e9naga,\u201d Argentina has seen more presidents than films from its acclaimed auteur, a fact best contextualized by the stories she tells in between. For one, she embarked on a boat voyage through the Paran\u00e1 River after her pitch for an original spin on sci-fi comic series \u201cEl Eternauta\u201d wasn\u2019t greenlit. The release of her latest film \u2014 her first documentary \u2014 \u201cNuestra Tierra\u201d converges with the filmmaker\u2019s career retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Martel sat down with The Daily Californian to discuss her first foray into non-fiction filmmaking, collaboration and her filmic philosophy.<\/p>\n
Meeting Martel at an Oakland coffee shop on a breezy Tuesday morning, the filmmaker\u2019s conversational nature became immediately clear. Having let down our English-speaking guard, chatting with Martel felt more like meeting a long-lost family friend than any professional formality. She kindly offered to share the gluten-free potato frittata she ordered \u2014 sparking a sidebar discussion about our shared dietary restrictions \u2014 and was quick to ask about my thoughts on Berkeley as a student native to Latin America.<\/p>\n
This kind of detail-focused, free-flowing exchange is perfectly observed in the filmmaker\u2019s work, known for its patient gaze and self-apparent insights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have a film-oriented background, but rather in one in the world,\u201d Martel said in Spanish. \u201cI focus on what I want to do and see how I can develop a visual language. \u2026 The shortest path for me is to think about what I want to tell and to comprehend it with as much detail as possible. And little by little, you figure out how to film it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an approach that\u2019s deeply embedded in her formal choices for \u201cNuestra Tierra.\u201d The film traverses the years-long journey to open court proceedings following the 2009 killing of Javier Chocobar, the leader of the Chuschagasta Indigenous community in Northern Argentina. The crime, which was caught on video, stemmed from an attempt by three men to remove the community from land they claim to be theirs. The case speaks to the looming presence of Latin American colonialism and larger systemic failings at addressing injustices impacting Indigenous groups.<\/p>\n
The film\u2019s thematic ties to her preceding work \u201cZama\u201d \u2014 about a Spanish officer stationed in 18th-century Argentina \u2014 are far from incidental. It was during the aforementioned boat voyage that she read Antonio di Benedetto\u2019s 1956 titular novel, inspiring Martel to adapt it into a film. Looking into uncontacted tribes during her research period for the film, she stumbled upon the video of Chocobar\u2019s murder, and was particularly struck by its familiarity, having previously seen the footage in the news.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese were people attacking a community carrying a camera and a revolver, things that held great significance in my work,\u201d Martel said. \u201cA camera is the opposite of firing a gun; it represents a desire to understand, a desire to know, a curiosity. Seeing these people using the camera for purposes that were so clearly at odds with one another, it really caught my attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of the crime\u2019s clear communal division \u2014 city folk threatening a rural community \u2014 Martel had to work to build trust with the Chuschagasta community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community tries not to say what it thinks, but rather what it knows can be said, given the current political climate or whatever the circumstances may be. So it\u2019s really hard to talk to people without them taking a stance \u2014 a defensive stance,\u201d Martel said. \u201cIt took me a long time to get them to be able to express themselves, to feel comfortable expressing their thoughts in front of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Land\u201d cinematographer Ernesto de Carvalho soon joined our conversation. The pair first met when Martel assisted Carvalho with post-production on his film \u201cCanuto\u2019s Transformation,\u201d which was featured in BAMPFA\u2019s Martel retrospective programming, and similarly centers on a South American Indigenous community. He was happy to return the favor with his camerawork in \u201cOur Land.\u201d<\/p>\n
A major component of Carvalho\u2019s cinematography in the film is the use of drone footage to capture the land and its inhabitants, a formal choice largely influenced by the investigative nature of the case and the associated parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a reference point, but Lucrecia obviously wanted the drone footage to have a constructed meaning, a form of its own. And there was an internal reference to the archival material \u2014 the police cameras, the drones used by the police,\u201d Carvalho said in Spanish. He spoke of the drone\u2019s dual nature, where the image\u2019s \u201cobjectifying gaze\u201d coexists with the beauty and sense of belonging connected to the landscapes captured.<\/p>\n
Despite the film\u2019s long-gestating development \u2014 the project was first announced in 2018, when the court case began \u2014 Martel continues to find herself far more enthralled by the aftermath of her work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conversations people have, the opinions it sparks, the connections people make, the interpretations \u2014 all of that is what makes cinema so appealing,\u201d she said. \u201cYou create something, and it\u2019s as if you\u2019re throwing a ball and letting it go, and people play with it and sometimes it helps them realize things about the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 25 years since Lucrecia Martel premiered her directorial debut \u201cLa Ci\u00e9naga,\u201d Argentina has seen more presidents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[19294,49110,120755,120756,120751,120750,143,145,144,120754,120752,120753],"class_list":{"0":"post-280481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-argentina","9":"tag-bampfa","10":"tag-canutos-transformation","11":"tag-ernesto-de-carvalho","12":"tag-la-cinaga","13":"tag-lucrecia-martel","14":"tag-oakland","15":"tag-oakland-headlines","16":"tag-oakland-news","17":"tag-our-land","18":"tag-the-ethernaut","19":"tag-zama"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}