Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1995
Historias breves
Buy Historias breves now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Historias breves' ("Short Stories") is an Argentine feature-length film made up of nine short films directed, respectively, by Daniel Burman, Adrin Caetano, Jorge Gaggero, Tristn Gicovate, Andrs Tambornino and Ulises Rosell, Sandra Gugliotta, Lucrecia Martel, Pablo Ramos, and Bruno Stagnaro. It debuted in theaters on May 19, 1995.
The film brings together the winners of the first edition of the Argentine National Film Board's (INCAA) annual public script competition, the grand prize of which is the budget to produce a short film. Eventually screened in national theaters, the omnibus film gave rise and recognition to a new generation of Argentine filmmakers known collectively as the New Argentine Cinemaa wave of contemporary filmmaking that began in the mid-1990s in reaction to decades of political and economic crises in the country.
Background
Filmmaker Lucrecia Martel explained in a 2008 interview that the premiere of the compilation film was unprecedented in Argentina and came about after all the directors of the short films banded together and visited the Argentine National Film Board (INCAA) headquarters in Buenos Aires repeatedly to ask the script contest organizers to premiere all the short films as a string of films in a theater. The filmmakers waited for hours until the contest organizers would meet with them and argued that it was a waste of state funding if they didn't exhibit the finished films. As a result, the films were exhibited on the dedicated screens of the national public circuit run by INCAA.
Short films included
'La ausencia'
'La ausencia' ("Absence"), written and directed by Pablo Ramos, is about a young man who tries to replace a lonely old watchmaker after discovering that he controls the lives of the people who pass by his street corner.'Cuesta abajo'
'Cuesta abajo' ("Downhill"), written and directed by Adrin Caetano, is about a truck driver transporting a cargo of chickens, who becomes lost on an endless journey.'Dnde y cmo Oliveira perdi a Achala'
'Dnde y cmo Oliveira perdi a Achala' ("Where and How Oliveira Lost Achala"), written and directed by Andrs Tambornino and Ulises Rosell and co-written by Rodrigo Moreno, is about two men traveling in a car looking for a village, apparently on the wrong road.'Guarisove, los olvidados'
'Guarisove, los olvidados' ("Guarisove, the Forgotten Ones"), written and directed by Bruno Stagnaro, is about two groups of soldiers in the Falkland Islands who are unaware of the coming war.'Nios envueltos'
'Nios envueltos' ("Wrapped Children" or "Stuffed Grape Leaves"), written and directed by Daniel Burman, is about a boy and girl who meet due to a confusion over home-delivery of meals.'Noches ticas'
'Noches ticas' ("Attic Nights"), written and directed by Sandra Gugliotta, is about a tarot card reader who works on a phone sex hotline and receives a briefcase full of money with instructions to take it out of the country for laundering.'Ojos de fuego'
'Ojos de fuego' ("Eyes of Fire"), directed by Jorge Gaggero and co-written with Matas Oks, a 13-year-old boy living in a miserable environment rebels and expresses himself with fire.'Rey muerto'
'Rey muerto' ("Dead King"), written and directed by Lucrecia Martel and set in the fictional village of Rey Muerto in northeastern Argentina, is about a woman who tries to escape her abusive husband with their three children.'La simple razn'
'La simple razn' ("The Simple Reason") is written and directed by Tristn Gicovate.Critical reception
Film critic Claudio Espaa of 'La Nacin' wrote:
'Clarn' wrote:
Film scholars Ral Manrupe and Mara Alejandra Portela wrote:
'El Amante del Cine' magazine wrote:
Legacy
Filmmaker Lucrecia Martel says that the premiere of 'Historias breves' was "very successful" and drew 10,000 viewers. "It also inspired people," she says, "to study filmmaking and to start making shorts. It was a really important phenomenon in spiritual terms. Curiously, many of the directors who began their careers at the time95 or 96are still making films today. That event inaugurated the activity of a lot of directors, and also a lot of young peoples interest in film." Film scholar Haden Guest says it helped inaugurate the New Argentine Cinema and is really where the [movement] began.
References
Buy Historias breves now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1995