What Will Become of Cinema? Postcards for the Future

For the 34th edition of the Mar Del Plata Film Festival, held in November 2020, we decided to publish a book that would reflect on all the changes that had a major impact on the lives of people whose day-to-day...

Translated from Spanish by César Albarrán-Torres When we touch each other, we are a bit less of an image. That is the difference between images and living beings. We believe we can touch with our eyes when we ...

Translated from the Argentinian Spanish by César Albarrán-Torres During these past few months, the times of lockdown, the apparatus in charge of feeding cinephilia just crumbled. This space, which we can und...

A couple of years ago, I had an audiovisual exhibit at Parque de la Memoria de Buenos Aires, a place that is dear to my heart because it represents, through that seemingly endless monument, the unanchored grief...

1st October, 2020 Dear Cecilia, Marcelo, Pablo and colleagues, I hope that you are all doing all right. Your invitation to send a reflection on the future of cinema got me thinking about how hard it of...

I The intensity of this pandemic jettisoned all my predictions regarding criticism and the way in which cinema is shared. I thought that the big theatres would close and thus, cinema would be reborn, or at lea...

Translated from the Argentinean Spanish by César Albarrán-Torres I believe that in part cinema’s future resides in its past. Nowadays everyone is talking about yet another irreversible crisis in the film in...

Translated from Spanish by Gabriela Arenas  1. Mid-March. After sharing a few days of joyful cinephilia in the city of Córdoba with friends from all over the world, quarantine restrictions are declared for th...

Translated from the Argentinian Spanish by César Albarrán-Torres The pandemic has had a very specific impact in cinema. At one point in its history – and it could have very well not been the case – cinema wa...

I He was very tired. The solitude, after such a long time, had become a burden for him. Perhaps he was sick. The moxibustion session had gone from being an ancient technique connected to the acupuncture points...

In the summer of 2021, I will buy a bike several kilos lighter than my present one. Every weekend, we will leave the city on the RegionalBahn, whose bicycle carriage will be almost empty. We will undertake leng...

Translated from the Argentinian Spanish by Gabriella Munoz We have done well We revealed to the world the selenites, so fragile they turn to dust with one blow we portrayed the workers proudly marching ou...

Dear Cinema, I’m writing to you from a little stone house covered with vine, where everyday bees come to forage. When you close your eyes, can you hear their soothing buzzing sound? Can you see all the...

Translated from the Argentinian Spanish by César Albarrán-Torres I spent the first few months of the pandemic reading the diary that Adolfo Bioy Casares wrote for over four decades detailing his meetings wit...

In the very midst of Covid-19's early panic days, I went for the first time ever to a drive-in theatre; a friend of mine took me there, in good parts because she couldn't believe that the man who'd seemingly se...

Little did I know in February 2020, when collective laughter – some of the bemused variety – erupted at the Berlinale’s Palast during an absurdist moment in Christian Petzold’s latest film, Undine, that we had ...

(This is a version of the last letter of a series that started during the first lockdowns, a collaboration between Jugend ohne film and La vida útil.) Dear Patrick, I am waiting for a letter from the (Spa...

When I first fell in love with the cinema at age 17, I was primarily interested in classic Hollywood films, and my main sources of access were independent television networks that filled the gaps in their sched...

Translated from the Argentinian Spanish by César Albarrán-Torres The film of the future will be even more personal than a novel, individual and autobiographical, like a confession or an intimate diary. Young f...

1st October, 2147 Excavation site: North East Ravensburg, Upper Swabia European Region – Former Federal Republic of Germany My Dearest Niece, I regret that we have not been much in touch lately. I am sure...

T’was the translucent-blue tongues of the glaciers licking the salty sea… yes, at the End of the World. That’s what they call Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of Argentina.  It might as well be the edge of that fla...

A fade-in, the sun is about to set in the cloudless sky above the sea. A male voice from off screen: "What are we waiting for?" Music enters. A female voice asks: "Do you know what the Green Ray is?" Two, who h...

Translated from German by Michelle Carey. I am writing to you from Berlin. I came here for a job and when it was over, there were no more flights between Europe and Argentina. My film shoot is postponed t...

1. More than a year after the beginning of the pandemic, film festivals still do not know what to do with these new times. The online editions were the first attempts to, at least, keep the fire alive, but litt...