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Casa de Lava 1994
" A laborer from the Cape Verde Islands, about 30 years old. No documents, no family, no friends, nothing. At work they say he didn't talk much."
“My love, being together will make life beautiful for another 30 years. I’m growing stronger and younger. I’d like to give you 10,000 cigarettes, a dozen fashionable dresses, a car, a house built of lava... a bouquet of wildflowers. But above all I want you to drink a bottle of good wine and think of me. Here it is all work. There's more than 100 of us now.”
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The Docks of New York 1928
"What did you ever do that makes you worse than me? I'd marry you in a minute!"
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Afrique 50 1950
Ligue de l'enseignement: Make for us an ethnographic film to broadcast in French schools to show students the benefits of the French educational mission in the West African colonies.
René Vautier: Fuck your funding. I'm engaging in praxis.
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They Kill Me If I Don't Work and If I Work They Kill Me 1974
Watch it here (with English subtitles by me): youtu.be/H8WcfJg6Hkc
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Las AAA son las tres armas: Carta abierta de Rodolfo Walsh a la junta militar 1979
Watch it here (with English subtitles by me): youtu.be/Xn6xvDC2jIY
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Inca Light 1972
Accompanied by introductory shots of cloud-filled skies, mountain ranges, and sunsets and sunrises, the soundtrack of this experimental film begins with a conversation about the state of Peru and the policies of its then president. The unnamed Juan Velasco who took power through a military coup in 1968. In recent Peruvian history, Velasco is notable for agrarian land reforms whose intentions were encapsulated in the final exclamation of an address to the nation in which Velasco quoted Andean revolutionary Tupac…
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Las AAA son las tres armas: Carta abierta de Rodolfo Walsh a la junta militar 1979
To watch Cine de la Base's films today is to welcome ghosts. It's like standing on the shoulders of the defeated who haunt of lost battles and lost futures. The subaltern will speak in their own voice or as ghosts.
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Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene 1973
“We must see the fire that is hidden in a person or in a landscape. We must strive for what Jean-Marie Straub describes: if there is no fire in the shot, if there is nothing burning in your shot, then it is worthless.” - Pedro Costa
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Las AAA son las tres armas: Carta abierta de Rodolfo Walsh a la junta militar 1979
A montage of denunciations extracted from an open letter, with one of the greatest overhead shots in cinema in which mate passed around by filmmakers of Grupo Cine de la Base becomes like a chalice for knights of a round table. Accompanied by the melody of Piazzolla's tango, this simple act of sharing crystallizes itself into the temporality of the closing line: "I will bear testimony during difficult times."
Rodolfo Walsh's open letter to the military dictatorship of 1976 was…
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The Killing of a Chinese Bookie 1976
"Like listening to a piano player tickling a few last chords on the ivories in the wee hours of the morning, when the last patrons have left the nightclub and the waiters are stacking the chairs on the tables." - Jean-Luc Godard on The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
A similar experience happened to me at a nightclub in the early morning, except I was listening to La Isla Bonita.
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It Happened In Hualfin 1965
How to avoid the ethnographic camera? That colonial imbalance between those holding the camera and the people who are filmed. The are two ways: by letting the people have their say or by exalting their stories with the truth of fiction. In the latter methodology, It Happened In Haulfin follows along the tracks of Rossellini's India: Matri Bhumi (1959) and Pedro Costa's Horse Money (2014). Argentina had a great humanist filmmaker. His name was Raymundo Gleyzer.