DOC Meeting Argentina/ 4
The most applauded film projects were connected to blindness. The young director Argimiro Wanadi Siso Saldivia (what a name!) from Venezuela presented ”The Labyrinth of the Possible”, which seems to become a strong documentary about the charismatic Sonia Soberats, a blind photographer, who lost her two sons and had her ”lifestyle changing drastically… developing in Sonia techniques of no-visual photography, as a therapy in a way but also as a recreational activity”.
The most moving presentation was done by experienced director and editor, Chilean/Canadian María Teresa Larrain, who has a low vision and wants to tell her story, which is ”her fight to keep her dignity and her voice as an artist”. Larrain did a presentation that was precisely full of dignity with a clip that had a lyrical tone. From her synopsis: In a small editing room in Toronto, a filmmaker suddenly goes blind. This documentary follows her walk into darkness… an autobiography about overcoming loss and rising from the ashes”. Can’t wait to see that film that will travel all over, no doubt.
DOC Meeting was full of talent and interesting, promising stories. Personally I am looking forward to see the film by Argentinian Federico Aletta, who as many others joined as a volunteer after the earthquake in Japan, on March 11, and filmed the physical and mental reconstruction in Ishinomaki (photo) – rock & roll city, he called it. It is told in first person – the filmmaker wants the film to be completed for the one year commemoration of the earthquake.
Likewise – another earthquake, Chile, February 2010 – there was an amazing stylistical touch in the material that was shown by young Australian/Iranian Nora Niasari, who wants to ”uncover the human face in the wreckage of the alarming (6500 homes were destroyed) statistics… Three characters with conflicting social pressures are bound together by the transformations of one devastating event in the neighborhood of Seminario”.
