Doc Talk – 327 CUADERNOS
Celebrated contemporary Argentinian author Ricardo Piglia is the subject of Andrés Di Tella’s fascinating portrait film 327 Cuadernos (327 Notebooks). Rejecting a conventional style, Di Tella created a more intimate approach by encouraging his friend’s recollections about his life and art by asking him to look back through the 327 diaries he had recorded since the age of sixteen. Piglia agreed, tracing the distance between a lonely young boy and the world-renowned novelist, exploring the different selves he does and does not recognize. Piglia is a compelling and charismatic storyteller who sadly falls ill midway through the filming, and the constant reminder of approaching death adds poignant urgency to the story he weaves about his life and his art.
Like so many Latin American filmmakers, Di Tella is drawn to the past and a searching examination of personal and collective memory of the tumultuous political and cultural history of the 20th century. He is well known for essayistic films that, like 327 Cuadernos, arise out of his life experience. In his wonderful film Fotografias (2007) he decides to face his past as a child caught between different worlds and two races. Fotografias follows the journey he took to India with his young son to meet the family he never knew in an attempt to understand the mother who never shared this part of her identity with him.
Andrés Di Tella is a filmmaker, writer, and curator based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is the founder of the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI), one of the major cinema events in Latin America. Like Piglia, Di Tella taught at Princeton University and for ten years served as Artistic Director of the Princeton Documentary Festival. Di Tella has directed eleven feature-length films, and retrospectives of his work have been held in Brazil, Chile, Italy, Peru, and Spain, among other places. His work spans video art, installations and performances as well as documentaries for television. He has written a nonfiction book based on one of his films, Hachazos, and a further book of essays, Cuaderno, is forthcoming. He is considered by many scholars, several of whom have written books about his work, to be among the most significant documentary filmmakers in Latin American history.
Please join us for this presentation and Q&A with acclaimed Argentinian director Andrés Di Tella, hosted and moderated by Deirdre Boyle, Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies who met Di Tella at the Visible Evidence conference in Buenos Aires last summer.
Monday, February 26 at 1 pm
Kellen Auditorium (Room N101), Ground Floor
66 Fifth Avenue (btw 12th & 13th St.)
Hosted by Deirdre Boyle
Presented by the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies
Director, Deanna Kamiel
