written by ANA LUISA GONZÁLEZ
Cineastas by the Argentine director Mariano Pensotti at REDCAT unpacks two simultaneous storylines to narrate the lives of four filmmakers. There is Gabriel, a commercial filmmaker, Mariela who shoots a documentary about the Soviet Union dissolution, and Lucas, an activist director who also works at McDonald’s to finance his movie, which ironically tries to ridicule the same company. Nadia directs a feature about a militant who disappeared during the Argentinian dictatorship but returns to his family after being missing for 30 years.
The performance evolves as the filmmakers pursue their movies’ production. Their films become metaphors for their lives, and an outlet to express their own failures, frustrations, memory and identity. As the narrator points out during the play: “Human beings encountered that at the end of the day film is about the possibility to fix time”.
Cineastas’ layered stage setting illustrates how the personal lives of its characters parallel the films they are simultaneously creating. // photo by CARLOS FURMAN
Cineastas demands audience attention from the very start. Pensotti engages the spectator throughout with dynamic dialogue, narrations and actions. The two-story stage setting provides a cinematic experience, a sense of movement that leads the audience into a lack of breath, of silence. Yet, the multiple tales demands simultaneous actions. For instance, Lucas, who works full time at McDonald’s, shows us the thin line between his own life and the film he creates, which features a man who also works at McDonalds but is instead kidnapped and forced to wear a Ronald McDonald costume. In this way, the four filmmakers weave their creative processes through their personal lives, bringing the viewer a reflection of how real life shapes absurd realities in the process of filmmaking.
Each scene represents how filmmakers have the power to fix time. //photo by CARLOS FURMAN
The quick movements of the actors, the frenetic tone and the electronic music also engages the audience. Yet the play’s rapid-fire dynamic might overwhelm anyone who follows the English translation from Spanish on the screen.
By the end of Cineastas, the spectator experiences a deconstruction of the stage as a way to narrate the emptiness of the characters’ lives. This isolation created by the integration of space fits with the ephemeral nature of the characters’ dialogues and actions, which passes by like projected instants on a screen.
& Extra
Cineastas will continue at REDCAT Feb. 18 to 21. The play also features English subtitles.
[featured photo by CARLOS FURMAN and courtesy of REDCAT]