Melisa Liebenthal

Yamel, a Mexican cinema student in Cuba, is randomly filming a stormy afternoon in Havana when Jans, an 18-year-old fisherman, walks across her frame and captures her attention.

It is no coincidence that the second feature by Argentinian Melisa Liebenthal begins with a quote from “Duino Elegies” by Rilke, who was concerned with existential angst. And, more prosaically, Marina, the film’s young protagonist, is faced with similar anxiety. In fact, her problem is her face. One morning, she discovers her face has changed, and she can no longer recognise herself. Not even her mother can, who bumps into her on the street and says hello to her like she would to any stranger (deadpan, surreal humor is part of the film’s recipe). Marina is thus forced to confront her identity: who is she? Is she determined by her parent’s DNA or by her ID card? Can she be identified by a family portrait, by biometrics or the love of those around her, including her Colombian boyfriend? Is she prettier now?

From her own personal experience and from talking with her lifelong friends, Melisa (24) wonders about the mandates and prohibitions that mold the cultural construction of the female gender, especially in relation to the image. With humor and candidness, the film portraits a feminine world seen from the inside, from conversations, personal photos and home movies.

Aquí y allá is an essay film that studies what being at home means. The filmmaker uses photographs, maps and Google Earth to connect places around the globe; not just from her own past, but also from the complex migratory history of her family that stretches back to Hitler-era Germany and Mao's China. Reality and the virtual prove equally confusing: however much you zoom in, you never get closer to home.

After having shared a common experience in Cuba, twelve filmmakers say goodbye to return to their countries and make a pact: to make a collective film that answers the questions: what does it mean to plagiarize images and how to do it in the distance? The mechanism is unusual: a director makes a short and sends it to the next director, who in turn makes his own short for the purpose of plagiarizing the one he received. And so the chain of plagiarism continues until it reaches the last one. Each one interprets in their own way what it means to plagiarize the received film. The first link in the chain is James Benning, one of the world's most patient filmmakers. His extensive plans are replicated in the following fragments. Disobedience moves the exercise away from literality and an exploration of the texture of the images begins. In its repetitive mechanism, we can see that cinema is, in addition to record of reality, an art of images and sound. (Santiago González Cragnolino)

Constanza is 35 years old, she works as a housemaid at Irene’s house, a 65 year old woman who is temporarily in a wheelchair. The film focuses on Constanza’s meticulous and almost obsessive gestures. As the hours pass by, repetition and melancholy become increasingly heavy, until this apparently ordinary day cracks.