Juan José Gorasurreta

The life of Juan José Gorasurreta is pierced by images. In his new feature film, the historic film society programmer appropriates the films that made him in order to find new relationships and patterns and thus generate a convergence between his personal life, that of Argentina and that of cinema. In The Absences his travels coexist with Orson Welles, activism, Fernando Birrri, the Cordobazo, his studies, Eva Landeck, family, Carlos Echeverría, the Trelew Massacre, Nagisa Ōshima, censorship, film societies, the Malvinas war, his short films. The randomness of this list vanishes as the film progresses, and gives way to a synapse that is as logical as it is moving. “It is a portrait on how Argentine history and my encounter with films designed my sensitive areas” —as he did with his own story, no one could define The Absences better than Gorasurreta himself.

One generation. One life. One country. On my last trip back to my hometown of San Gregorio, Santa Fe, to see my mother at almost 90 years old, I arrived at the field where I grew up and worked on my parents' dairy farm. The overflowing of Laguna La Picasa had flooded everything, and a few years later, soybeans painted the remaining land a nearly dollar-green. Upon reaching the woods surrounding the house, it was difficult to enter the space, invaded by abandonment, and it was impossible to find a single brick from the torpedoed house.