The first Argentine Film Festival commemorates the opening of the country’s consulate in the city

The opening of diplomatic centres in foreign nation often comes with a showcasing of a nation’s cultural products. As the Consulate General and Promotion Center of the Argentine Republic prepares to open in Mumbai, the 1st Argentine Film Festival complements it perfectly with a line-up of four of Argentina’s recent, critically acclaimed films.

Organised in collaboration with the Federation of Film Societies of India, the festival will be a perfect opportunity for film-buffs in the city to see Argentine cinema in a larger scenario of rising critical acclaim for Latin American cinema as a whole.

“The cinema of Mexico has been hailed in festivals across the world and has received much adulation in the past five to six years. Films like Amores Perros being popular even amongst audiences here is a sign of that. Brazil has also had a great cinematic tradition to speak of,” says Sudhir Nandgaonkar, one of the leading members of the FFSI. Rising out of the political turmoil and economic deprivation that is part of their history and a chief influence on their literary and cinematic traditions, Latin American cinema has risen once again in the past 10 years or so, he says.

Argentina’s cinematic history spans nearly as long as the history of cinema itself, with the first films made in the late 1890s. Viaje del Doctor Campos Salles a Buenos Aires, made in 1900 by French photographer Eugene Py, is considered the country’s first documentary. Much later, Fernando Solanas made La hora de los hornos in1968, considered one of the most influential political films of all time. The present festival though, will be screening some of the latest that Argentine cinema has to offer. Beginning today with Los Gigantes de Valdés (2008) by Alex Tossenberger followed by Regresados (2007) by Flavio Nardini and Cristian Bernard, a documentary 4 de Julio by Pablo Young and Pablo Zubizarreta, La Velocidad Funda El Olvido by Marcelo Schapces and Lluvia by Paula Hernandez are all films made in the past three years and will be insightful into the contemporary situation of Argentine life and cinema.