Here at Lucky Star, we are always on the lookout for points of contact with other cinephile cultures. We are hoping with this column, Encounters, to establish a dialogue, a line of communication. We get to know interesting cinephiles, critics, directors, etc., all as a way to interrogate our own positions, our own cinephilia.
In this installment, we speak with Alejo Moguillansky, the subject of Profiles #2, a member of El Pampero Cine, and director of films such as Por el dinero and The Little Match Girl. In this conversation, we discuss his thoughts on filmmaking, editing, his work as a teacher and film programmer and more.
After Castro, it can be said that real life becomes the base on top of which you build everything. In Castro there is a much more direct relationship to the script. So I want to ask how do you see your relationship to the script now, with the experience of writing a script?
Castro was practically the last script that I wrote from scratch, let’s say, meaning without having previously filmed anything, without having any previous event surrounding the film, etc. Castro was the last film I wrote in that way. But now after so many films, I don’t even know how many, almost 10, made without any type of prior script, now I have returned to writing a script. I don’t know if it’s as an antidote, or a reaction, or just as a need to keep things moving and change them once again. But now I’m writing a script, two scripts actually. These films will have a script as their starting point. This doesn’t mean that they won’t look like the previous films, or that, in any case, they won’t have the same concerns of staging that there always are. It simply means that now there is a script. I think it has to do with a need, a desire for change, that always appears film after film, and that in these two films has manifested in this way.
I remember that you once said that to write a script from nothing was like an abyss. But when you have an actor in front of you, as you did in The Little Match Girl with María Villar and Margarita Fernández around the piano, you don’t have a script. When you have an actor in front of you in this way what sort of questions do you ask yourself to find a scene? Are you looking for a particular idea? A gesture? Without a script, how do you know what to look for?
It depends. There’s not a single answer for that. There are infinite answers. I think one always looks for the shot, more than the scene. The truth is that scenes are made out of individual shots, and that the decisions one makes are made within the shot – you always look for the shot to be alive, for it to have a little blood pumping in its veins. Based on that, yes, you can look for a gesture, you can look for a particular tension with a sound that’s off-screen and a character in the shot reacting to that sound, you can believe that the frame is capable of narrating something, whether in a medium shot or close up. I don’t have a very clear answer for that if I’m honest because sometimes it’s something purely documentary, sometimes it’s about the accumulation of time in a shot that then generates a tension that’s newer and stranger. Filming is a lot like looking in that sense. The other day at the beach, for example, I remember that I asked my daughter to film something, and my daughter started filming with the phone and discovered, I saw it very clearly, the moment where watching someone doing a certain action is interesting. It was very clear for me that she had understood that. She had understood that taste for documentary, that the documentary gaze is a narrative act. In that sense, the camera is an instrument that allows us to look at someone. Well, that’s how cinema was born.
Has it become easier to find those shots in reality? Has anything changed in the way that you look for them?
I suspect so, but I honestly don’t know very well. In this sense I’m very Bressonian in that I subscribe to the idea that cinema can film a person interpreting something and that in any case what the cinema films is not the incarnation of that something, but rather that person trying to go towards a text – that strange relationship between material that is real and material that is imaginary. Cinema is located there a bit. The difference between documentary and fiction doesn’t make much sense because it is simply about filming a body, about filming materials, filming spaces, and trying to understand that cinema has to find itself between those bodies and those spaces. At the moment when one is filming, you have to be very sharp, because it’s like a game of different velocities… the velocity of a person, against the velocity of a space, against the velocity of another person, against the velocity of a text. I think of mise en scene and the frame from that place. If there is a script or there’s not a script, it doesn’t matter that much, but what there always is are materials and that can be an actress, an actor, an animal, a specific text. I feel close to Bresson in that type of thinking. He is always filming the resistance of a body to say something, or the resistance of a text to being spoken by someone. Cinema feeds on that tension. In any case, when you don’t film that tension then, well, that’s when a bad film appears.
When you say you need an actor, an actress, and these things, well, you also need a camera. I remember a few years ago your colleague Mariano Llinás was being interviewed about La Flor and he said that La Flor could be understood as a film by Canon, because it showed their process of learning to use that particular camera. What is the your relationship with the camera? Do you only film when you want to film, or do you take it everywhere to film things? What is your relationship to modern cameras?
I film a lot. On every trip I’m filming. I’m filming all the time. Sometimes a movie can also be a curiosity about a camera system. That also happens. I am quite restless. I’m not a big fan of immobility, in any case. Rather, I’m a person who is trying to change at all times. And what I’m saying can go from one to movie to another, or to the interior of a shot. I don’t like shots that start and end the same way. In any case, I believe the best will and the best capacity that cinema has is transformation. I quickly tend to test the limits of things, of forms, and cameras as well. I try to reach this limit and for that to become, if you want it to, a narrative act. So it’s natural that you’re thirsty for change all the time, for transformation. And for change I don’t mean that to be something almost commercial, the market feeding year after year on new technologies that seem to surpass the previous ones (that change is based on things always remaining the same, a technological change in favor of the market). Change has to do with the opposite, with trying to provoke transformation; it seems to me that the key word is transformation. Within a shot, from documentary material to fictional material, from one film to another – it can be totally antagonistic, and yet maintain that same melancholy. Those types of contradictions interest me.
I want to ask you a little about your profession as an editor. Do you see a difference in editing your own films compared to those of other filmmakers?
No, honestly not. The difference is that it costs me much less to do my own film because, having filmed the material, I have a knowledge of it. But, no, I don’t see big differences. The truth is that the real difference is that in your own movies you’re more likely to be lost at some point. In my films there is a moment when I abandon the editing and allow other people to intervene and give their opinions freely. And, little by little, I might do what they say. In other people’s movies that other person is usually me.
In your work I see almost Godardian strategies, to handle the material, such as the use of titles, cuts to black, the use of maps and letters in The Gold Bug. How do you decide what your montage needs? Is it a question of rhythm?
It seems to me that it’s purely a musical question. It can be about rhythm, but also about understanding movies almost like velocities. And shots as velocities. There are shots that quickly rush toward their end and that don’t need to be interrupted or highlighted. There are other shots that are more like an adagio, where the shot is a material a little more flexible and expansive that needs to be interrupted, etc. One could continue infinitely with a plastic description of the temporality of a shot. But it seems to me that it has to do with tensions a little similar to musical composition. A composer would always know where to put a staccato, where to put a chord that interrupts, where to change the key, etc. In that sense, editing is very similar. It’s tremendously similar. Although sometimes I work with typographic materials, verbal materials. Cinema and music are two of arts of time. An eighth note is a unit of time. A shot is as well. A shot is a duration. In any case, the question one has to ask as a filmmaker is how long a shot lasts. That’s a big question. A shot is a certain distance, the height of the camera, it’s a frame, it’s a lens, but above all the shot is a duration. That must be very clear. When a filmmaker is editing, or filming, it’s a little like musical composition. Back to your question, it just depends on how everything is going. One can find infinite tonalities in a scene, a million things. What I try again and again to generate with a cut, etc., is an idea of contradiction, or paradox.
How do you think your cinephilia informs you when you’re filming, when you’re editing?
I think for each movie you know what other movies you’re looking at. There are films of mine that look at Rozier, or Bresson, or Godard, or Antonioni, or Ford. Even Huston. It seems to me that ever since you’re a cinephile it is very difficult to free yourself from those pantheons. It’s inevitable that you might think about a shot, a cut in relation to… well, I don’t know if to a shot in particular, but rather a language you know well. So, yes, I have a small pantheon that is made up of those directors I mentioned and some others – Franju, or Murnau. Several more. You always have the intuition that you must take a scene closer to the language you’ve learned from those directors. You always imitate a little what you like. That’s one of the laws in life. No matter how much you later detach from that, or whether you return and transform that into your own language. But the truth is that the moment when you’re filming is suddenly more fun because you’re a little more lost. Even sometimes when you’re editing. But when thinking about it more abstractly, it’s very difficult to get away from the movies you like. In in any case, they are a little like a map; it helps you feel safe.
Do you teach editing?
No, I teach direction. At the Universidad del Cine, L’école cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland, and Universidad Torcuato di tella – all direction. I’ve never taught editing.
What type of films do you show?
Everything. But I usually don’t show anything past 1990. Even though there are infinite movies that interest me from those times. I really like showing Murnau. Very much. And it helps me to show Murnau.
What concept to you illustrate with Murnau?
A certain pictorial quality of cinema. A certain capacity to show how one can make movies. Where does a shot come from? Does a shot begin from the script? Or does a shot begin with a performance? There’s something Murnau that tells us that a shot can begin from the light. The truth is that if you look it at with some attention, you can start to see how suddenly a director like Murnau can construct a shot from the light, in the same way that Rembrandt can construct painting from the light. And it’s quite innovative. Because now no one thinks of filming starting from the light. Even more so now with digital cameras that quickly equalize everything, raising the shadows to match them with the highlights, making everything average. There is a certain pictorial depth that was lost. And it has nothing to do with a decorative plasticity, no. It has to do with what the films narrate. One can’t think of film noir, or detective films, without that pictorial quality. It is impossible to think about them without that. Curiously, today cinema is at a time where what is missing above all are creators of images. There are many creators of stories, many creators of characters, those kind of things abound. But there are few creators of images. It’s interesting to think about cinema again in that direction – in the idea of images that end up conquering you for reasons that you don’t really understand what they are. In that sense, I really enjoy showing Murnau in schools.
I understand that you do the programming for a film festival, Vecine. What do you look for when you program for a film festival? What vision of cinema are you looking for?
I try to look for movies that make experimentation a possible popular act. That’s what I’m looking for. To bridge the gap between an experimental cinema and the full room. Festivals are still basically places where cinephilia continues to be breathed a little, with a lot of problems of course. But I think film festivals allow for that idea. They allow people to really look again. And in this looking again, cinema is not asked for a certain speed or a certain efficiency. And then that old fairground spectacle called the cinematograph may appear. If there was one thing that was clear about the cinematograph was that if it didn’t experiment, nothing would happen. It had the word experimentation as its noble word. I believe in that as a film programmer.
How do you think your work as a teacher, as a programmer, has influenced your work as a filmmaker?
I’ve had dazzling students in several years of teaching. Inevitably it is a form of influence when you discover someone who you really like what they do. But that has happened in exceptional cases. But in general I would tell you that… sometimes it tells you where the norm is. It tells you where the norm is, where the convention is, seeing the type of production of the students. Something that is not yet official in the language of the films seen at the theaters or festivals – it’s a future convention. I see that a lot. As a good anti-canonical militant, it is good because it’s a type of influence, an almost perfect one, because you see exactly what you don’t want to see.
Sometimes El Pampero Cine has likened itself to a rock group. The groups who have been together for many years I imagine have to a find a way renew themselves, or to renew their artistic search. How does El Pampero Cine try to renew itself?
I don’t know. Right now El Pampero is in a moment of great change. Perhaps precisely in search of this renewal. A change perhaps in the type of production – as if to say, yes, well, small films will continue to be made, but also bigger ones. If we can make totally wild movies with a punk spirit, then this spirit can also inhabit larger production structures, with new actors, with co-producers. The last years of El Pampero were good. There was a lot of recognition, a lot of legitimization. And you have to be able to see that change and to be able to think based on that. So, yes, El Pampero is in a great moment of change.
In my own case I am putting together a bigger movie that requires a strong co-production. Mariano is doing this too. Laura as well. And everyone also has their small movies. In fact, in about a month and a half I am going to film a small movie in Switzerland where I’ve been living these last few months. Extremely small movie. In a parallel, the big movie I’ve been writing that much bigger movie with Mariano. So, the question is difficult. It is constantly changing. I understand that this change goes towards a certain issue of diversity and, above all, towards a certain issue that is perhaps new for us in terms of production size. On the other hand, we are all older. When we are older, the agenda becomes more difficult. Everything gets more complex. But, hey, we still go on. For example, we have to make a trailer, the four of us together, for a festival that is doing a Pampero retrospective. And doing the trailer we’ve been having fun filming something, all the four of us together. Things keep flowing. I don’t know in which direction, but they keep flowing.
Things in Argentina at the moment are flowing as you say, but perhaps not in a very good direction thanks to the election of Javier Milei. Obviously, El Pampero does not take money from INCAA, but how does this law that’s being proposed, Ley Omnibus, affect you?
Very much. It’s a law that if it’s carried out as the executive branch wants it to, it will do away with a lot of institutions. Basically it is a law that wants to disappear the cultural institutions that protect the cultural production of an entire country. Of course, there are institutions that do not depend on the national government, but rather on the municipal governments, or those of the provinces, etc., but it’s not very clear what scope the law will really have. What we do see are intentions that are not very pleasant towards those people who work in the arts or in culture. It would seem this is a government that does not believe that culture has to be part of the production of a state, as an identity. That’s a problem, of course. But it is still not very clear the scope of the law; it is not very clear if the law will go into practice. It is being discussed right at this precise moment in Congress, and the government does not want it discussed there. In short, there are a series of very suspicious legal and constitutional issues. Prior to the arrival of this new government, INCAA worked despite an infinite number of problems. This law is very far away from wanting to be interested in solutions to these problems. I believe that it only deepens them.
Removing funds from these institutions also affects film festivals such as Mar De Plata. I believe INCAA is in charge of this festival. And this can also impact how you’re able to launch and release films.
Of course. But they also want to close el Fondo Nacional de las Artes. This is an institution that’s been around a while and they give grants, small ones but they give grants. In any case, you could go and try to rethink how things work. Well, this works. This does not work. What can I do to make it better? The same with INCAA. The will of this government is not to think about anything. It’s for these institutions to disappear, and that cultural production will be an activity outside of the state. In that sense, we are on opposite paths. The historical discussion that El Pampero has had with INCAA doesn’t have as its objective that INCAA doesn’t exist. But rather that it changes toward a less industrialist direction, and with greater diversity. This government thinks of this word, diversity, as a bad word. So, yes, this is all worrisome. Even though El Pampero has made the discussion with INCAA and not working with public funds as part of its identity, it is not an identity that wants the closure of those institutions. On the contrary, ours is an identity that wishes for these institutions to open up and work with cinema in the way filmmakers work, in a way that is not necessarily industrialized. It’s all a problem. This government is, as they say in Argentina, monkeys with knives (“monos con najavas”).
Alejo, I wanted to finish with a slightly silly question. Obviously, Mariano has made his gigantic films. Now Laura made her film of 4 hours. Is there a part of you that wants to make a long movie like that?
A movie that lasts three months. My new movie lasts three months (laughs). No, I don’t have that ambition. Although the script we are writing with Mariano which I plan on directing, everything indicates that it will be a very long film. If that does happen, then it’s my hope that it does not reach the extraordinary lengths of my friends (laughs). Because I’m more fond of shorter durations. In this new movie everything indicates that it’s going to be a movie of more than three hours. But let’s hope it doesn’t get to four.
Interview conducted by Jhon Hernandez on January 10th.
Post-Script: After this interview was conducted, Milei’s government has gone ahead and moved forward with the plan to defund INCAA (read more here).
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