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- In Search of a Master in Cinematography: PABLO TABERNERO
Marcelo Zapata dedicates his column in Ambito Financiero, the Finantial Times or WSJ of Buenos Aires, to inquire about the life of Pablo Tabernero and the upcoming premier of the documentary film about "Searching 4-TAbernero", a partial biography.
- Traductores traidores! El subtítulo y su vanidad
Crecimos viendo películas extranjeras en su versión original, subtituladas. El doblaje nos pareció desde siempre una aberración, una canallada. Escuchar a Woody Allen doblado por una voz madrileña nos produjo desde siempre un profundo desaliento. No hay manera de explicarlo, a menos que uno pueda hacerlo, que es exactamente lo que voy a intentar en las próximas líneas de las que puede desprenderse la idea de la importancia de un subtitulado acorde con la intención. (ver video mas adelante) Voy a comenzar por circunscribir mi argumento a la tediosa labor de subtitular mi propia película (Buscando a Tabernero), con algunos diálogos en castellano, al inglés. Me refiero, concretamente, a la escena en la que Diego Trerótola se explaya sobre el trabajo de Pablo Tabernero en “Vidalita” (1949), un filme de Luis Saslavsky. La cámara se encuentra en el centro de un círculo casi perfecto sobre el que Trerótola se desplaza manteniendo un radio constante, o casi constante. El divertimento evoca una maniobra similar que intenté con Martín Caparrós durante el rodaje de “Crónicas Mexicas” (2005), y como no hay dos sin tres volveré a jugarme en la primera oportunidad que tenga de no marearme. Durante el transcurso de la toma de 2:20 minutos, Trerótola relata directamente a cámara sus impresiones acerca de la labor de Tabernero en aquel legendario filme, casi un culto entre los que saben de cine argentino, en el que la actriz Mirtha Legrand hace las veces de gaucho, es decir de una mujer travestida lo que en tiempos del breve reinado de Eva Perón pudo haber sido tomado de mala manera. Pero Trerótola sabe que mi documental no está dirigido a comentar la obra de Saslavsky, sino la de su director de fotografía y ahí es donde talla el cultor de curiosidad, el crítico devenido agudo observador. Podría explayarme cómodamente en torno a sus reflexiones, pero sería mejor remitirse a la secuencia subida en la canaleta YouTube. Lo que sí me gustaría señalar, es que el subtitulado me costó un gaucho y la yema del otro, porque dicho sea de paso no es lo mismo un western que la gauchesca, y que no hay dios que nos entienda porque somos una raza verbal que sólo se entiende a sí mismo. Digo, yo entiendo lo que dice Diego Trerótola, pero acepto que ese decir es tan sabio como hermético. Ahí es precisamente donde me identifico más con el testimonio -quizá- que con el mismo objeto del documental. Traducirlo es otra cosa. Creo que en casos como este la traducción debe ser realizada por el autor de la película. Con frecuencia volcamos denodados esfuerzos en la realización de trabajos para después confiarle a a otros el subtitulado de nuestras preciosuras. Deberíamos ser más precavidos. El subtítulo importa, casi tanto como no escuchar a Woody Allen en la irrisoria voz de un madrileño trasnochado.
- REVISITING LINCOLN PERRY & ANN BEATTIE
It is a well-known fact that movies, and this will also apply to documentary films, are not quite finished until we feel we’re done with the project, or we run out of money, whichever comes first. Seldom, we go into development, and start production on film that we don’t know will never get made. Personally, I can only recall a handful of such frustrating moments. One was a film about a writer in the jungles from which I was chase by mosquitos and red ants, another bared the work-in-progress title “The Village”. “The Village” hoped to narrate two-hundred years since the creation of the Academic Village at the University of Virginia, a Thomas Jefferson’s major accomplishment, and perhaps one of which he was proud alongside the Declaration of Independence. “The Village” never gather wind, nor financial support, and just before the project was about to drag me into serious financial hardship, I cowardly quieted to focus in more practical matters, and commissioned work, the sort of documentary films that I get hired to make. “The Village” soon became a closed chapter in my life as a producer, just another hard-drive and backup drive on a shelf. Today I mounted the disk on my computer and went surfing for some of the photos and footage harvested for “The Village” in the development phase. To my surprise I found pretty good stuff, images that made me think that, notwithstanding the difficulties, it was a good idea to begin with. Several images, taking on the same day, brought particularly good memories. In those pictures Lincoln appears next to his wife, the acclaimed writer Anne Beattie. As part of my research, I met Lincoln Perry, the artist responsible for the mural at Old Cabell Hall which has been and remains the center of a ridiculous argument between the reasonable and the unreasonable. The mural, it seems, sparked the reaction of the PC Police which demanded, and still demands, the dismantling and destruction of the mural. Fortunately for me, the mural still remains in place today. Whenever I get a chance, I come to Old Cabell Hall just to appreciate the stimulating representation of life at the University of Virginia by Lincoln Perry. I don’t believe I’ll go back to “The Village” anytime soon, but I do rejoice over the hundreds of hours film as part of the learning experience. The film, will always be somewhere in the back of my mind, alongside myself as I walk down The Lawn at the Academic Village.
- TABERNERO in times of MACK THE KNIFE
There is a first exile in the life of Pablo Tabernero which could probably be applied to the decade he spent away from his mother in Berlin. He left during the pandemic of the Spanish Flew and the civil unrest of the November uprisings of 1919, and he will only return in 1927 to enroll a student at the Lette-Verein School of design. It was there that he was taught basic instruction in the art of photography. In the 1940s Pablo Tabernero will be distinguished as one of the founders of modern cinematography in Argentina, at the time a vibrant industry that served as a beacon to the rest of Latin America, even inspiring up and coming directors of photography in Hollywood studios. In the documentary film “Searching for Tabernero” I was determined to establish early influences that help to shape the cinematographer’s technic, and I came across several references of which the Lette-Verein School in Berlin was just the beginning. In the sequence dedicated to the period 1927-1929, I choose to include several of the surviving “School Project” in order to illustrate his progress. The song that underscores the segment is, of course, "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" (German: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer") or simply put “Mack The Knife” a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht in his own performance. The song was composed in 1928 for the musical The Threepenny Opera (German: Die Dreigroschenoper), and it extremely popular by the time Pablo Tabernero graduated as Photographer Assistant from the Lette-Verein School in Berlin. Back in the day, Pablo Tabernero was known as Peter Paul Weinschenk, son of Ernst Weinschenk, a distinguished architect and committed woodcut artist. His name will change several years later as he disembarked in Buenos Aires fleeing persecution in Europe.
- SONGS FOR EVE: ALICE PARKER in collaboration with A. MacLEISH in a new documentary by MONTES-BRADLEY
"Alice", USA 2020, HD 30 min The documentary film resulting from my collaboration with Alice Parker approaches her work as a composer in connection with a handful of literary figures who influenced her work. I’m thinking of Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King, and Eudora Welty, but also of Archibald McLeish where Alice fund inspiration for the 28 songs that make the cycle for vocal and string quartet known as “Songs for Eve”. The effort was commissioned by the Mohawk Trail Concerts of Charlemont, Massachusetts, under a grant from the Massachusetts Bicentennial Commission in 1975. “The story is the story of the beginning of Genesis -the greatest myth of all the myths- or, more precisely, what has become, in the last few generations, the greatest of all the myths. Prior to that, over many centuries, it had been a very creaky bit of stage business having to do with what was called The Fall – a largely sexual event interpreted as an explanation of our loss of innocence. What we learned in the last hundred years or so about the actuality of our origins has pretty well disposed of the myth too. But subsequently, as the modern mind became aware of the great mystery of the beginning of consciousness – it began to appear that whatever the story of Eden had been to the Middle Ages, it had become, yo us, the greatest (in the sense of being the most human) of the myths for it offered a means of examining the heart of our humanity, our consciousness of ourselves.” – Alice Parker In the documentary, each of the previous collaborations of Alice Parker with a literary force is introduced as an independent vignette, intertwined with each other with autobiographical elements that allow us to look inside the composer. In the process, Alice was a true force contributing to the selection of archival material and embellishing illustrations such as Eve’s seen in the short segment herein, one by Paul Gauguin, the other by Fernando Botero.
- Sérgio Sant’Anna: Documental que no fue
Ayer murió Sérgio Sant'Anna, al que conocí en virtud de la amistad que el tenía con Julia Tomasini. Por entonces Sant'Anna era uno de los nombres en consideración para continuar con los documentales sobre escritores brasileros que comenzó con el rodaje de una biografía parcial sobre Adriana Lisboa en Denver, en el invierno del 2012. La idea era por demás atractiva, Sant'Anna encarnaba un mito viviente, una suerte de oráculo. El encuentro tuvo lugar en su minúsculo departamento, en una torre entre otros palomares¡s no muy distantes de la zona turística. Con Julia esperamos un rato largo a que atendiera el portero eléctrico. Finalmente sonó la chicharra y empezamos a desplazarnos dentro de aquel mausoleo de pasillos angostos. Por un momento tuve la sensación de estar abriéndome camino en las entrañas de una pirámide. Digo, pasillos angostos como para que los gordos queden atrapados, angostos y recubiertos de azulejos como los corredores de un hospital en las pesadillas de mi infancia. De repente dimos con las escaleras y un elevador. Para entonces había comenzado a sudar frío, a sentir que tenía que controlar el ataque de pánico. Julia me pregunta si me pasa algo, digo que no, que si, que a lo mejor. El ascensor era minúsculo, ruidoso. Pienso que Sant'Anna rara vez deja su departamento, pienso que los muertos rara vez se ausentan de sus mausoleos. Finalmente, el piso esperado, y otro pasillo mínimo del que espero librarme llegando a la bóveda de Sant'Anna, a su nicho urbano. Se escuchan pasos, veo el blanco del ojo por la mirilla. El escritor abre la puerta que invita a un escueto salón con una ventana dominada por el Cristo Redentor del Corcovado. _ ¿Todo bien?, pregunta Sant'Anna. Le digo que sí, pero que estaba un poco impresionado por la presencia de aquella figura tan cercana. Le pregunto si no se siente intimidado por la mirada de un Cristo desproporcionado. Sant'Anna sonríe, me toma el tiempo, la presión el pulso. Empezamos mal. La charla fue difícil, alcancé a tomar algunas fotografías, no muchas. Quería llevarme algunos retratos porque sabía que no había ninguna posibilidad de que volviera a ese reducto. Espera salir con vida, contener el pánico hasta llegar al hotel, o a la playa. El resto de la conversa fue críptica. Creo que no estuvimos cómodos, que él debió preguntarse para que había venido a verle, y yo me hacía la misma pregunta. Nunca estuve tan cerca de la muerte como aquella tarde en el sarcófago de Sérgio Sant'Anna. Hoy me entero de su segunda muerte, un virus, el mismo que nos tiene a todos acorralados en los escuetos pasillos de la monotonía. Me pregunto cómo habrán hecho para sacar su cadáver de aquel lugar tan ínfimo, si caso debieron haberlo bajado por la ventana bajo la mirada del Redentor. Julia me dice que no, que murió en el hospital.
- MUJERES BELLAS Y CON TACOS en la guerra civil española
Es posible que Pablo Tabernero no hubiera tenido más remedio que emigrar a Barcelona en la primavera del ´33. Lo cierto es que para mayo de aquel año desembarca en la Estación Francia y se instala en un hotel a escasos metros del paseo de las ramblas. Durante los próximos cuatro años, el berlinés (su verdadero nombre era Peter Paul Weinschenk) aprenderá castellano y catalán, también a sobrevivir en los dos idiomas. La Segunda República tenía mucho que ofrecerle, el ambiente que se vivía en aquellos días pudo parecerle auspicioso. En 1935 participó del rodaje en seis largometrajes sonoros y un año más tarde estalla la guerra civil. La tarea de documentar ese período en la vida de quien años más tarde se convertiría en uno de los directores de fotografía más importantes de los que se tenga noticias en la historia del cine argentino, me permitió convivir con imágenes y testimonios de la época. La tarea me permitió reflexionar en torno a un número considerable de fotografías en las que aparecen mujeres, generalmente muy jóvenes y en muchos casos sumamente atractivas, en el rol de combatientes que, hasta entonces, le estaba casi exclusivamente reservado al varón. Años más tarde aparecerían las primeras imágenes de mujeres, también bellas y airosas, en el ejército israelí. Entre las primeras hay una en particular que me llama poderosamente la atención. Me refiero a la miliciana con una rodilla en tierra y pistola en mano apuntando hacia la derecha de cámara. Va vestida de negro y con zapatos acordonados y con tacos como los que se usan en los calzados de baile. Se me ocurre que el fotógrafo debió de haber sido hombre, es más, no creo que hubiera mujeres como corresponsales de guerra en aquellos años. De cualquier modo, resulta intrigante. El resto de las jóvenes milicianas retratadas en el compilado de imágenes que acompaña esta reflexió son tan atractivas como ella. Están las cuatro que empujan un camión; la que toca el acordeón y las que cuelgan de la puerta de un vagón de tren. Insisto, todas de una belleza sutil, casi despiadada. Busqué entre los archivos a mi disposición retratos de mujeres que no fueran atractivas y no encontré ninguna. O bien el bando republicano llevó adelante un casting exhaustivo, o los bien los corresponsales de guerra dejaron de lado a las milicianas menos afortunadas. La idea hoy, resulta cuando menos inquietante.
- TRINA SEARS STERNSTEIN artwork illustrates documentary on ALICE PARKER
Part of the process of making a film, not just a documentary but any film, is conceiving the key art, a poster that will represent the movie on a wall, on the web, at film festivals and in most official communications. The design of the poster is an essential part of the filmmaking process, and no project is ever really finished without it. Hollywood studios have creative and advertising agencies, in-house artists, art departments. I prefer doing it myself. Growing up I watched my father at work on the design of the jackets of the LPs published by Discos Qualiton, a record label he cofounded with a handful of friends in the 60s. In those days my father would cut out strips of paper, columns of text, paintings and drawings, carefully arrange them and paste them onto a board to create the album artwork. This original would then be photographed and the resulting negative split into four basic colors and delivered to the printers. One day I woke up and Photoshop was there. I don’t know how it happened, but everything had changed. Well, not everything. The basic process remains invariable. To conceive a poster that will represent a film, one must know and understand that film like no other and then come up with the visual elements that are needed to render the poster and other variables of the key art. There are typically four elements to consider: the artwork (basic image), the title treatment (the design of the film title as it appears everywhere), the copy line (one line synopsis), and the billing block (the portion of the poster that states who’s who on the film). The last one is the one I’m least concerned with since the documentaries I make are pretty much a one-man-band deal. I don’t usually include the copy line, although I might. I do believe the title treatment is relevant and that it should always match the title on the actual film. However, the most important element is the image that will represent the film. Winter Dance: A Collaboration For “Alice” I chose an actual work of art, as opposed to a still from the film. The image is a reproduction of an original oil on linen painting (19x12 inches) by Trina Sears Sternstein, a neighbor of Alice Parker in Hawley, in the western mountains of Massachusetts. I stumbled upon her work by accident. I was trying to find Alice’s house after a blizzard and there were two possible ways to get there. Both were open during the Summer, but one was closed in Winter. It was early January and I chose the wrong way. Stranded at the end of the road and mesmerized by the landscape, I pulled my camera from the bag and started to film scenes that later became a fundamental inspiration for the documentary. Unbeknownst to me, the house at that spot on the road was Trina’s home. I related the story to Alice later that day and she mentioned that Trina was a friend and an amazing artist, and that I should find out more about her work. She even showed me a postcard with the reproduction of a painting of hers, a perspective of the woods in the nearby hills of Hawley. The image was a fair depiction of the landscapes I had filmed earlier at that roadblock that not even the village plow would dare to cross. The coincidence resulted in a remarkable collaboration, and “Winter Dance” became an essential element of the key art composition of “Alice”. The collaboration between filmmaker and visual artist honors the synergy that fueled my relationship with Alice during the process of making the documentary about her, and also seems a fair tribute to her past collaborations with Emily Dickinson, Archibald MacLeish and Eudora Welty to name just a few. I often forget how meaningful these and other artistic relationships are, and how much we all have to gain when we work together. With the meticulous stroke of her brush on the cloth, Trina Sears Sternstein contributed to make our film a stronger window into the world of Alice Parker.
- THE MISSING PICTURE
Jules Renard once said that “everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.”, so I did. I needed an image to illustrate a segment on my film about Alice Parker, a photograph that showed conductor Robert Shaw in front of an integrated ensemble. Although not directly related to the story I was telling on the documentary about Alice, the image will serve to establish that Robert Shaw, undoubtedly a most influential figure in her formative years, was also a progressive minded and remarkable individual who in the midst of the Civil Rights movement brought his integrated chorale for a tour to the segregated south. “We were, very frankly, the first group that mixed blacks and whites on stages in the South. There were a lot of mayors that didn’t know we integrated their hotels, too. We’ve had, in the South, capital cities, we’ve had the front three rows, which are the expensive rows, get up and leave as our group walked on stage. But we never cancelled a concert. In some respects, we led that crusade in the Arts.” Robert Shaw. So, I took action and reached out to Kiki Wilson, executive producer of “Robert Shaw The Film” aired on PBS American Masters. After screening one of the latest edited versions of “Alice” with a private link to Vimeo, Kiki’s responded with a number of amazing photographs. I needed only one, and she offered ten. Now we’re one step closer to concluding this portrayal on Alice Parker. I know that soon I will have to export the final version into a master that we can share with the world in multiple languages and with film festivals everywhere, but I would rather keep on editing forever. I’ve got used to Alice’s company on the screen of my computer, to the phone calls, to her music. This film reminded me why I do what I do, why am I a filmmaker and a biographer. In a certain way Alice and I are very much alike, we both believe we have the best job in the world.
- ALICE PARKER COMES TO VIRGINIA
With Ken Nafziger and Beth-Neville Evans in Harrisonburg, Va. planning the premiere of “Alice” on both sides of the Blue Ridge. As of today, tentative dates are October 10th at the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium in Charlottesville, and the following day in Harrisonburg at the Eastern Mennonite University. The presentations will be a unique opportunity to celebrate Alice Parker’s 95th birthday and the 35th anniversary of Melodious Accord, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to bringing together composers, performers, and listeners in the creation and re-creation of music. “Alice” is a documentary film by Eduardo Montes-Bradley produced by Heritage Film Project in association with Melodious Accord.