The father of new Latin American cinema, director Fernando Birri, screened his latest documentary, "Elegia Fruilana," and introduced his latest book, "To Dream With Open Eyes," at an event Monday night sponsored by Brown's Center for Latin American Studies. Birri is the honorary president of this year's Providence Latin American Film Festival, which runs through Sept. 29.
Birri was born in Santa Fe, Argentina in 1925. He studied film in Rome at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia before returning to Argentina to open the first documentary filmmaking school in Latin America. While in exile from Argentina during a military regime, he traveled to Cuba and founded the International School of Film and Television.
"There's a secret that isn't really a secret," Birri said. "I am part of a united group of artists that believe in an anarchist dream that there could be a better world."
Accompanied by a translator and dressed entirely in white to match his long white beard, Birri introduced the 22-minute film "Elegia Fruilana," which he explained was inspired by a grandfather whom he never met. Birri's grandfather was a farmer in the Fruili region of northern Italy and an activist in the anarchist movements of the late 19th century. He emigrated to Argentina in the 1880s and became a proletariat urban worker, until he fell to death from a tower on which he was working. "The image has always haunted me," Birri said. "That ghostly image is what I try to express in this film."
An elegy to work, bread, dreams, simplicity and hope, "Elegia Fruilana" is a haunting yet moving depiction of everyday life in Fruili and the experiences of those that emigrated from the region. The documentary combines various forms of artistic expression, including photography, watercolors, music and poetry.
To achieve what Birri calls a "third dimension of time," black and white portraits are super-imposed against colorful backgrounds including watermills and fields of flowers. "For every drop of sweat, every tear, for every globule of blood: a poppy..." commands a voice-over in the film.
Birri pieces together these seemingly diverse components to evoke a feeling he refers to as hopeful melancholy. "The word elegy already connotes melancholy, but like a light that illuminates, this film also represents hope," he said, switching to English when using the word hope and pounding his fist on the podium for emphasis. "Hope, hope, hope!"
During the second part of the event, Birri introduced his new book, "To Dream With Open Eyes," a compilation of the 30 lectures he taught as a visiting professor at Stanford University. "The idea of the course was to give an introduction to new Latin American cinema and place it in the context of early 20th century art," he said. The course was divided into three parts: an analysis of his own work, an examination of his fellow Latin American filmmakers and a study of the relationship between cinema and other forms of Latin American art including Diego Rivera's muralism and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's literature.
Birri explained the significance of his book's title by recounting a story from his time teaching in Cuba. Before visiting professors left the school, students would ask them to leave graffiti on a wall. Film director Francis Ford Coppola took up practically an entire wall with the phrase, "Art never sleeps." When it came time for Birri to leave, he responded to Coppola's line in small letters, "But it dreams with open eyes."
Towards the end of the event, Birri requested opinions, questions and even insults. An audience member asked if any of the photographs in the film were of him as a child, to which Birri joked, "I'm old, but not archaic!" When a woman congratulated him for the masterful way in which he combined the old black and white photographs with the other components of the film, Birri answered with his usual humble response, "Thank you, but it's in your eyes."
"For a long time, I haven't believed in the division between genres," he said. "For practical reasons, I had to call the film a documentary, but I believe new film is a mixture of forms and genres. The genre has a name - Docfic!"
Birri's first attempt at making a film about Argentine immigrants and their anarchist movements in the 1880s, entitled "The Illness of America," was forced to stop production for political reasons. He only succeeded in making "Elegia Fruilana" because of the stubbornness of many people, he said. "These 22 minutes of film you just saw have taken many years of resistance, but that is not personal. All Latin American filmmakers have this problem."
"The struggle has always been against the major players in Hollywood. It's a David and Goliath type struggle," Birri said. "There is a great wall of heavy rocks protecting the kingdom, but lizards go in between the rocks and arrive at the other side."
"The moral of the story is: let's all be lizards!" he concluded with a bow.
