Dolly Pussi

Documentary film about Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Birri. An interview: a journey through documentary filmmaking, his childhood, the dawning of New Latin American cinema...

The film tells how in 1970 a group of Argentine filmmakers - including Alberto Fischerman, Rafael Filippelli, Julio Ludueña, Miguel Bejo, Jorge Cedrón, Dody Scheuer and Luis Zanger - decided to make a short film each in one night. The occasion is perfect to describe the atmosphere of the '70s, the fever in which militants and publicists lived, the clash between art and politics. Includes fragments of the films The Players vs. Ángeles Caídos (Fischerman, 1969), Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959), Made in U.S.A. (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966), L'eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962), The Hour of the Furnaces (Pino Solanas & Octavio Getino, 1968), Tire dié (Fernando Birri, 1960), Alianza para el progreso (Ludueña, 1971), La civilización está haciendo masa y no deja oír (Ludueña, 1974) and La pieza de Franz (Fischerman, 1974).

Few people in Argentine and Latin American cinema have been as close as Fernando Birri to stand as a patriarch, pioneer, and spokesman for a committed cinema that tears itself apart in its solidarity with its own surroundings. This ode to the tireless Birri presents him to us in full: teaching, establishing standards, and creating with the tools of his time, turning culture into a form of political affirmation as he grows more and more vital and rooted.