Rotterdam 2009: Trainee Project

Camila Moraes
"Turistas": Lonely, No Matter Where / To Be Or Not To Be. Indie

"Tourists": Lonely, No Matter Where

The title may not reveal that much, but Tourists (Turistas) by Alicia Scherson, is certainly more than a portrait of people with their cameras spending time in some curious spot. One of the 14 titles that competed for the VPRO Tiger Awards during the 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam, the movie — the second feature by the Chilean filmmaker — transmits a familiar sensation we remember from time to time (with no need to be on vacation): in life, we are all tourists.

The proposal is to follow Carla, who has to change her vacation plans after discussing on the road with her husband and, instead of going back to Santiago, ends up spending some days in an ecological park in central Chile in the company of a foreign traveler. Through the urban point of view of this 30-something woman landed unexpectedly in a forest, we get acquainted with the particularities and difficulties of a green environment, which little by little turn to be matters of the same human existence, leaving no place for the viewer to feel like choosing between city and nature. Between both there are no limits, even though there is always distance.

To paint this picture in tones of gray and green, Scherson makes good use of sound in a very round script that is followed precisely, like she has already revealed before about her work style. If the city has cars and deafening horns, the forest has pretty loud waterfalls that prevent anyone from having a conversation in a normal volume. On the other side, the camera registers on a detail level the elements of this beautiful environment that works as a scenery for the development of themes usually related to urban life, like discussions about relationships, parties with drinks and electronic music, acceptance crises and loneliness.

It's important to stress that what we face here is a controlled kind of nature, with its tracks, signs and reserved areas, sharing with distance, like good tourists, the life of characters that have been created rather to represent than to portrait self-searching — like the two cousins that look the same with their haircuts and black outfits, always discussing cheap philosophy.

Tourists is certainly a step ahead for Alicia Scherson, who debuted in 2005 with the well accepted Play and today reveals to be much more confident. Such confidence might leave by a feeling of a too controlled movie, maybe classical and not really risky. But that doesn't leave aside the construction of a personal point of view that is pretty successful trying to generate empathy and forgetting the old clichés of the dispute between city and nature. Here is a vision Scherson carries through from beginning to end with complete control.

To Be Or Not To Be. Indie

Making cinema in Latin America is a guerrilla matter. When I was asked to write a comment on the indie movie production in my country, Brazil, I started thinking about a wider scenery — the Latin American, for instance — and so I realized: what's done from Mexico the most distant corner of Argentina is practically a 100% independent cinema. Brazil obviously included.

This means that, for Latin America in general, there are no financial guarantees during the whole production process for almost anyone. From this conclusion, we can take another: Latin American cinema is pure independent cinema! But that's not true. If we agree indies are, at the same time, those movies that (1) don't receive financing from big studios, (2) are financially self-sustainable and (3) don't have their eyes first thing on profit, but on culture, no movie — at least in Brazil, can get an authentic indie stamp (for one or other reason). Strange paradox.

Let's talk about Brazilian cinema to clear things. With the exceptions of Globo Filmes, the cinematographic arm of the biggest Brazilian TV Channel, and of the recent association between O2 Filmes, from Fernando Meirelles (City of Men/Cidade de Deus) and Focus Features, Universal Picture's independent division, the national cinema lives basically on incentive laws. Supported-by-the-State kind of cinema, basically. Is that being independent?

For now, let's say yes. What matter in this quick analysis is that from around 200 movies filmed in Brazil each year, more than a half stays in the drawer for lacking financing somewhere. In 2008, the numbers say only 82 productions were effectively launched. From those, one or two titles are the ones responsible for reasonable box-offices — generally, not the independents (in time, official numbers reveal that indie launchings went down on 8 % last year, while the majors kept the size of their offer). This is where I go back: making cinema in Latin America is a guerrilla matter.

Camila Moraes, Brazilian, 28 years old, has a degree in Social Communication from the University of Sao Paulo (USP), in Brazil. Nowadays, she attends a master course on screenwriting in the Universidad Nacional, in Bogota. After working as a general culture journalist for some years, Camila started dedicating herself to the cinema, with special attention to the Latin-American scenery. Besides launching a personal website focused on the theme (www.lalatina.com.br), Camila took film courses both in Cuba and Argentina and finally left her natal Sao Paulo to live in Colombia and try a different reality than her own in South America.

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