INCLUDES Q&A WITH FILMMAKERS!

CLEMENTINA
dir. Agustín Mendilaharzu & Costanza Feldman, 2023
109 min. Argentina.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, MAY 16 – 7:30 PM

“In 2020, in an apartment in Buenos Aires, a dancer-actress and a cameraman-playwright look for a way to occupy their days of confinement. They have a camera and they start filming. At first they are documentary images. Then her face and her body appear and Fiction, timidly, begins to appear. They work with what reality provides and then transmute it. They believe they are making a short film, then another, and then plenty others. The game grows and completely takes over their lives. With infinite innocence first, with infinite responsibility later, they begin to understand that they are making a film. This film.”
— Director’s statement

“The sudden cleaning of an extremely cluttered domestic space; the habits of an idiosyncratic couple living between home-made meals and online classes; the slow devastation of an apartment as every basic service seems to crack up; the exterior world asking for favours or coming to the rescue. These are some of the elements that constitute Clementina, scripted, performed and directed – in a superb tour de force – by Constanza Feldman and Agustín Mendilaharzu.

This offbeat comedy builds a narrative of stagnation and isolation, punctuated by sudden detours and surprising turning points. The intervention of secondary characters brings infectious warmth, fun and disequilibrium. The film resonates with echoes of Chantal Akerman, Raúl Ruiz, the Zürcher brothers and Mariano Llinás: the absurdism of quotidian situations; the performances that mix slapstick, dance and pantomime; the emotional undercurrents that slowly come to the surface; the repetitive patterns broken by imaginative flights; and its impeccable, gracious timing.

Shot with refreshing formal inventiveness, paying special attention to the humorous qualities of sound, Clementina is a delightful cinematic experience about the lives of two eccentrics – not to mention their improbable collection of handmade objects, toys, books, souvenirs, records and leaves – during pandemic times.”
— Cristina Álvarez López