los posibles -- Dance film review
Featured at the
Northwest Film Forum's "Pulsos Latinos" film festival, "los posibles" is a production of
Grupo KM29, a genre-bending Argentinian arts organization, and "
La Union de los Rios," a film production brainchild of Agustina Llambi Campbell, Alejandro Fadel, Martín Mauregui and Santiago Mitre. Some readers may remember last year's fascinating and much-accoladed "El Estudiante" at the Film Forum, also directed by this team.
"los posibles" is an unforgettable synthesis of dance and movement, original live music, stunningly effective photography and camera work, and a riveting ensemble of male dancers. In its utter originality, devotion to male energy and physicality, and eroticism, it bears some comparison to Fassbinder's controversial but arguably masterful "Querelle" -- not in terms of content or even style, but in both films' success in creating an otherworldy, almost hypnotic world where speech and storyline are transcended by a language of movement and relationship.
"los posibles" moves through a succession of "beats" or movements, starting with a somber, shadowy space almost devoid of scale and shape, where male figures prowl, emerge, disappear, return, engage, disengage, touch, look, submit and transfigure in what suggests the silent, erotic dance of a cruise park or under-the-highway trysting point where language and identity are non-existent: movement or the absence thereof are the prime medium. The actual "KM29" on National Route 3 outside of Buenos Aires is such a place, apparently: a kind of no-man's-land beyond the rules and conventions of the Federal Capitol, where boundaries blur and a kind of dangerous, erotic, subversive anarchy holds.
From here, as the twilight gradually brightens, the men leap to an open floor where a complex web of action and interaction unfolds. The camera follows particular dancers and clusters, illuminating fragments of stories within a surrounding vortex of outsiders, observers, invaders, and newly-germinating stories.
Fernando Lockett and Pablo Parra insert their cameras like knowing and well-practiced eyes amidst the deceptively improvised-looking choreography and the stark industrial sets. The original score played live by Ramiro Cairo, is penetrating, primal, and supportive of the dancers; it permeates the space of the film without crowding the performers who share it -- a perfect synchronicity of genres.
At a mid-point of the film, the camera tantalizes with an ambiguous glimpse as from the wings of a major opera or concert hall: rising ranks of red-velvet seats, pillars, gilt arcades, and one of the few glimpses of vivid color in the otherwise pale palette of greys and browns.
"Ah," this viewer thought, "now we will see the performance in a live theater."
But no: this film, and the KM29 project as a whole, does not appear to take an interest in the concert venues of the Federal Capitol. Viewers instead are drawn into the dark, ambiguous spaces between and behind the facades of mainstream culture, where danger and eros and experimentation cohabitate in joyful irreverence.
In the final trope of the film an outlier, a solo dancer who has circled and watched and remained apart from the evolution of the dance, finally finds his groove and earns his place among the clan of men. Here, as elsewhere, the film reveals an aspect of its work: the use of arts and community to lift up and unite outliers of society: the poor, the despised, the ignored, and to show the amazing, revolutionizing power of eros and expressive freedom to transform and uplift humankind.
The film is one of a kind, and will hopefully return to NW Film Forum or SIFF and garner a larger audience than the woefully small crowd at NWFF on April 26, 2014. Those present witnessed a rare work of revolutionary collaboration among genres of film, music, movement and performance, alongside a social element (see
KM29DANZA on the website) that seeks to empower and motivate street youth through opportunities and training in performance arts.
See the film trailer here.
Ficha técnica y artística
Argentina - 2013 – 50 minutos – Color – HD
Dirección: Santiago Mitre – Juan Onofri Barbato
Producción: La Unión de los Ríos – Km29 – Alta Definición Argentina
Con el apoyo de: Instituto Cultural de la Provincia de Buenos Aires – Teatro Argentino de La Plata – Universidad del Cine.
Coreografía: Km29
Fotografía y Cámara: Fernando Lockett
Fotografía y Cámara adicional: Pablo Parra
Producción Ejecutiva: Agustina Llambí Campbell
Sonido: Santiago Fumagalli
Escenografía e iluminación: Matías Sendón
Montaje: Delfina Castagnino – Susana Leunda
Música: Ramiro Cairo
Asistente de Dirección: Juan Schnitman – Marina Sarmiento
Jefatura de Producción: Martin Feldman
Coordinadora de Producción: Giselle Lozano
Vestuario: Km29 - Carolina Sosa Loyola
Interpretada por: Lucas Araujo – Jonathan Da Rosa – Jonathan Carrasco – Daniel Leguizamón – Alejandro Alvarenga – Alfonso Baron – Pablo Kun Castro