Q&A with Eduardo Williams

Argentine filmmaker Eduardo “Teddy” Williams (The Human Surge, NYFF54) has been named one of the recipients of the 2019 Lincoln Center Awards for Emerging Artists, which recognizes diverse and exceptional talents across the arts each year. For this edition of Neighboring Scenes, we are pleased to present a selection of Williams’s short films and celebrate the young auteur as he continues to realize his bold, singular vision—featuring the North American premiere of his latest film, Parsi (in collaboration with Mariano Blatt), followed by a post-screening Q&A with Williams.

Could See a Puma / Pude ver un puma
Argentina, 2011, 18m, 35mm
Spanish with English subtitles
An rooftop accident sends a group of friends wandering across a desolate landscapes until they plunge into the earth’s depths.

That I’m Falling? / Que je tombe tout le temps?
France, 2013, 15m
French, English, and Spanish with English subtitles
In Sierra Leone, a young man looking for a seed emerges from the underground, hangs out with his friends and begins a long, digestive trip.

I Forgot! / Tôi quên rồi
France/Vietnam, 2014, 29m
Vietnamese with English subtitles
A group of Vietnamese teenagers stave off boredom by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, window to window, one building to the next. Flaunting Williams’s free, immersive way with street scenes and his protagonists’ death-defying feats, I Forgot! offers a vision as spellbinding as it is terrifying, juxtaposing all-too-familiar everydayness with the sublime beauty of the reckless act.

Parsi
Eduardo Williams with Mariano Blatt, Guinea-Bissau/Argentina/Switzerland, 2018, 23m
Creole and Spanish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Commissioned for the 2018 Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Williams’s latest is an immersive work exploring the rhythmic, discursive language of Mariano Blatt’s poem “No es” against the perpetually moving people of Guinea-Bissau.