The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents
Sounds Like Music: The Films of Martín Rejtman
MAY 13-19

Includes a week-long run of past NYFF favorite Two Shots Fired opening May 13 with director in attendance at select screenings

New York, NY (April 9, 2015) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today Sounds Like Music: The Films of Martín Rejtman (May 13-19). Hailed as one of the founding fathers of New Argentine Cinema, the series puts a spotlight on his illustrious 28-year career starting with his 1992 debut feature Rapado. The offbeat minimalist, youthful comedy, which he wrote and directed, single-handedly revitalized Argentine narrative film in the 1990s and established a break from the politically oriented films that was shaping much of Argentine cinema that resulted from the nation’s many years of dictatorship. Born in Buenos Aires, he spent time as a student of New York University’s film program, where he started out directing short films. The five contemporary movies he’s made since are models of stylistic precision, narrative structure, and comic pacing, and his works have been compared to notable directors like Akerman, Jarmusch, Bresson and Tati.

From his early studies of young people drifting in and out of financial solvency (Silvia Prieto, The Magic Gloves) to his recent excursions into nonfiction (Copacabana) and hybrid filmmaking (Elementary Training for Actors, co-directed with the playwright Federico Léon), Rejtman has developed a canny, wholly original serio-comic voice. Romantic confusion, investment troubles, unemployment, youthful aimlessness, the numbing rush of city life, and the revivifying power of music and dance: in Rejtman’s movies, the business of modern urban living—and specifically, of living in Argentina during the country’s millennial economic crisis—comes off as both familiar and thrillingly strange.

“Rejtman sustains a unique energy across all of his work, which combines droll dialogue with screwball-inspired situations and chance.” – Film Comment

In addition, the Film Society is proud to bring back his newest work Two Shots Fired, which had its US premiere at the 52nd New York Film Festival and will be receiving a one-week run as part of this retrospective. The dark comedy marked his triumphant return to directing after a decade long hiatus and kicks off with a teen’s attempt at suicide with a shot to the stomach and head. This is a comeback film that is wry, moving, surprising about the irrationality of emotions and how they govern our actions at each stage of our lives.

“I’m interested in the film functioning like a “narration machine,” where situations flow from one another with a perhaps unconventional cause-effect; but where humor works anchors spectators” — Martín Rejtman to Variety

Programmed by Dennis Lim with Isa Cucinotta. The Film Society would like to thank Cinema Tropical, The Consulate General of Argentina in New York, and The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Inc. for their support. Tickets will go on sale Thursday, April 23. Single screening tickets are $14; $11 for students and seniors (62+); and $9 for Film Society members. See more and save with the 3+ film discount package. Visit filmlinc.com for more information.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

Elementary Training for Actors
Martín Rejtman & Federico Léon, Argentina, 2009, digital projection, 62m
Spanish with English subtitles
“A child can only play a child,” insists the charismatic acting teacher at the center of Rejtman’s uproarious, whip-smart fiction-nonfiction hybrid film. Elementary Training for Actors, co-directed with the playwright Federico León, is a study of an experimental acting workshop for children aged 8 to 12. One girl performs the act of waiting for a kettle to boil; another has to take time out for acting, as her severe instructor would have it, too much; a pair of students reenact a class discussion word for word. The heart of the movie is Fabián Arenillas, who—as the workshop’s teacher—gives the movie a manic, irrepressible energy new to Rejtman’s body of work.

Screening with:

Copacabana
Martín Rejtman, Argentina, 2006, HDCAM, 58m
Spanish with English subtitles
After completing his loose trilogy of movies set among Buenos Aires’ young, aimless working middle class, Rejtman turned to nonfiction. For Copacabana, he set his sights on a more marginalized Buenos Aires social group: the city’s large community of Bolivian immigrants. Rejtman contrasts the weekday drudgery of these underacknowledged members of Argentina’s urban population with the exuberant, intricately synchronized group dances they practice and perform for the feast day of the Virgin of Copacabana. The result is a moving, attentive study of a culture at once near to and far from the one on display in Rejtman’s previous films.
Sunday, May 17, 6:00pm

The Magic Gloves
Martín Rejtman, Argentina, 2003, 35mm, 90m
Spanish with English subtitles
Rejtman’s comic masterpiece follows the crisscrossed fortunes of, among others, a cab driver, a rock musician, a flight attendant, and a dog walker with an alarming penchant for over-the-counter medication. The Magic Gloves came out in the wake of Argentina’s devastating financial crisis, and it’s a movie fixated on rotten investments, thin wages, and bad deals. It’s also, despite all that, one of Rejtman’s funniest films, peppered with colorful secondary characters, suffused with a terse, prickly sympathy for its heroes, and alive to the mystery and charm of the modern urban world.

Screening with:

Doli Goes Home
Martín Rejtman, Argentina, 1986, digital projection, 30m
Spanish with English subtitles
Rejtman took a break from his time at NYU to make this half-hour short in Buenos Aires two years after the country’s return to democracy. A nocturnal urban walkabout reminiscent of the films of Chantal Akerman and Jim Jarmusch, Doli Goes Home marked the beginning of Rejtman’s many cinematic reckonings with the pace, atmosphere, and human diversity of Buenos Aires—a city that works, in his first four features, as a character in itself.
Saturday, May 16, 8:45pm
Sunday, May 17, 1:15pm

Rapado
Martín Rejtman, Argentina, 1992, 35mm, 75m
Spanish with English subtitles
The scenario for Rejtman’s thrilling, deadpan first feature came from a story included in one of the director’s own short fiction collections, written during his two-year stint studying film at NYU. After the theft of his motorcycle, Lucio (Ezequiel Cavia) bums aimlessly around Buenos Aires drifting from one video-game arcade and record store to the next, indulging in short chats with friends and, more often, setting out onto the streets alone. A perfect introduction to Rejtman’s droll, shaggy-dog comic sensibility, Rapado is also one of the great modern cinematic studies of youthful aimlessness, and a priceless time capsule of urban Argentina in the years leading up to the country’s 1998 economic crisis.
Wednesday, May 13, 9:15pm
Saturday, May 16, 4:45pm

Silvia Prieto
Martín Rejtman, Argentina, 1999, 35mm, 92m
Spanish with English subtitles
Silvia Prieto sells soap to passersby in busy city squares, pores over phone books to find women who share her name, and won’t concede to settle down with either of the boyish men in her orbit. Rejtman’s radiant second feature, which follows Silvia (played by the singer Rosario Bléfari) for a short stretch of her life in Buenos Aires, is a comedy of details—the statue that supposedly resembles Silvia and passes from owner to owner; the blazer Silvia permanently borrows from a wealthy male admirer; the chicken she buys every night—and occasional, quiet epiphanies. Silvia Prieto is one of the jewels of recent Argentine cinema, and perhaps Rejtman’s most perfectly realized film to date.
Friday, May 15, 9:15pm
Tuesday, May 19, 7:00pm

Opens May 13 – One-Week Exclusive:
Two Shots Fired / Dos Disparos
Martín Rejtman, Argentina, 2014, DCP, 105m
Spanish with English subtitles
Rejtman’s first feature in a decade is an engrossing, digressive comedy with the weight of an existentialist novel. Sixteen-year-old Mariano (Rafael Federman), inexplicably and without warning, shoots himself twice—once in the stomach and once in the head—and improbably survives. As his family strains to protect Mariano from himself, his elder brother (Benjamín Coehlo) pursues a romance with a disaffected girl (Laura Paredes) who works the counter at a fast-food restaurant, his mother (Susana Pampin) impulsively takes off on a trip with a stranger, and Mariano recruits a young woman (Manuela Martelli) to join his medieval wind ensemble. Rejtman tells this story with both compassion and formal daring, pursuing one thread only to abandon it for another. Two Shots Fired is a wry, moving, consistently surprising film about the irrationality of emotions and how they govern our actions at each stage of our lives. An NYFF52 selection.
(Q&A with Martín Rejtman at the 6:30pm screenings on May 13 & 15)

Public Screening Schedule

Wednesday, May 13
4:15PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
6:30PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m) with Q&A with Reijtman
9:15PM RAPADO (75m)

Thursday, May 14
4:00PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
9:00PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)

Friday, May 15
4:15PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
6:30PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m) with Q&A with Reijtman
9:15PM SILVIA PRIETO (92m)

Saturday, May 16
2:30PM            TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
4:45PM RAPADO (75min)
6:30PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
8:45PM THE MAGIC GLOVES (90m) + DOLLY GOES HOME (30m)

Sunday, May 17
1:15PM THE MAGIC GLOVES (90m) + DOLLY GOES HOME (30m)
3:45PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
6:00PM ELEMENTARY TRAINING FOR ACTORS (62m) + COPACABANA (58m)
8:30PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)

Monday, May 18
4:45PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
9:15PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)

Tuesday, May 19
4:45PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)
7:00PM SILVIA PRIETO (92m)
9:00PM TWO SHOTS FIRED (105m)

ABOUT FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year’s most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, the Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award, whose 2015 recipient is Robert Redford. The Film Society’s state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community.

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For Media specific inquiries, please contact:
Film Society of Lincoln Center:
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