THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER WILL SHOWCASE THE FILMS OF ARGENTINIAN DIRECTOR MATÍAS PIÑEIRO

THEY ALL LIE AND THE STOLEN MAN TO SCREEN AT LATINBEAT AND VIOLA AND ROSALINDA WILL OPEN THEATRICALLY SIMULTANEOUSLY

New York, NY (May 20, 2013) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center will showcase the work of Argentinian filmmaker Matías Piñeiro during the upcoming Latinbeat film festival (July 12 – 21) and will simultaneously open two of his films, Viola and Rosalinda, theatrically on July 12th. Latinbeat will play host to the NY premiere of Piñeiro’s 2007 film The Stolen Man/El hombre robado and 2009 film They All Lie/Todos mienten. Viola returns to the Film Society after debuting at this year’s New Directors/New Films and will be released in the US through Cinema Guild. All screenings of Viola at the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be followed by his short film Rosalinda.

“Only 31, Matías Piñeiro has already established himself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary world cinema,” said Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming, Cinematheque. “His playful, mysterious films, about the power of desire and of language draw freely on theater and literature while remaining fully cinematic, at times calling to mind the youthful works of the French New Wave masters Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer. We are delighted to be tracing the evolution of Piñeiro’s career to date by supplementing the theatrical release of Viola with a complete retrospective of his work.”

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1982, Matías Piñeiro studied at the Universidad del Cine, where he went on to teach filmmaking and film history. In 2011 he received the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard University for his new film project, Sarmiento, Translator. He currently lives in New York on a New York University scholarship in creative writing. His films include El hombre robado (2007), Todos mienten (2009), Rosalinda (2010), and Viola (2012). He is currently developing the third installment of his Shakespearean project, The Princess of France.

Matías Piñeiro is available for press interviews, please contact the Film Society press office, [email protected], or Carlos Gutiérrez, [email protected] to arrange coverage.

Latinbeat will take place from July 12 – 21 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the complete lineup will be announced soon. Tickets for the theatrical run of Viola and Rosalinda, as well as Latinbeat will go on sale to Members on June 18th and to the General Public on June 20th.

Films & Descriptions

Rosalinda, 2010, 43m
A group of actors travel to an island in Tigre to rehearse William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”. Luisa, who plays Rosalind in the play, terminates a current romantic relationship over her cell phone.  During preparations she alternates between rehearsing and daydreaming, and starts to slowly embody Rosalind, transforming into the object of desire of other cast members on the island. During those sun-soaked hours, love strikes between the players and the roles between actress and character confuse themselves in a rare mixing of joyful artifice and anguishing uncertainty. But once rehearsals are over and everyone returns to reality, the romantic bliss between the cast members and their own partners awakens in her a, foolish and irrepressible, desire to long and hope for a phone call. A Cinema Guild release.

The Stolen Man / El hombre robado, 2007, 91m
Pineiro’s sparkling debut film breathlessly follows a clever, capricious young woman as she carefully interweaves friends and lovers into an intricate web of secretive yet often unexpectedly compassionate games.  Together with her best friend and fellow tour guide at a rival Buenos Aires historical museum, Pineiro’s headstrong heroine attempts to tame the unpredictable course of her heart, eccentrically drawing inspiration from Sarmiento’s magnum opus, Facundo.  With its grainy 16mm black-and-white cinematography, its political sub- and super- texts and its compelling portrait of impetuous youth, The Stolen Man recalls the alternately sober and sprightly nouvelle vague of Jean Eustache and Jacques Rivette.  (Harvard Film Archive)

They All Lie / Todos mienten, 2009, 75m
A more abstract counterpart of The Stolen Man, Pineiro’s second feature unleashes eight strong-willed characters into a clandestine plot involving art forgery, an unfinished novel and Sarmiento’s US journals, resulting in a giddy kaleidoscope of differed meaning that playfully channels the high postmodernism of William Gaddis.  Pineiro explores a cool stylistic restraint in They All Lie, deploying precision mise-en-scene to transform the rambling country house that is the film’s sole location into a series of inter-nested boxes and closets in which strange skeletons inevitably wait.  With their zealous embrace of Sarmiento’s introspective writings, Pineiro’s youthful and self-absorbed characters once again become the delightfully improbable vehicles for thoughtful reflections on the history of modern Argentina.  (Harvard Film Archive)

Viola, 2012, 63m
Matías Piñeiro is one of contemporary Argentine cinema’s most sensuous and sophisticated new voices. In his latest film, VIOLA, he ingeniously fashions out of Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night a seductive roundelay among young actors and lovers in present-day Buenos Aires. Mixing melodrama with sentimental comedy, philosophical conundrum with matters of the heart, VIOLA bears all the signature traits of a Piñeiro film: serpentine camera movements and slippages of language, an elliptical narrative and a playful confusion of reality and artifice. A Cinema Guild release.

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film. Among its yearly programming of film festivals, film series and special events, the Film Society presents two film festivals in particular that annually attract global attention: the New York Film Festival which just celebrated its 50th edition, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine and a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational and transmedia programs and specialty film releases at the famous Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stonehenge Partners, Stella Artois, the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow #filmlinc on Twitter.

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