Cinematheque presents the premiere of acclaimed new Argentine film about European colonialism

A scene from Zama, the latest film from Argentine provocateur Lucrecia Martel. The acclaimed 2017 movie screens at The Cinematheque as part of a career retrospective.

The Cinematheque is presenting the Vancouver premiere of the first film in nearly a decade from the Argentine auteur behind the acclaimed 2008 thriller The Headless Woman.

Zama is the acclaimed latest film from Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel. To coincide with its Vancouver premiere of the 2017 movie, The Cinematheque presents I Feel You: The Films of Lucrecia Martel. The mid-career retrospective features four films from what cinematheque.ca calls “the Argentine auteur’s fiercely-original, highly-sensorial body of work.”

Screenings run June 1-10 at the downtown rep theatre, with opening night featuring a screening of Zama. UBC Film Studies lecturer Dr. Christine Evans will introduce the film. Find out more about the films below.

I Feel You is the title of a new retrospective of films by Lucrecia Martel. The New York Times’ Nicolas Rapold has called her “A major auteur and eloquent leading light of the New Argentine Cinema.”

Martel came to international prominence in 2001, with her first feature La Ciénaga (The Swamp). The film, which won the prestigious Alfred Bauer Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, “introduced the social themes, feminist framework, and much-lauded aesthetic sensibilities that would only intensify over her next two features,” according to thecinematheque.ca.

Other Martel films include the coming-of-age drama The Holy Girl (La niña santa) (2004) and the thriller The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza) (2008). Many consider the latter to be one of the best films of the 21st century.

A scene from Martel’s La Ciénaga (The Swamp).

As part of its retrospective, The Cinematheque is screening all three films, as well as Zama. Martel’s long-awaited new film (her first since The Headless Woman), Zama is an adaptation of a 1956 novel by Argentine journalist/writer Antonio di Benedetto. The Los Angeles Times calls it “a brilliantly discomfiting portrait of European colonialism and its discontents…”

According to indiewire.com, Zama is “the 50-year-old Martel’s most audacious vision to date — and her grandest scale. Produced for $3.5 million, more than twice the amount of “The Headless Woman,” this mostly outdoor period piece required an extensive international co-financing process that yielded close to 30 producers credited on the production…” Producers include director Pedro Almódovar, Gael García Bernal, and Danny Glover.

I Feel You: The Films of Lucrecia Martel

When: June 1-10 (opening night Friday June 1 includes reception, refreshments and an introduction by Dr. Christine Evans)
Where: The Cinematheque (1131 Howe St.)
Tickets and screening info: thecinematheque.ca

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