An ambitious attempt to narrate Borges’s biography through objects and places. A 330-minute film which narrates not only the life of Borges but a century of literature and history...

Situation 1: Mondongo, a duo of Argentinian artists, create a work inspired by The Art of colors, a treatise by Johannes Itten. Situation 2: A filmmaker begins a portrait of them.

On 9 July – Argentina’s Independence Day – Llinás sets off in Buenos Aires with his regular cameraman Agustín Mendilaharzu to re-record ‘Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel’, an album made in 1929 by lyricist Hector Pedro Blomberg and composer Enrique Maciel, as an ode to Juan Manuel de Rosas, leader of the Argentine Confederation.

An enormous effort of narrative complexity made up of six independent, successive stories, connected by the same four actresses living very different experiences in very different universes…

Mariano Llinás’s 868-minute La flor was one of the highlights of IFFR 2019; now, the Argentinian director is back with a film about Italian-Argentine singer Ignacio Corsini. “The greatest singer of tangos and Argentine classics”, says Llinás, who, like in La flor, regularly appears in front of the camera himself. On 9 July – Argentina’s Independence Day – Llinás sets off in Buenos Aires with his regular cameraman Agustín Mendilaharzu to re-record ‘Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel’, an album made in 1929 by lyricist Hector Pedro Blomberg and composer Enrique Maciel, as an ode to Juan Manuel de Rosas, leader of the Argentine Confederation.
Llinás visits the places that feature in the songs and goes in search of the stories behind the album. Resulting in great entertainment, with songs such as ‘La pulpera de Santa Lucia’ including lyrics like ‘she was blonde, her blue eyes reflected the glory of the day, and she sang like a lark’.

Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards
Year Result Award Category/Recipient(s)
2003 Won Silver Condor Best Argentinean Video Film (Mejor Videofilm Argentino)
Mariano Llinás
This movie is a documentary about "balnearios". I don't know the exact translation to english, but they're tourism towns or little cities by the seacoast, or near some water fountain. The movie shows the singularity of these places and how people enjoy them.
The movie don't want to show big places but little ones. It's centered in margins, in little tourism places, almost without people living there. The life in these places is narrated in detail, with an external yet friendly look. It's divided in 4 episodes.
After a melancholic introduction that relates how the 'balnearios' that born in a different time, compulsorily (and not gracefully) had to adapt to the pass of time, the first episodes begins, telling a mystic crime story in an old hotel, leaving me thinking if every little town has its epic tragedy, its own legend. The second episode is the heart of the movie, and its about the contrast between the season and the out-of-season, the unexplainable customs of the tourists, about the people at the 'balnearios' in general. It is narrated very gracefully. The people laughed a lot in the cinema.
The third episode is the shorter and the worst, IMO. Tell the story of Miramar, a town on the seacoast that is half flooded, the streets finishing under the sea. The fourth episode is about 'balnearios' on river coasts, little lagoons, or dikes, and it's centered in Zucco, an amateur painter(His personality remains me to Ed Wood) that paint the 'balneario' where he lives. He has written down and stored every dream he had. He talks with Neptune. The episode tells a 'balneario'-related dream he had once, his thoughts, and show some of his work. This episode is maybe too long, but funny. And it shows the spirit of these different 'balnearios', too.