“It is a privilege to be able to meet the public again”

From July 7 to 9, ArtHaus, one of the new epicenters of Buenos Aires culture, is home to the cycle, made in collaboration with Mubi, Humor y melancolía: El cine de Martín Retjman. There are three days, with free tickets, and where Rapado, the beloved Silvia Prieto and Los guantes mágicos will be seen (in addition to a concert where the daughter of Rosario Bléfari, the deceased protagonist of Silvia Prieto, Nina Suárez Bléfari and the son of Vicentico will play , actor in Silvia Prieto and protagonist of The Magic Gloves, Florián Fernández Capello). It’s three days, with the first three films by a director who has managed to become a cult classic, but also a mothership of a style of comedy that defines various corners of today’s culture. The shapes of Martín Retjman, who has been in our film culture for more than 20 years, are one of those crucial prisms that few know of their importance, but it appears, without a doubt, in various corners. Retjman has observed the nonsense, universal and Argentine, our excuses, our fears, our gaps, how we are when we collide, and has achieved the most powerful comedies of Argentine independent cinema (to say the best is to underestimate them: they are its DNA, its essence , his sun). When reflecting on this return that will go to the Mubi platform, Retjman himself maintains: “These are films that are very difficult to find and locate afterwards and I think it is good to see them. Well, it makes me happy that this happens and also that from time to time they are shown again. For example, it took place on Tuesday at the Universidad del Cine with a group of students and it was packed with people sitting on the floor in the corridors. Then there was a talk. There was an audience that had never seen the film, others that had already seen it several times. It seems to me that it is like a kind of privilege to be able to meet an audience again and to be able to show the films again and establish a new communication. I couldn’t tell you what surprises me, but it does make me happy about this situation.”

—How has the cult that has been generated around your cinema and your figure lived?

—The first thing that always surprised me, from my first film, is that someone liked it. It baffled me and that’s how it was going to happen to me with Silvia Prieto and with all the films I’ve made: they always baffle me, the first impression is perhaps very bad and I’m not going to find any kind of echo. Or the only one I’m going to find is a negative echo and then I’m always surprised to find people who synchronize, who tune in, with the movies in some way and then, over time, it continues to happen.

—What is your relationship with your films? How do you live them at this moment in your life?

—I had to see Silvia Prieto again when the film was restored, when it went digital. I was at the Berlinale and just at that moment they were finishing the restoration, so I left as a businessman, for a day. They showed me the film so that I could see what they were at work. They projected it to me with sound, so I could check, that too and no…. I didn’t really expect it because I don’t like to go back to my movies. To see the whole thing again and it was weird. I think that for me they are very situated at a moment in my life, which is already behind us and I like that people can reconnect with the movies, but I don’t do that exercise,

—This series of films was essential for a form of comedy in Argentina. How do you experience that part of what has been generated with your work?

-Nose. But I suppose there must be something to that. I do know that many people saw my films, that film students see my films, that they are the ones who later make the films, and I suppose that they must have had some influence. I hope it’s positive, but I don’t know what to tell you. I swear I have no answer. Sometimes I see some movies and it seems to me that there is something, that is, that they have some familiarity with mine. But I don’t think of it so much as an influence, but sometimes people do similar things or have similar tastes and taste, others work in the same frequency as other people and see the same movies. We also live in Argentina and we pay attention to certain things: it’s like aiming our gaze in a particular way towards certain things that happen and happen here, or that happen to us and from that we later draw stories to tell. It seems to me that it is more like the idea of ​​where to aim the gaze, right? You can make of it whatever has been taken from my films.

What is comedy for you?

— I don’t think I do pure comedies. It is not that I dedicate myself to the comedy genre. I like some pure comedies, but above all the older comedies, from the most classic cinema. It is not a genre that I frequent so much, but it happens to me that I do come up with a form of comedy, I think naturally and it is something that I cannot escape or I no longer want to escape either. When I write I need a certain stimulus and I kind of need to enjoy what I write and many times what makes me enjoy what I write and makes me think that what you are seeing is alive, is humor.

—Many times they talk about the nonsense of your characters…

—If someone starts filming, your life or mine or that of any of us and then they say they make an edition of that by choosing certain moments, we are not going to have a very different result from my films, right? The situations that are in my films are situations that some people will suffer in some way or with an absurd similarity and it is a matter of accumulation as well. The accumulation and find a meaning, right?

The new looks

—Martín, what is your bond with your characters considering that many of them have created a very emotional bond with the fans or, for example, the presence of Rosario Bléfari who is no longer with us?

—Many times I build characters based on people I know or using things from people I know. I never used the exact model of a person for a character, but I always took many phrases or situations that I saw, through which those real people went, and later took them to become part of my universe. And actually, I relate more to the characters because of the actors, because I often work with the same actors. For example, with Rosario Bléfari, with Silvia Prieto: what happened to me was that later he couldn’t sign another film with her. There are actors that I have repeated, but sometimes after they do a leading role it is difficult for me to get them out of that place, to put them in other personal roles. We talked about certain things in my films, and now I can see that they have a universe, like the characters move in a world that is very similar to ours, but not exactly the same, a bit shifted. So to see the movies go to other places, it excites me a little bit. It seemed average to me, I don’t know, I liked it: it’s good to see how what you did over the years generates good responses and to see that things last. Above all, being able to see after such a long time that the films will still have the possibility of establishing a communication with generations, with new viewers. That is certainly very good. Yeah, okay, I’m fine with that. The truth is that with this I am barbaric.