...A Valparaíso - Joris Ivens

un film bellissimo e commovente, oltre a Ivens sono dentro Chris Marker e Patricio Guzman, da non perdere assolutamente, è Cinema - Ismaele

un altro bel film ambientato a Valparaiso (qui)

qui c’è il testo, di Chris Marker

Sostenuto da Salvador Allende, che incontrò all’Havana, Ivens arrivò nel 1962 a Santiago del Cile dove iniziò un’attività di insegnamento di teoria cinematografica presso l’Università. Come per le passate esperienze nelle vesti di professore, il miglior approccio che il regista riuscì a instaurare con la materia fu quello pratico. Da queste premesse nasce …A Valparaiso, un documentario girato con gli studenti di Santiago sulle peculiarità di questa città portuale cilena. Costruita in verticale, su cinque colline che salgono dal porto, con la vita che si sussegue su piani e livelli diversi, Valparaiso assume l’aspetto di un inferno dantesco, dove l’altezza denota lo status e la condizione sociale degli abitanti che riempiono le lunghe scale nelle ore di punta…

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…A decade before the Battle of Chile events would begin, Ivens and crew give us an overview of life in this port city built on a series of steep hills. Focus is on things that affect the residents (like the funicular system) and events they participate in (huge annual fireworks show, a kite flying festival), not the popular tourist sites and historic buildings mentioned on wikipedia. Or maybe Ivens just hired a local tour guide and didn’t check wikipedia before going over there. A humorous tone to the commentary (when appropriate), shots of penguins, seals, pelicans and cats (no owls in town), a fire, some jump-cutting in line for the funicular. One very non-Marker-esque bit when a staged (I assume) bar-fight shatters a mirror and leads to a splash of blood, audio dissonance, a kaleidoscopic shot cutting to a burning pirate flag to introduce a history of colonialism in the state… awesome…

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Often regarded as a somewhat peripheral work in the careers of both director Joris Ivens and writer Chris Marker, … à Valparaiso is actually one of the great collaborations in both filmmakers’ vast filmographies. It is also an extremely revealing film about the nature of collaboration, the ways in which authorship is perceived by audiences and critics, and the close relationship and symmetry between the globetrotting Ivens and Marker, compatriots who shared a particular and often poetic vision of travel (one that both heightens and abstracts perception).

Both filmmakers have persistently prioritised the importance and value of collaboration to their work and broader worldview, with Ivens working with a range of prominent writers aside from Marker (Ernest Hemingway, Jacques Prévert, Dudley Nichols, etc.), and Marker with an impressive range of other filmmakers (such as Alain Resnais, Walerian Borowczyk, Patricio Guzman, Yannick Bellon, and William Klein). But whereas Marker values and poeticises the “tyranny of distance” and the (im)possibility of truly capturing things or communicating emotions (he again returns to the difficulty of perceiving “happiness” here, an idea that more fully “motivates” the aleatory journey of Sans soleil/Sunless twenty years later), Ivens delves into the particularity and peculiarity of place, giving each country, city, region, tributary or event his full, captivated attention before moving elsewhere for a subsequent film…

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