First Generation Filmmaker: the Films of Nicolás Pereda

It’s great news to hear that Nicolás Pereda is finally getting a full retrospective here in Toronto. It will be from Thursday November 22^nd to the 25^th at the TIFF Cinematheque.

The label First Generation filmmaker, which was initially coined as part of a film program organized by Kaz and Dan (MDFF) at the Lichter Filmtage in Frankfurt, seems to be growing and becoming more relevant. The five films in the initial program were Chris Chong Chan Fui’s Pool and Block B, Igor Drljaca’s Woman in Purple and On a Lonely Drive, and Nicolás Pereda’s Interview with the Earth. According to Kaz these films, “have been created by directors that spent time in Toronto, but did not necessarily film there. These temporary-residents play a role in Canadian cinema: their films maintain a connection to Toronto, while defining their own territories and landscapes.” Since the initial program in March 2011 these directors have gone on to do new projects, and more directors emerged that fit this criteria. The director Igor Drljaca has gone on to make a feature film Krivina, a small masterpiece in and of itself (more about it later), and he recently received the Hubert Bals Fund for script and project development for a new film Tabija. And I would include two other filmmakers to the list: Simone Rapisarda Casanova (The Strawberry Tree) and Luo Li (Rivers and my father).

In a recent Cinema Scope article Unexpected Textures: A Conversation Between Nicolás Pereda and Kazik Radwanski (moderated by Christopher Heron), Perada writes about his newest film,

“In Greatest Hits, the first 40 minutes follow a very concrete aesthetic and then suddenly something totally new happens that changes the whole idea of what the film is about. We’re shooting with a different camera, but the acting style also changes radically. Those are formal games that now I’m more interested in – not setting up concrete rules, but making radical games that are obvious to the viewer.”

The retrospective, Where Are the Films of Nicolás Pereda?, includes the Toronto premiere of Pereda’s newest film Greatest Hits, which had its world premiere this summer at the Locarno Film Festival, and includes all of his other films: Where Are Their Stories?, Juntos, Perpetuum Mobile, All Things Were Now Overtaken by Silence, Summer of Goliath, and Interview with the Earth.