Los Rubios

Infobox Film
name = Los rubios


image_size =
caption = Theatrical Poster
director = Albertina Carri
producer = Marcelo Cespedes Barry Ellsworth
writer = Albertina Carri Alan Pauls
narrator =
starring = Analía Couceyro Albertina Carri
music = Gonzalo Córdoba Charly García Ryuichi Sakamoto
cinematography = Catalina Fernández
editing = Alejandra Almirón Catalina Fernández Carmen Torres
distributor = Primer Plano Film Women Make Movies
released = April 23, 2003 (Buenos Aires)
runtime = 89 minutes
country = Argentina United States
language = Spanish
budget =
gross =
website = http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c629.shtml
amg_id = 1:287231
imdb_id = 0319307

"Los rubios" (English: "The Blonds") (2003) is an Argentine and American documentary/drama film, directed by Albertina Carri, and written by Carri and Alan Pauls. [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319307/ "Los rubios"] at the Internet Movie Database.]

The award winning film documents the search of director Albertina Carri as she investigates what happened to her family during Argentina's "Dirty War."

The themes: Why did they disappear? Why were they murdered? Film critics have called the work an autobiographical semi-documentary work.

The drama/documentary was filmed in black-and-white and in color.

ynopsis

The film deals with a child, whose parents were among the tens of thousands of Argentines who were murdered during the military junta's Dirty War, who years later has to contend with the pain barely remembered.

In this case the child is director Albertina Carri.

She returns with her film crew to the house she lived in the 1970s and interviews the neighbors about her parents and what happened.

The movie's title comes from an elderly woman's insistent (and, as it turns out, wrong) recollection that Carri's family members all had blond hair.

Carri tries to determine the following in the doc: Who were the Carri's? How did they disappear? Were they blond or brunette? Were they heroes or merely a fiction of those who remember them?

In addition to appearing on camera herself, Ms. Carri is played by the actress (Analía Couceyro).

Background

Basis of film

The film is based on the real political events that took place in Argentina after Jorge Rafael Videla's reactionary military "junta" assumed power in March 24, 1976. During the "junta's" rule: the parliament was suspended, unions, political parties and provincial governments were banned, and in what became known as the Dirty War between 9,000 and 30,000 people deemed left-wing "subversives" disappeared from society. [ [http://www.yendor.com/vanished/ The Vanished Gallery] web site documenting Argentina's Dirty War, 2007.]

tyle

The documentary/drama has, what some critics have called, an odd style. For example, director Carri appears on film as herself in some scenes, but also uses an actor to portray her in other scenes. A.O. Scott writes that the film "is not so much a documentary as a fictional film about the making of a documentary, or perhaps a documentary about the making of a fictional film about the making of a documentary." [ [http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=Blonds%2C+The+(Movie)&title2=Blonds%2C+The+(Movie)&reviewer=A.+O.+Scott&v_id=287231&pdate= Scott, A.O] . "The New York Times," film review, "Personally Political: Fallout From the 'Dirty War'," April 7, 2004.]

Cast

* Analía Couceyro as Albertina Carri
* Albertina Carri as Herself
* Santiago Giralt as Himself
* Jesica Suarez as Herself
* Marcelo Zanelli as Himself

Critical reception

Critic A.O. Scott, writing for "The New York Times", believes the odd style of the documentary made its impact less forceful. He wrote, "The film's open-ended, recursive structure is central to Ms. Carri's intellectual agenda, which is to emphasize the deceptive, indeterminate nature of the truth...Too much of the film is in a mood of chin-scratching detachment, and this creates a vacuum in which its powerful, confrontational moments lose their force, the trauma of the past pushed nearly out of reach." [Scott, A.O. Ibid.]

Critic Kevin Jack Hagopian thought the film's message is important, and wrote, "Los rubios" is absurd, tragic, and sometimes, hilarious. It seeks not to eulogize the disappeared in solemn, self-important terms, but to make them as alive and real in the cultural sphere as they are in the political arena, a Borgesian lesson in the ultimate fiction: that of ultimate certainty." [ [http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/fnf06n3.html Hagopian, Kevin Jack] . "New York State Writers Institute," State University of New York.]

Awards

Wins
* Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema: Audience Award, Albertina Carri; New Cinema Award, Albertina Carri; Special Mention, Albertina Carri; 2003.
* Clarin Entertainment Awards: Clarin Award; Best Documentary, Albertina Carri; 2003.

Nominations
* Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema: Best Film, Albertina Carri; 2003.
* Gijón International Film Festival: "Grand Prix Asturias"; Best Feature, Albertina Carri; 2003.

References

External links

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* [http://www.cinenacional.com/peliculas/index.php?pelicula=3053 "Los rubios"] at the cinenacional.com sp icon.