The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi

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The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi

Las poetas visitan a Juana Bignozzi
Laura Citarella, Mercedes Halfon
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Argentina
2019
90 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

A poet’s life ends and a film begins to carry on her legacy, prosaically at first. When Juana Bignozzi dies in 2015, the intellectual property rights to her work pass to the young author Mercedes Halfon – as the aged lady had decreed. But Mercedes also inherits a refrigerator and a lot of junk that must be cleared out of the orphaned apartment in Buenos Aires. Together with young filmmakers, she transforms the duty into a poetically fulfilling project.

The result is not only an unusual but actually a non-portrait of a poet – and perhaps not even a result. Rather, it is a continuously growing equation of superimposed faces, texts and images that refuses to simply work out. They look at each other as if in rear-view mirrors: Juana Bignozzi, who speaks to the young from her writings full of humble reverence, and her young female admirers who, reading, filming and browsing through Bignozzi’s legacy, feel almost embarrassed by these declarations of love. What confidence the deceased had in them! What tremendous expectations she had of those whose mother or grandmother she could have been! Their own poetic achievements seem too half-hearted to Mercedes and Laura to ever live up to such advance praise. But even as they doubt, they are already deep into it.
Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Laura Citarella, Mercedes Halfon
Cinematographer
Inés Duacastella, Agustín Mendilaharzu
Editor
Miguel de Zuviría, Alejo Moguillansky
Producer
Ingrid Pokropek
Sound
Valeria Fernández, Marcos Canosa
Winner of: Silver Dove (International Competition)