Terminal Norte

Summary

The sensation of sisterhood of the artists and a relaxed spontaneity run through this short documentary on female music, of course with the ineffable visual and sound treatment of Lucrecia Martel. Terminal Norte is a collective and diverse song of feminist resistance expressed through its songs and its diversity of styles from the heart of the patriarchal Argentine province of Salta.

Review:

The germ of Lucrecia Martel's last half-length film was a frustrated show in the north (perhaps in Salta) by the singer Julieta Laso, who in this musical documentary conducts and articulates a kind of night gathering with other performers and composers, such as the notable pianist Platense Noelia Sinkunas (a regular collaborator of Laso and also of the singer Marina Ríos on the incredible album Oscuridad), the coplera Mariana Carrizo, the trans coplera Lorena Carpanchay, the trapera B Yami, the feminist duo Whiskey (made up of Maka Fuentes and Mar Pérez ) and guitarist Bubu Ríos (among others).

We see and hear them (and they are heard) not only in the peña but also in the jungle, singing verses, milongas and music of other genres. Memories, brief testimonies and conversations of the own and charismatic Laso (who recalls something in her style and physiognomy of the singer Liliana Vitale) and of the other artists are interspersed, such as those of the serene and eloquent Carpanchay and some more disturbing fragments with camera subjective. Martel films each performer in a different way, and true to her style, you have to be attentive to the sound, where the director sometimes makes some inserts superimposed on the songs.

The feeling of sisterhood of the artists and a relaxed spontaneity runs through the entire documentary, in a collective and diverse song of feminist resistance expressed through their songs and their diversity of styles from the heart of the patriarchal Argentine province of Salta.

This might have done better for me if Lucrecia Martel had just stuck to putting together a series of authentic and potent folk performances from an array of people whom we meet, initially, sitting around a camp fire in the middle of lockdown. I didn't really need to hear Julieta Laso's rather chronological and self-indulgent in-car monologue. Back to the thrust of this documentary, though, and the acoustics - especially in the jungle, give the songs a joy and a potency and you get a real sense not just of tradition, but of aspiration from the (admittedly subtitled) lyric for women who yearn for an intangible yet necessary independence of body, opportunity and spirit. Not so much worth a watch, but certainly a listen.