hkesselm

A fiction documentary about an imaginary discovering (by an imaginary Dr Kurz) during Argentine fifties and sixties: the K-2 drug that allow people to live more years, extracted from the ñandú (the South American ostrich). Carlos Sorin takes the format and voices of the ancient news films screened in the cinemas in those years, adding fictional TV news reports, and tells about an imaginary general hysteria in Buenos Aires with people wanting to get the marvellous drug. Though I was born and live in Buenos Aires, I doubted about the film first time I watched it. It seems very believable. Sorin filmed the movie in 1986. Then, Buenos Aires news talked about Dr Vidal and his discovering, "crotoxina", a marvellous drug that could avoid the cancer extracted from the poison of snakes. Perhaps Vidal and his snakes inspired Dr Kurz and the ñandú story.

This documentary go through the trail of Cándido López, a voluntary soldier from Buenos Aires province who went to fight against Paraguayans in 1860s decade. He was promoted as lieutenant because he was able to read and write, though he was inexpert with arms. But he became famous because he painted the war actions he was witness. His pictures are exposed in Argentine history museums. Cándido López lost his right arm in Curupaity battle, and he had to train the remaining arm for finishing his work in Buenos Aires. He couldn't see the last battles of the war, that finished with the death of Mariscal Francisco Solano Lopez, Paraguay's leader, and the killing of the most of Paraguayan over 10-years-old men by Argentine and Brazilian troops. The film shows the way of Cándido López with Argentine troops, trying to find the sceneries of the terrible battles he painted. The director interviews some inhabitants of that places, some of them old people that remembered their grandparents' tales about that war. Interviews were made in Spanish, Portuguese, Guaraní and English, to people reflecting different viewpoints about that historical events.

Paco is a teenager living with Alvaro (his father), the second wife of Alvaro and a recently born baby, his sister. Paco was told that his mother had escaped from home when he was a baby (after making him a tattoo in his arm) leaving Alvaro and him alone. And he decides to look for her, with the help of Tero, his girl-friend, a lier teenager who escape from her house. Alvaro decides to go with them, and they go to a little town where the parents of Paco's mother live. They met the old couple, and a cousin of Paco's mother, who had been in love with her. And they discovered why she left them. Meanwhile, Tero was recovered by his father, after being 5 days out of home. The Paco's story is good, I believe there are doubts about Tero's one, she believes to be actually daughter of a couple disappeared during military dictatorship in Argentina. People cannot discover if this was true or another of her lies.