DVD Camera Obscura Argentina Spanish & Yiddish with English subtitles Directed By María V. Menis

Camera Obscura
La Cámara Oscura

Argentina, 2008, 86 minutes, color/B&W
Spanish & Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed By María Victoria Menis

Cast: Mirta Bogdasarian, Fernando Armani, Patrick Dell'Isola, Carlos Defeo

At the end of the 19th century, a baby girl is born only feet from the new world as a ship of immigrants docks in Buenos Aires harbor. Shy and self-conscious, Gertrudis grows up and into her role as the ugly duckling in a colony of Argentinean Jews. She fashions herself almost invisible, even hiding her face in photographs. After she is married off to an older, wealthy Jewish rancher, Gertrudis meets expectations and raises a family. The years pass and she finds solace in the beauty of everyday life, turning the tasks of setting the table or preparing a meal into aesthetic pursuits. One day her husband invites a gentle, nomadic French photographer to take a family portrait. His wondrous Surrealist photographs and uncompromising vision, allow Gertrudis to see herself for the first time.

A lyrical, inventive new feature film from award-winning Argentine director María Victoria Menis, Camera Obscura employs a number of visual innovations, including original Surrealist-inspired photographs and black-and-white films, archival World War I photographs, and hand-drawn color animation. The film-within-a-film sequences —fantasies drawn from the characters’ imaginations— were written by María Victoria Menis and Alejandro Fernández Murriay and designed and created by renowned Argentine artist-illustrator Rocambole (Ricardo Cohen). Beautifully shot on location, this luminous, remarkable film captures the rich landscape of Buenos Aires Province, and its fertile forests, fields, lagoons and rivers.

Based on a story of the same name by Argentinian writer Angélica Gorodischer published in The House of Mermory: Stories by Jewish Women Writers of Latin America edited by Marjorie Agosin