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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.

How long can loving kids to became pleasant the last days of their dying mother? Well, the action take place in the last days of DDR (East Germany), before the fall of the wall. She is a fervorous communist (whose husband she says is a betrayer who ran away to the West) and his son try she cannot realize what is happening beyond the room. The room is transformed in a bubble of DDR. Outside, changes go on. The videos she watch believing it is TV are marvellous, looking how crowd of West Germans escapes from capitalism to know the welfare of DDR. At last, deceivers are shown as deceived. A lot of comedy are into the drama (that is the life, indeed).

Héctor Kesselman Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A short and very interesting documental about the anarchists in Argentina and Uruguay in early XX century. Who were and what were the thoughts of Severino de Giovanni and Simón Radowitzky? Who was Rosigna? The movie begins showing the Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego) prison, where Radowitzky lived a lot of years after killing Ramón Falcón, chief of the Federal Police (who had killed a lot of workers during a manifestation). Then, it goes to the arrival to Buenos Aires of thousands of Italians, Spanish and Jewish immigrants, the origin of half the population of Argentina and Uruguay, between them the first anarchists and socialists of the River Plate. Nowadays can be curious to see that such idealists could attack a bank (sometimes killing people) and steal a lot of money only for editing books or pamphlets, as their lives went on in a pathetic material poverty. It is interesting to see how was planned the escape of anarchists from Punta Carretas prison of Montevideo. One anarquist settled a coal shop in front of the prison, and a tunnel was dug from there to prison. Some decades before, there was a flight of Tupamaros prisoners in the same way. The anarchists were defeated by militar dictatorships and because the appearing of peronism in 1946 (the creol working class had less contact with European political ideas). Di Giovanni was executed in prison, Radowitzky after being put free fought in the Spanish Civil War, Rosigna was put free in Uruguay but disappeared (killed indeed). Perhaps there are few emphasis in the origin of their ideals and the difference between the pacifists and violent ways they employ for fighting. The testimony of anarchist writer Osvaldo Bayer, a niece of Rosigna, a former Tupamaro and old anarchists contribute to have a wider viewpoint.

The movie can be seen as a road-movie in the loneliness of the province of Santa Cruz, in South Patagonia.

Each one of the three chief characters, with different kinds of loneliness, look for a light in their future: María, a very poor woman living in an abandoned railway station, is selected for take part in a TV prize program; Don Justo, an old man, looks for his dog lost years ago; Roberto, a road seller of goods, tries to gain the love of a young widow customer. Three simple stories that touch the heart of people because their emotiveness and humor.

This is the second movie of Carlos Sorin in the windy and desert Patagonia ("La Pelicula del Rey" was the former one).

The new movie from Costa-Gavras is as believable as his former ones: Z, The Confession, State of Siege, Missing. Perhaps his tale about the role of the Catholic Church can offer some doubts to Europeans and North-Americans subscribers of IMDB, but people who lived in Argentina during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) can agree that there are coherency. In my country we had a lot of missing or killed Catholic priests and nuns. Riccardo Fontana represents them. Some bishops (De Nevares, Hesayne, Novak, perhaps another one) fought for human rights. But the official Church, including the papal nuncio, the rest of the bishops, and specially the "military vicars" (who gave "spiritual comfort" to torturers and pilots who threw human bodies to the River Plate) where in the same role that Pio XII and the Vatican staff. It is not an attack to Roman Catholics. Usually, the religious hierarchies are always in the side of the political power. You can see muslim priests giving spiritual comfort to terrorists, as rabbies in the Israel Army do to soldiers who killed a Palestinian family. "Our" soldiers are always dispensed from the observance of the Commandments.

What would you do if your son is dying and hospital authorities ask you U$S 250.000 for saving his life? Suppose you aren't rich enough and another man enter in the hospital after your kid and he is operated and saved only because he can "buy" it. The best of "John Q" are the questions the movie ask to us. Are the offer & demand laws sacred laws? What kind of society does we want? Can be called democracy a political end economic system where the right to life is not the same one for riches and poors? The movie is an excuse for asking these questions. After it, you can ask if it is possible that a despairing father (Denzel Washington) can take over part of an hospital alone, if it is believable that all the hostages would help him, and what posibilities are of getting a "happy end". Happy end that, in Hollywood movies, is as sacred as capitalist market laws.

Héctor. Buenos Aires. Argentina.

The life of illegal immigrants, in Buenos Aires or in another place in the world, is a black & white life, the colors are off. For telling the routine of a Bolivian cook, alone, sleeping in a bar, with his wife and children living 1500 miles away, disturbed everyday by police asking for his papers, white and black are enough. You won't find here famous actors or great special effects. Almost the whole movie occurs in a cheap neighbourhood bar. But the story is universal, it could be a Turkey in Munich, a Tunisian in Marsella or a Mexican in Los Angeles.

Hector Kesselman, Buenos Aires, Argentina