Fake.

Review on Filmefobia, by Kiko Goifman (Brasil, 2007) Kiko Goifmans Filmefobia is a fake documentary showing the production process of a film on phobias, which apparently could not be concluded for unknown reasons. Filmefobia has the intention according to the director of criticizing certain documentaries that maintain an authoritarian position over their subjects, objectualizing them under the excuse of producing an objective picture. Nevertheless, this film has an ambiguous status of fiction/fake documentary that makes its critical potential at least diffuse. Besides, at the same time Filmefobia imposes to the spectator the vision of intensely sadist images be them fake or not. The film is built almost entirely on scenes where we see supposedly phobics being confronted with the objects or situations that terrify them. These individuals appear in many cases nude and immobilized, apart from suffering and anguished. Those images are intercalated with very few scenes where the same people narrate how their phobias were born, the effects produced on them and the limitations imposed to their quotidian lives. These short stories are the most interesting parts of the film, but they only leak like small drops. The third component of Filmefobia is made of the conversations probably fictional as well maintained by the films production team, debating the ethical problem they feel involved to. In the end Filmefobia has the strong virtue of being a provocative film, perturbing and generating debate over a series of ethical-esthetical issues that are rarely addressed. But it is also and more that anything a sordid experience. Filmefobia tiene la virtud de ser una pelcula provocadora, que perturba y pone en discusin una serie de cuestiones tico-estticas que pocas veces se plantean. Pero resulta una experiencia bastante srdida.

Critico de Kleber Mendona Filho Critico is a documentary on the conflictive relation between film directors and critics, built with archive material: interviews to an ample range of directors from all over the world and especially from Brazil, as well as the most important film critics from magazines and newspapers. The operation of integration and reappropriation of these material produced with other intentions into a single piece is absolutely remarkable since the spectator observes unity. The selection and ordering of the testimonies delineate a set of well thought topics on the issue of film criticism: the excision of film and director, the difference between true and favorable reviews, the reactions of film directors to criticism, the ambiguous relationship of director and critics, the role of festivals as socializing places. Although Critico is a documentary following the classical interview format, it turns out to being very entertaining and also an excellent trigger of thought on film criticism and, clearly, on cinema itself.

The fevered look (Filipelli, Rafael, 2008) The fevered look, last film by Rafael Filipelli, was a request from the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI) on its tenth anniversary. But far

from proposing a celebratory and aseptic commemoration, this film opens up a series of questions and invites to think about not only the past of the festival but also about its present an immediate future. Filipellis film operates alternating fictional sequences of a young couple of cinephiles in different situations at the BAFICI with other documental sequences of testimonies and interviews to important figures of the festivals history. The first, fictional series is perhaps the less attractive, although it captures certain festivals spectatorial spirit. It looks artificial, overcharged, with weak acting performances. The documental part of the film sums many hits, built on read texts and interviews to central actors of the cinematographic business in Argentina. Between these personages the young directors stand out, cleverly describing their relation with the festival, where many of them found an excellent scenario to present first films. This is a portrait that becomes increasingly political with its opening of questions and its display of perspectives about the role of cinema in Argentina, experimentation, independence, esthetics, professional issues. As the film develops, The fevered look reaches the end of an encounter between critics and directors implicit pact that came to be known as New Argentinean Cinema. This breaking union that we come to imagine as tore to pieces is the subtext that emerges as a bright reflection on todays national cinema.