Jeanine Meerapfel reflects on memory and emotional ties through time

His name is A womanbut the documentary speaks, if not of all, at least of many, many: Marie Luise Chatelaine (“Malou”) as an archetypal figure of 20th century tragedy. In her new film, the director Jeanine Meerapfel (the german friend, Anna’s Summer) attacks a woman — and this woman is his mother – and of a life that took her from France to Germany, and from there, fleeing the Nazis, to exile in Argentina.

What is lost, what is forgotten, what is remembered, how is it remembered. Meerapfel is an archaeologist who seeks to uncover a truth. He says he was looking to do a literary essay. By the tone and the look, there is an immediate link with poetry.

“I wanted to make a film about memory”, he confides in dialogue with GlobeLiveMedia Culture from Germany, where he lives, by videoconference. “How we process our memories. How are they and how are they? What about memories that are just a photo. It’s a mystery that I decided to investigate and, for that, I needed a common thread that connect the different stories. So I decided to use my mother’s story.”

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The film begins with a discovery: a box with hundreds of meters of 8mm film where the mother appeared as the protagonist. It was badly damaged material that Meerapfel had to digitize. “When I saw it,” he says, “I realized it was wonderful and I wanted to use it in a movie.”

—How much 20th century history can be covered from one person’s life?

“In fact, everything. Because one person’s story is about situations and things that have happened to thousands. In different ways and with different paths, of course. If you tell someone’s life in great detail, you can tell the story of many others.. And in Argentina, as many of us — not all — come from the boats and have stories of immigrant parents, there is a double projection and a more direct communication with this film.

—A mother’s story is also a daughter’s story. How do you seek to preserve this memory?

— It’s also discovering that you can be from different places and love one in particular. I have a memory of Buenos Aires who will never leave my being. And there are still things that I love. For that, park bars This is the first thing that struck me. The story of the Argentina in recent years it appears everywhere and it must be said. i have to say it.

—There is a famous sentence by Gramsci which says: “History teaches, but has no pupils.” What does a documentary like this teach? How would the student be?

“I don’t think he teaches or has students. I think viewers connect with the film in a way that is both personal and historical. There is no lesson, but an invitation to one’s own memory, to remember and try to follow those memories. In this film, I dare to tell what happens with a machine that cuts the grass or what happens with strange trees. I beat around the bushbut I’m in the same tree: I tell what happens to us when we look closely.

—The documentary begins with the roots of an ombú. Before beating around the bush, should we look at where we come from?

-It’s like that. I really had no idea what we were going to do with this shot, but afterwards it was very clear that I had to start the film. Similar to the last image is of those fabrics hanging in the garage. There are things that, when you see them, you realize that they have a pictorial force that goes beyond the story.

—At the same time, I feel like there’s been a lot of writing and re-writing to get to the narrative. How did you research the link between voice and image?

—It was a process during the assembly process. I always knew there would be a lot of text in the film. I wrote and rewrote a lot. The crucial moment was in the assembly, when the epidemic fell, and we had to work Zoom as we do now. I spoke to the editor, we saw the scenes and I sent her a recorded text message on the phone. It wasn’t the text that was going to stay, but we were seeing how it worked. My great example was Without sunof Chris Markerwhere he travels Japan and throughout the trip there is a voice that tells of the letters that two friends wrote to each other. It’s a very interesting way of telling who influenced me.

—The meetings with the new inhabitants of the old family houses are very pleasant.

— It was interesting: people opened the door for us. Although you would think people are more cautious, it has happened to us almost everywhere. And there was even a lady in the apartment that belonged to my grandfather in Belgrano, who, with incredible confidence, he left me the key and went to the doctor. Also the stories of these people are very beautiful. When they tell you where they are from or who they are, and you can tell a little more, they fit in and enrich your story. It’s also part of the cinema we make. It is a cinema that has to do with human contact with the protagonists.

* A woman is presented in the Malba Museum (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415, Buenos Aires) every Sunday in March at 6:00 p.m.

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