Dog Lady (Citerella/Llinas, 2015): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm
The Machine That Kills Bad People is, of course, the cinema – a medium that is so often and so visibly in service of a crushing status quo but which, in the right hands, is a fatal instrument of beauty, contestation, wonder, politics, poetry, new visions, testimonies, histories, dreams. It is also a film club devoted to showing work – ‘mainstream’ and experimental, known and unknown, historical and contemporary – that takes up this task. The group borrowed their name from the Roberto Rossellini film of the same title, and find inspiration in the eclectic juxtapositions of Amos Vogel’s groundbreaking New York film society Cinema 16. This is their latest offering.
MOMA review:
An indelible and quietly haunting study of a nameless woman (memorably
played by co-director Verónica Llinás) living with a loyal pack of stray
dogs in silent, self-imposed exile in the Pampas, on the edge of Buenos
Aires. Almost dialogue-free, the film follows this hermit across four
seasons as she patches up her makeshift shack in the woods, communes
with nature, and forages for (and sometimes steals) food, making only
the briefest of forays into the city and only fleetingly engaging with
other people. She’s a distant cousin of Agnès Varda’s protagonist in
Vagabond, perhaps, and is just as enigmatic. Dog Lady is filmed
with an attentive and sympathetic eye, yet it is careful never to
“explain” its subject—but be sure to stay to the very end of the film’s
extended final long shot.
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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