Narcisa Hirsch

This documentary is an approach to the experience of seeing and listening to the trajectory of Narcisa Hirsch, a pioneer of Argentine experimental cinema, but who has also been part of the happenings and performances of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Aleph is the point where diachronic and synchronic times meet, and each second represents a moment in life, from birth to death.

Twins still in their amniotic fluid announce our human condition, our compulsion to walk, move forward, run. When everything moves, we go through the forest of emotions in a dreamlike way. But it is thanks to water and its light reflections, to its transforming power that the infinite “Kosmos” plays with our uncertainty.

"The world is a tarantula ... a big, dark tarantula, moving around weaving its own web." A journey into myths and origins of the world with the grand dame of Argentine avant-garde cinema. See the Earth as it really is: A marble spinning in a sea of eternity.

A portrait of Narcisa Hirsch, Argentine filmmaker, pioneer of experimental cinema. The artist explores the path of her memories, where the traces of some men appear, which are transposed with the constant reference to the desert.

An unpublished piece by this pioneer of experimental cinema with the participation of Elías Cherñajovsky and Sergio Levin.

Narcisa Hirsch was born on 16 January under the sign of Capricom. These diaries labelled Capricorn 78 show an approach to everyday life with unusual tenderness and beauty; a baby bird that a child lovingly cares for; a calf being born: cats and dogs: a house in the snow; a fire, Narcisa on the grass; Narcisa swimming; a full life.

Patagonia reflects Hirsch's close connection to Argentina’s natural world and the people around her.

A tribute to Virginia, a 23-year-old girl who apparently committed suicide in Ibiza. Excerpts from her letters to Narcisa, written on the walls, appear in the film as a leitmotif.

Happening by Narcisa Hirsch, where she gives free apples in the street while we hear passersby's comments.

Portrait of women where they look at the images of their own faces and reflect on that experience.

The camera takes in the Patagonian pastures, then the faces in an old warehouse, and transparent photos of Patagonian scenes. Everything is filtered by an amber light. (Narcisa Hirsch Filmoteca)

"Academia del fracaso" is a speculative aesthetic fact of a polemic nature, as Marta Minujín explains when she talks about her work. Portrayed in this film explaining the functioning of her participatory performance in 1974, the artist extends herself to reflect and talk about some things, many things, that make up the world and its ideas.

on the image of a collage on the wall, the voice of a woman describes a man the interior space of a workshop that is not seen.

The hands of Narcisa Hirsch, a nonagenarian, open another Super 8 film cartridge to load a camera. In what seems like a ritual of passing on a legacy, the grandmother and her grandson, Tomás Rautenstrauch, watch a film of a meadow that gradually fills the frame.

The movie follows a group of children living in the streets in the city of Buenos Aires. The only day center working is the CAINA (Centro de Atención Integral a la Niñez y Adolescencia) an institution that assists and shelters street children.

"the speed of time dissolves thought"

Hirsch’s first steps in filmmaking were documentations of her performances and happenings in public spaces. These were collective actions, filmed initially on 8mm or 16mm film, which record the reactions of a randomly chosen spectator.

An excursion to the Gaviota Islands in Lake Nahuel Huapi becomes a psychedelic trip: taking advantage of the very power of the natural landscape and its birds, a pair of mysterious characters seem to conjure up a spell.

A mixture of abstract images and, as if out of a Man Ray painting, a large mouth in the foreground with red lipstick slowly devours a raw liver and then goes on to eat a postcard. Meanwhile, romantic Neapolitan songs play in the background. As Andrea Giunta says: At the same time they function as a hyperbole of the feminine in a register impregnated with pop aesthetics (they are perfect lips and make-up), but in which the flesh introduces an element of deep transgression, with scatological tensions.