Sensation '77: Mimicry

Documentary on State terrorism during the last military dictatorship in Argentina, made in its aftermath. Invited by the Goethe-Institut to hold a workshop with young film students, Schroeter contrasts the official statements of the regime with the testimony of victims, dissidents and relatives of the disappeared. And trust that their faces and words will resonate much more than a mere representation of violence.

The stories of four solitary characters form a single plot in which the rules of the game are determined by chance. Everyone is finishing something; everyone, unknowingly, is about to start over.

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.

Marie Louise Alemann, who died in February 2015, was an experimental filmmaker based in Buenos Aires. She worked on Super8 and developed a bold yet enigmatic style, frequently performing in her own films, and emphasising physical sensations and the primacy of the body. In the words of curator Federico Windhausen, her Umbrales ‘deserves to be seen as a major work of Latin American queer cinema’.

A portrait of experimental filmmaker Marie Louise Alemann in two alternating characters

Crossing an old bridge in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas, the filmmakers come face to face. They walk towards each other, crossing paths until all that remains is the metal structure of the bridge.

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

"I am the man who walks down the street. At first there is no one. The protagonist smokes, goes to a bar, takes a bus, walks down the street, wanders around and little by little more people appear. And then more and more people, until he ends up on Florida Street, merging into the crowd."

Wearing a swimming cap and one-piece, with a bright white face, an alien-like woman circles the camera, snarling and contorting her jaw, using a rainstick as a shield.

In documentary fashion, drag queens are shown preparing for a performance, of which clips are also shown.

In a forest, a woman is bound by rope and string to the trees. Gradually, she begins to remove the bindings.

A group of people, blindfolded and fed distorted German dialogue through headphones, sit at a table and feel their way towards the food in the centre.