Noticias
Chile
Bettina Perut & Ivan Osnovikoff
"News" is an observational documentary film that using the fragmented format of a newscast program, propose a cinematographic critic of the powerful and questioned world of television journalism. In black comedy tone and by means of a careful and incisive recording of "journalistic" and "anti-journalistic" facts, the film reflects on the disconcerting and even absurd ways in which a country builds through media its daily reality.
Television journalism topics, like crime, politics, healthcare, sport, religion and show business, among others, will be filmed and edited following audiovisual strategies radically opposed to traditional codes, producing a perceptive transformation of their social and individual meanings. Without the presence of an anchorman or reporters commenting facts, images will transmit their reality load, limiting conditioned interpretations. Long observational shots free of any kind of superposed commentary will “report" on the tranquil face with which Pinochet receives thousands of Chileans visiting his coffin, on the several earthquakes shaking daily the small city of Puerto Aysén, on the religious passion of masochist penitents dragging themselves to the feet of Lo Vásquez Virgin, among others.
These journalistic clichés will combine with "anti-journalistic", normal, not sensational facts, like the enormous majority of events occurring in reality: quiet landscapes, streets without accidents, the disinhibited life of Papio Hamadryas from the Santiago Zoo, the aristocratic International Convention of Roses Societies, the press teams guideline meetings to prepare informative contents of journalistic programs, among others.
The articulation of these two strategies of recording and edition of reality will result in a "newscast", the sarcastic summary of a society’s life expressing a world view completely opposed to the one we see daily in newspaper and television. A world view in which things do not progress neither go back but only change, in which individual or institutional mise-on-scenes are not very efficient, in which man is not as far away as he believes of his animal kin, and in which the dominant idea of reality, of good and evil, is put into crisis.
The structure and progression sense of the "story" will be a daily cycle that starts with the beginning of an indeterminate day and concludes the early morning of an also indeterminate next day. Contradicting a traditional newscast, along its structure "News" will follow up the development of facts we will "report", generating an interpretative framework allowing to think those facts and not only to enunciate them. In this way, each reality will be treated in a progressive form in the different phases the "story" will circulate:morning, noon, afternoon, twilight, night and daybreak.
"News" will connect what in television newscasts appears always and necessarily not connected. Politics, show business, healthcare and sports will not be separated compartments in which good and/or evil individuals are leading characters of positive and/or negative situations. On the contrary, "News" will present reality as a unique flow where all is connected because of the simple fact that all belongs to that flow. Social life in papios' cage will flirt with events occurring down in the city, the tranquility of an altiplanic lake will counterbalance the continuous earthquakes shaking Puerto Aysén, and the paraphernalic hospitalization of Pinochet will contrast with the anguishing waiting of sick people in a Public Hospital.
Finally, "News" is a necessary film on social reality construction through journalistic media, of high cinematographic quality and thematic depth, and bearer of a will of artistic differentiation that will contribute to the diversification of documentary production in Chile.
Television journalism topics, like crime, politics, healthcare, sport, religion and show business, among others, will be filmed and edited following audiovisual strategies radically opposed to traditional codes, producing a perceptive transformation of their social and individual meanings. Without the presence of an anchorman or reporters commenting facts, images will transmit their reality load, limiting conditioned interpretations. Long observational shots free of any kind of superposed commentary will “report" on the tranquil face with which Pinochet receives thousands of Chileans visiting his coffin, on the several earthquakes shaking daily the small city of Puerto Aysén, on the religious passion of masochist penitents dragging themselves to the feet of Lo Vásquez Virgin, among others.
These journalistic clichés will combine with "anti-journalistic", normal, not sensational facts, like the enormous majority of events occurring in reality: quiet landscapes, streets without accidents, the disinhibited life of Papio Hamadryas from the Santiago Zoo, the aristocratic International Convention of Roses Societies, the press teams guideline meetings to prepare informative contents of journalistic programs, among others.
The articulation of these two strategies of recording and edition of reality will result in a "newscast", the sarcastic summary of a society’s life expressing a world view completely opposed to the one we see daily in newspaper and television. A world view in which things do not progress neither go back but only change, in which individual or institutional mise-on-scenes are not very efficient, in which man is not as far away as he believes of his animal kin, and in which the dominant idea of reality, of good and evil, is put into crisis.
The structure and progression sense of the "story" will be a daily cycle that starts with the beginning of an indeterminate day and concludes the early morning of an also indeterminate next day. Contradicting a traditional newscast, along its structure "News" will follow up the development of facts we will "report", generating an interpretative framework allowing to think those facts and not only to enunciate them. In this way, each reality will be treated in a progressive form in the different phases the "story" will circulate:morning, noon, afternoon, twilight, night and daybreak.
"News" will connect what in television newscasts appears always and necessarily not connected. Politics, show business, healthcare and sports will not be separated compartments in which good and/or evil individuals are leading characters of positive and/or negative situations. On the contrary, "News" will present reality as a unique flow where all is connected because of the simple fact that all belongs to that flow. Social life in papios' cage will flirt with events occurring down in the city, the tranquility of an altiplanic lake will counterbalance the continuous earthquakes shaking Puerto Aysén, and the paraphernalic hospitalization of Pinochet will contrast with the anguishing waiting of sick people in a Public Hospital.
Finally, "News" is a necessary film on social reality construction through journalistic media, of high cinematographic quality and thematic depth, and bearer of a will of artistic differentiation that will contribute to the diversification of documentary production in Chile.
Support:
Festivals and Awards:
in competition in Buenos Aires, Valdivia, Amsterdam 2009
Pärnu 2010: Best Experimental Film Award
Viña del Mar 2010: Jury Award
in competition in Thessaloniki, Guadalajara, Mar del Plata, Ourense, La Habana 2010
Pärnu 2010: Best Experimental Film Award
Viña del Mar 2010: Jury Award
in competition in Thessaloniki, Guadalajara, Mar del Plata, Ourense, La Habana 2010
World Sales:
Perut + Osnovikoff Ltd.