Juror
Ignacio Agüero
[Juror’s Statement]
Cinema is able to approach the complexity of the world, because in a way, it can model it. Through associative exercises and combinations between images, sometimes it can brush with beauty, which is neither more nor less than the truth of things, seen from one point of view. Thus, cinema is the language with which the complexity of things can reveal itself to us. This is what relates it to science. However cinema does not work with data or evidence, but rather with images. And images are ambiguous. Dense but ambiguous, and at the same time they are abysses. If, on top of this, the filmmaker does not intend to communicate something in particular with his images, cinema takes us to the terrain of mystery. And that terrain is the same as that of death, and life. Now, this can be humorous.
Born in Santiago de Chile in 1952, he studied architecture and film at the Catholic University of Chile. He develops his work in cinema mainly in documentary, as director. He has also been photographer, cameraman, screenwriter, sound designer and producer for many of his films, and also performed in numerous telefilms for Chilean television. He was co-director of the television program The Strip of NO in the plesbicito that defeated Pinochet in 1988, and he has been an actor in numerous films, including several films by Raúl Ruiz. Retrospectives of his films have been held in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Spain and Mexico. He has received numerous international prizes, held training workshops in various countries and been on the jury at numerous festivals. Between 2012 and 2017, he directed the master’s program in documentary film at the University of Chile, where he is a professor. His last film, This Is the Way I Like It II, won the Grand Prize of the International Competition at FID Marseille 2016. He is currently filming his documentary I Never Climbed the Provincia. His films One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train (1988, YIDFF ’89), Dreams of Ice (1993, YIDFF ’93) and The Other Day (2012, Awards of Excellence at YIDFF 2013) have been shown at this festival.
This Is the Way I Like It II
Como me de la Gana II
CHILE / 2016 / Spanish / Color, B&W / DCP / 86 min
Director, Script, Narration: Ignacio Agüero
Photography: David Bravo, Arnaldo Rodriguez, Gabriel Diaz
Editing: Sophie França
Sound: Andrea López, Mario Díaz, Freddy González
Producers: Amalric de Pontcharra, Tehani Staiger, Viviana Erpel
Production Company, World Sales: Ignacio Agüero y Asociado Ltd.
Thirty years have passed since Ignacio Agüero’s This Is the Way I Like It, in which he spontaneously showed up on the sets of other Chilean directors and asked what it meant to them to make films under a dictatorship. Chilean films have now come to enjoy great acclaim both in Chile and around the world, and in this sequel, Agüero continues his clearly beloved practice of bursting on set in order to nosily grill the newest generation of directors about what “cinematic” means to them. Intercutting private footage of his own children and an interview of the film workshop schoolteacher who appeared in One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train (YIDFF ’89), Agüero continues deepening his quest to uncover the essence of film—a query for which a clear response appears to remain elusive.