The Aerial

(La Antena)

Dir. Esteban Sapir; script Esteban Sapir; cinemat. Christian Cottet, Marcello Lavintman

La Doble A, Argentina, 2007

Cast: Alejandro Urdapilleta (Mr TV), Valeria Bertuccelli  (Son of Mr TV), Julieta Cardinali  (Nurse), Rafael Ferro (The Inventor)

  DCP, 90’, bw, intertitles/subtitles: ES/PL, EN, source: La Doble A

The citizens of an entire town have lost their voices, taken away by the sinister Mr TV, who wishes to exercise absolute control over the inhabitants. To this end, he plans to create a device to hypnotise the citizens, putting them into a passive stupor. The residents' only hope lies in a young boy who has inherited his mother's voice.

This dark, visually sophisticated fable for adults is a surreal dystopia drawing on the aesthetics of German Expressionism. Its use of silent film conventions corresponds to the main motif that defines the world being depicted: the town and its inhabitants are rendered voiceless by the television mogul, so the mute person here becomes a symbol of the loss of identity and a tool of control. At the same time, they are a catalyst for creative directorial feats that, scene by scene, bombard the viewer with poetic images packed with intertextual references to the classics of silent cinema, notably Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). The Aerial is thus a postmodern play on tropes and a tribute to the old masters of film, while at the same time showing the (still relevant) horror of enslavement under totalitarian control, often based on media propaganda.

The Aerial is one of several directorial ventures by Esteban Sapir, a trained cinematographer, and aligns with the art cinema movement of the early 21st century, drawing inspiration from the aesthetics of the silent film era alongside works like The Artist (2011) by Michel Hazanavicius, Blancanieves (2012) by Pablo Berger, and the films of Guy Maddin.                                                          

  music: Antonina Nowacka

  FRIDAY | NOVEMBER 29 | 18:00 
introduction to the movie: Tomasz Kolankiewicz