Viola
by Matías Piñeiro (2012, 65 min)
Based on William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (also known as Kings’ Night) Viola (2012) delves into the Shakespearean path traced by Rosalinda (2011), a medium-length film with which director Matías Piñeiro —El hombre robado (2007), Todos mienten (2009— started a series of films inspired in Daughters of Fire (Les Filles du feu), by Gérard de Nerval, a set of stories each titled after a woman’s name. Piñeiro dazzles in his contemporary adaptation of situations drafted more than 400 years ago in the key of a comedy of errors. If in Kings’ Night the scenery was Illyria or Albania’s ancient coastline, in Viola a wintry Buenos Aires contains the lives of Viola and her boyfriend Javier, with whom she dispatches packages of pirated movies through their company, Metrópolis.
Displayed in a choral range, a women’s theater company, headed by Cecilia, rehearses their staging of Kings’ Night, from which different fragments are rehearsed, even in the midst of everyday life, interacting with Viola, Javier, and the women themselves. Here, the relations between characters are ruled by a certain sensuality that is dictated by the camera itself. Suggestive and refined, the language used by Piñeiro outlines a style of his own, a style of deep aesthetic and intellectual preoccupations. Shakespeare is here, all things aside, a fruitful land. As if it were an orchestra, Piñeiro directs a framework of dramatic artifices that revolve around courtship and love, solitude and existential angst, art and the joy of living. -Maximiliano Cruz
Biography
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1982, Matías Piñeiro studied at the Universidad del Cine, where he went on to teach filmmaking and film history. In 2011 he received the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard University for his new film project, Sarmiento, Translator. He currently lives in New York on a New York University scholarship in creative writing. His films include El hombre robado (2007), Todos mienten (2009), Rosalinda (2010), Viola (2012), and The Princess of France (2014).
The Spring 2015 edition of Film Society is being taught and programmed by visiting professor and Balagan Film Series co-programmer Jeff Silva.
MASSART FILM SOCIETY is a screening class for MassArt film students open to those who are interested.
We hope to provide access to films and videos not often shown at other venues. 4$ donation, free for MassArt students and community.
Enter to MASSART through the South Building, Admissions on Huntington Ave. FILM SOCIETY shows are held in Screening Rm 1 in East Hall in the FILM Department.
http://massartfilmsociety.blogspot.com/
Founder and programmer Saul Levine is currently on sabbatical.
