On 20 March 2021, Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha (in Hastings, UK), Julia Kratje (in Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Paul R. Merchant (in Bristol, UK) spoke with Lucrecia Martel (in Salta, Argentina) about her career, some underexplored connections between her films (like humour, or the traits which imbue her films with a certain air of comedy, or musical collaborations, such as those with Juana Molina, Björk, and Julieta Laso, that have not been considered as closely by the audience or by the critics), and her plans for the future, including reflections on the Covid-19 pandemic. Martel says: “I think no one (at least among the people who enjoy my movies) cares about what the film is about. (…) As regards what making a movie means, ‘what the movie is about’ is something very superficial, which enables you to organise time and a series of things, but ‘what the movie is about’ lies in the experience of the film. It isn’t something you can include in the synopsis, or a logline”. In this sense, this chapter invites the reader to participate in a conversation that cannot be summed up in a few lines.
Lucrecia Martel’s body of work is in many senses unusual: alongside features that have won critical acclaim across the world are to be found short films, including one made for a clothing brand, and the art direction of a concert tour. This introduction provides a historical-biographical background on Martel by charting her trajectory from her first short films to the recent partnership with the multi-talented artist Björk, and Martel’s place in the so-called New Argentine Cinema and beyond, highlighting the themes and modes that have characterised her works. It also outlines the main tendencies in Martel film criticism, and how this anthology moves beyond those. It concludes with overviews of the subsequent chapters, authored by some of the most prominent scholars of Martel’s films and by emergent voices, and offer a fresh set of perspectives (alongside two translations of landmark essays not previously available in English) that build on existing critical trends and suggest promising new avenues for research.
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