María Luisa Bemberg

María Luisa Bemberg: El eco de mi voz

Alejandro Maci

María Luisa Bemberg

María Luisa Bemberg was born into the highest echelons of Argentina’s society. Her family founded Quilmes, the nation’s biggest brewery, which expanded into a multinational. Bemberg, home-schooled by the best teachers and tutors, grew up in a social bubble. And she never made a secret of this, in as far as many of her films are set in the upper classes of different eras and narrate the politics of their respective periods through the prism of female opportunity, or the lack thereof – what could a woman do, behaviour in extramarital affairs included? Class, more often than not, was a trap, even if it might offer opportunities that many are denied. With María Luisa Bemberg: El eco de mi voz, Alejandro Maci paints a detailed and multifaceted picture of Argentina’s greatest female filmmaker, in which family and colleagues get their say as much as Bemberg herself, thanks to myriads of private and public recordings.

Yo, la peor de todas

María Luisa Bemberg

Assumpta Serna, Dominique Sanda

A viceroy and an archbishop take their posts in Mexico. A local nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695), intrigues them. The viceroy and his wife find her brilliant and fascinating. The prelate finds her a symbol of European laxity. He engineers the election of a new abbess, severe and ascetic. The virreina visits Sor Juana often and inspires her to write passionate poetry that the archbishop finds scandalous. The viceroy protects her. After he is replaced and returns to Spain with his wife, Sor Juana faces envy and retribution. A bishop betrays her, her confessor humbles her. Plague, a tribunal, and her confession as "the worst of all" end the great poet's life.

Nobody's Wife

María Luisa Bemberg

Luisina Brando, Rodolfo Ranni

It is the story of Eleanor, a good housewife who lives with her husband, Fernando, and their two children. Deeply loves her husband and does not question the reciprocity of love and fidelity. One day, circumstantially, discovers her husband is cheating. Leonor emotionally feels betrayed and realizes that his world, based on a lie, has collapsed like a house of cards. With more fear than conviction, leaving the house, leaving little signs with instructions for their march and trust their children to the care of her husband.

De eso no se habla

María Luisa Bemberg

Marcello Mastroianni, Luisina Brando

Leonor, a widow in a small South American town, gives birth to Charlotte, a dwarf. The mother not only provides a rich childhood for her daughter, she erases any clues her daughter might see that would lead her to think she is different (mother burns books such as "Snow White" and destroys lawn statues of gnomes). In short, she doesn't want to talk about it. The mother succeeds in creating a modern-day Rapunzel: Charlotte becomes an accomplished young woman who captures the heart of Ludovico. But then, the circus comes to town.

Camila

María Luisa Bemberg

Susú Pecoraro, Imanol Arias

In 1847 Buenos Aires, a young noblewoman and a young Jesuit fall in love, much to the disapproval of her family and the Church.

Momentos

María Luisa Bemberg

Héctor Bidonde, Graciela Dufau

History of encounters, romances, isolation, boredom and an overwhelming passion for a married woman, that fills a sadness and leaves her husband.

Miss Mary

María Luisa Bemberg

Julie Christie, Nacha Guevara

A young British woman is hired as a governess by a wealthy Argentine family. Through her position, she slowly sees how the upper class of society is slowly crumbling, and how a fascist movement is preparing to install itself in power.

La balada de Donna Helena

Fito Páez

Cecilia Roth, Susú Pecoraro

El mundo de la mujer

María Luisa Bemberg

Centered on a trade fair of products for women, the work's sarcastic and biting perspective falls on both the men who build that "world" (workers and businessmen) and the women who support them. Through techniques of distancing, mostly of image from sound, the artist developed a poignant reflection on the social debasement of and discrimination against women carried out by products that supposedly exalt and distinguish them.

Juguetes

María Luisa Bemberg

This short film, filmed at the Rural Exhibition, is a testimony that, based on 70 interviews with girls and boys of 9 and 10 years old, investigates the behavior guidelines imposed by conventional education and the results obtained. Boys are educated in a specific way, with very different life goals, and toys reflect this discrimination: kitchens, dolls, hairdryers, cosmetic equipment, the whole domestic world for girls. Creative games, those that awaken the imagination (trains, cars, building games, men in space), are intended for boys.