On Sept. 19, Chilean-American filmmaker Ignacio Agüero visited the university to deliver a masterclass on film, hedging on his multi-decade career by asking one very important question: “what is cinema?” Throughout the masterclass, he spoke about his experience evolving into a documentarian, offered clips of his films to demonstrate their important themes and answered questions from students — many of them inspiring filmmakers themselves — about his work and the political atmosphere of Chile today.
Agüero said he “wanted to direct fiction films,” but became drawn to the idea of creating a documentary film when he realized he wanted to tell the story of post-Pinochet Chile. He was struck by the story of a mother who walked along a rural road to bring flowers to Saint Rose de Pequén every Sunday in thanks for “bringing back her sons” who had disappeared during the dictatorship. His first documentary, “No olvidar,” is about her story, which he created under the alias Pedro Meneses. Meneses was a friend of Agüero’s who had passed during the Pinochet era.
However, Agüero “knew nothing about documentaries” when he started. Still, he ended up “falling in love” with the craft and created his second film, “Como de la gana,” which “revolves around the question of ‘why’” in regards to cinema: why filmmakers create and the importance of their themes. “Como de la gama” tells the story of some of Agüero’s closest filmmaking friends, and they discussed their respective processes.
“It revolves around an image,” said Agüero. “The image of understanding why people make films and what messages they are trying to convey.”
Later, he said he embraced the title of ‘documentary filmmaker’ because it gave him “full creative freedom,” versus being a fiction filmmaker, which typically involves a lot of people, such as actors, writers and camera operators. Creating documentaries meant that Agüero could work by himself answering the question he had about the world.
“[Documentaries] are less to say something and more to create, to explore,” said Agüero.
This visit was in recognition of Lincoln Center holding a special screening of Agüero’s latest film, “Notes for a Film” (Notas para una película), on Sept. 20.