From 1972 to 1981, Robert Gardner conducted a Boston television series that became a reference and a cult show for the experimental cinema community: Screening Room. The program, which welcomed some of the most relevant avant-garde filmmakers of that time, offered not only in-depth interviews with the guests, but also the opportunity to discover their work. Today, Screening Room remains a source of inspiration. Gardner’s legacy, in combination with the spirit of the times and the possibilities brought to us by technological advancement and the internet encouraged us to develop a show that will be broadcast on streaming. Camera Obscura, which also follows the steps of Janine Bazan and André S. Labarthe’s Cinéastes de notre temps, is a creative endeavor –an interpretation of Gardner’s show with a bold aesthetic and in an innovative format in tune with our times. The show, which will bring to the audience an in-detail presentation of the creative processes of a selection of filmmakers, is also an invitation to discover their work, as it will feature chosen excerpts of their creations. The name Camera Obscura is a reference to the optical device that inspired painters and anticipated cinema centuries before its creation –a box-like, unlit construction where a ray of light coming from the outside projects, through a small hole in one of its walls, a moving image that is seen on the surface opposite to the opening. (S8) aims to be that ray of light, travelling from wave to wave on its way to project its images on the wall of any room in the world.

Pablo Marín (Buenos Aires, 1982) is a vital agent of Argentina’s experimental cinema scene. He is, indeed, an outstanding filmmaker, but also a researcher, a writer, an editor, a professor, and a cultural programmer. His film work –filmed almost exclusively in super 8 (a format that was essential in the history of Argentinian experimental cinema)– takes over from that of creators like Claudio Caldini, and is, at the same time, the result of a profound knowledge of the international avant-garde initiatives. All this is present in Marín’s films, which delve into the personal and the quotidian. Over the years, Marín has brought together a sort of film journal, abstract and oblique, where, by the means of superimpositions, masks, and frame by frame techniques, he puts to the test the potentialities of cinema. His camera acts like a light trap that (just like the traps set by the Ghostbusters) has the ability to capture, inside itself, the very essence of (someone’s) life.