The Newest Olds (Pablo Mazzolo, 2022) (Patreon)

TIFF WAVELENGTHS 2022

Mazzolo is one of the most intellectually provocative filmmakers currently working in Argentina, a nation with a proud and significant history when it comes to avant-garde film. This history is often eclipsed by that country's fruitful new wave of narrative cinema. But there are significant parallels. (If you like Lucrecia Martel and Lisando Alonso, maybe try Narcisa Hirsch and Claudio Caldini!) Mazzolo's recent work could be considered political landscape filmmaking. Using layered, fragmented images, he considers the historical residue that may be perceptible from certain locales -- a project that mirrors Apichatpong's in certain ways.

The Newest Olds leaves the countryside for the city. A follow-up to his 2015 film Fish Point, The Newest Olds takes as its subject the location of the Media City Film Festival itself: Windsor, Ontario and its sister city across the bridge, Detroit. Mazzolo examines the changing skyline of Detroit from close up and far away, using the buildings themselves as totems for that city's shifting fortunes. Stable structures move around, dislodged and unstable, as Windsor looks on, rather helplessly. A site-specific film, The Newest Olds considers its own place within the economy of production and exhibition, refuting the ostensible neutrality of the aesthetic realm.