The Endless Film
A provocative cinematic Frankenstein, pieced together from fragments of unfinished Argentine films spanning the 1960s to the 2000s. In his experimental debut, Leandro Listorti, director of Herbaria (Lost Lost Lost, 22nd NH), breathes life into archival materials long consigned to oblivion, merging disparate plans and styles into an unsettling narrative set on the fringes of the city and cinema. Focused on the art of editing, the archivist echoes another hero of our "Lost" pilgrimages, Jean-Claude Rousseau (A Floating World, Lost Lost Lost, 21st NH), with the quote: Where is this going? You use the word montage, which I have refused to use for a very long time. What is montage? To relate images in order to say something. (...) It cannot be reduced to a sign that says something, it has nothing to say. It can only be seen, contemplated. Amid a Kafkaesque atmosphere and a quest for meaning, Listorti, far more radical here than in Herbaria, charts an alternative path of perception, moving seamlessly from scene to scene.
Leandro Listorti
Leandro Listorti (1976, Argentina) is a filmmaker, programmer, projectionist and film archivist. After studying film, he attended workshops and shot a series of short films in Super-8. In 2010 he finished his first documentary Dead Youth, screened at e.g. Les Écrans Documentaires, Viennale, IDFA, DocsLisboa. He worked as programmer for BAFICI Film Festival between 2005 and 2015 and was one of the founders of A.R.C.A. (Regional Archive for Amateur Cinema). Listorti is part of Vaivem Cine, a production company in Buenos Aires, and he has worked at the Buenos Aires FilmMuseum since 2016. He was an artist in residence at the Living Archive (Arsenal) in Berlin. And since 2018 he has been part of MaravillaCine as an associate producer.
Filmography
2010 Los jóvenes muertos / Death Youth
2012 El jardín secreto
2018 Film bez końca / La película infinita / The Endless Film
2022 Herbaria