Lucrecia Martel Discusses Hybrid Project ‘Chocobar,’ About Real-Life Murder of Indigenous Leader Javier Chocobar

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen Lucrecia Martel, whose films include “La Ciénaga,” “The Holy Girl” and “The Headless Woman,” has been celebrated as guest of honor at the 54th edition of international documentary film festival Visions du Réel, where organizers had to switch to a larger venue to accommodate the large, enthusiastic audience attending her masterclass.

During the three-hour event on Tuesday, the acclaimed Argentinian filmmaker and leading figure of the New Argentine Cinema delved into her body of work and spoke about her upcoming hybrid project, “Chocobar,” her first foray into feature-length non-fiction. “I am learning as I’m doing, that’s why it’s taking so long,” she quipped, with characteristic self-deprecation. “I am currently on version four of the edit,” she explained of her doc, which focuses on the real-life murder of indigenous leader Javier Chocobar.

The film explores the subject of land ownership and indigenous struggles in Latin America, asking what has changed over the past five centuries. “In this doc there are historical archives from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries because the more something is documented, the more it is adjusted to the rules of fiction,” she said. “In former colonies, where what was written was completely controlled by the colonialists, the documents correspond to the fantasies of the colonialists.

Colonialism did not end, the continuity of the colony is intact in terms of property – when you talk about eviction from territory, the indigenous people’s situation got worse when the country was decolonized.” In 2020, the project won a Pardo prize in the Locarno Festival’s The Films After Tomorrow section, an award to help filmmakers whose productions were halted by COVID-19 (see interview