Appendix 1 the World of Cinema in Argentina
Appendix 1 The World of Cinema in Argentina A revelation on January 17, 2002. I am headed to the Citibank on Cabildo Street, where I have a savings account. I try to enter the bank but cannot because of the number of people waiting. So I give up on my errand. I cross the street to return home, and from the sidewalk facing the bank I see, for the first time, the building in which it is housed. The familiar is made strange; shortly after, it becomes familiar again, but in a slightly disturbing way. I recognize the building’s arches and moldings, its fanciful rococo façade. I recognize the Cabildo movie theater, in which I saw so many movies as an adolescent. Although I have been coming to this bank for years, I have never before made this connection. I know movie theaters that have been transformed into video arcades, into evangelical churches,1 into parking garages, even into bookstores. Yet I knew of none that had become a bank. All my savings were housed in a space that had been shadows, lights, images, sounds, seats, a screen, film. I remember that around the age of sixteen, I saw Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980) on the same day as Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961) in the Hebraica theater. Two or three movies a day (video didn’t exist then) in which almost everything was film, film, and only film. These are the adolescent years in which cinephilia is born: a messy love, passionate, without much judgment.
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