CAMERA OBSCURA (La Cámara Oscura)

Director: Maria Victoria Menis
Release Date: 2008
Runtime: 86 minutes
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina, France
Language: Spanish and Yiddish with subtitles
Trailer: youtube.com

Synopsis:
At the end of the 19th century, a baby girl is born only feet from the new world as a ship of immigrants docks in
Buenos Aires harbor. Shy and self-conscious, Gertrudis grows up and into her role as the ugly duckling in a
colony of Argentinean Jews. She fashions herself almost invisible, even hiding her face in photographs. After
she is married off to an older, wealthy Jewish rancher, Gertrudis meets expectations and raises a family. The
years pass and she finds solace in the beauty of everyday life, turning the tasks of setting the table or preparing
a meal into aesthetic pursuits. One day her husband invites a gentle, nomadic French photographer to take a
family portrait. His wondrous Surrealist photographs and uncompromising vision, allow Gertrudis to see herself
for the first time.
A lyrical, inventive new feature film from award-winning Argentine director Maria Victoria Menis, CAMERA
OBSCURA employs a number of visual innovations, including original Surrealist-inspired photographs and
black-and-white films, archival World War I photographs, and illustrated color animation. The film-within-a-film
sequences—fantasies drawn from the charactersʼ imaginations—were written by Maria Victoria Menis and
Alejandro Fernández Murriay and designed and created by renowned Argentine artist-illustrator Rocambole
(Ricardo Cohen). Beautifully shot on location, this luminous, remarkable film captures the rich landscape of
Buenos Aires Province, and its fertile forests, fields, lagoons and rivers.
“Nietzsche found ugliness interesting and Kierkegaard was convinced that the ugliness enabled us to remember
reality. The territory of ugliness is a place known only to those who live in it. With my camera I would like to open
the frontier of that world, immerse myself in it, and discover its overwhelming beauty.”

--Obtained from Maria Victoria Menis