2023-12-07 08:00:00
Diego Lumerman He was doing something that he was passionate regarding like few other things when making films: filming in the north of Neuquén, its stories, mysteries and geographies. And it was there that he heard a name for the second time. That of a man who had already done it before, long before: filming in the north of Neuquén, his stories, mysteries and his geographies. Carlos Procopiuk, They told Diego. And he remembered that man who filmed aerial shots on VHS ascended by paramotor.
That (re)appearance motivated Lumerman to investigate the figure of a man who had done what no one else had done in his time: filming Patagonia in the ’50s in all possible ways, from fiction to documentary, give short and long. He talked to people, delved into archives, looked at his filmography and decided that this man deserved his own film and that he, Diego Lumerman, would be its director.
The result of all that is “Procopiuk”, his first feature-length documentary, with a script by Sofía Tarruella and Lumerman himself. Recently screened in the Argentine Panorama section of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, it will premiere this Thursday, at 8 p.m., at the MNBA Neuquén Auditorium (Miter and Santa Cruz), with free entry.
Lumerman met the protagonist of his documentary as it was taking shape and what he learned regarding Procopiuk was a person passionate regarding what he did, very generous and absorbed in his work. “Generous, empathetic and obsessive regarding work and work,” Lumerman defines him. “It is demonstrated in the number of films that he has, the number of music bands that he had, the tangos that he taught to dance because he was not only a filmmaker, but a multifaceted artist. But I was interested in the cinematographic part of his art and his legacy,” says the Neuquén director in a dialogue with RÍO NEGRO Newspaper.
“Procopiuk began as an actor in Kelly’s short films and then moved to the other side (laughs9) and they began to direct together, one directed the camera and the other directed and then they changed, they shared the tasks.”
Diego Lumerman, director of “Procopiuk”.
But Carlos Procopiuk did not work just because talking regarding him is talking regarding his partner and friend Lorenzo Kelly, who in some way is also part of the documentary, there is no way to talk regarding one without the other, Lumerman knew that immediately. “1950s in the valley region, no one made movies and they started making small shorts. Procopiuk began as an actor in Kelly’s short films and then moved to the other side (laughs9) and they began to direct together, one directed the camera and the other directed and then they changed, they shared the tasks. There were 30 years of a unique filmography, pioneer of cinema here. They started making Western-type shorts, but later small tourist shorts and also a type of ethnographic film that portrayed the native peoples.
With the arrival of Channel 7 in Neuquén, says Lumerman, “They worked making the news report ‘Regional Panorama’ with which they toured the province from end to end with a 16 mm camera taking very tremendous, very beautiful images, there you see the Neuquén of the 60s. That material was in 16 mm rolls that were digitized at the Cinematheque and Archive of the Patagonian Image (CAIP), in Neuquén, they shared the material with us.”
Then, following separating from Kelly, Procopiuk was very interested in community cinema, He worked with neighbors, taught them how to film. “There is a film of his called ‘When the people film’ made in Las Coloradas, which shows how young people learn to film from there to preserve the memory of the place,” reveals the director.
“Procopiuk,” Lumerman clarifies, “is not a biographical documentary, we do not tell his life, but rather we build a profile of him through his film work.” And he concludes by saying from the amazement that the figure of Procopiuk still generates in him: “The impressive thing regarding all this is when we put it in context, when a camera was something strange, very strange, when there was no training in how to make films. What was impressive regarding them was the courage to make films, to learn by doing. And make a career practically from nothing.”
Datasheet
Original title: «Procopiuk»
Country: Argentina
Duration in minutes: 65 min.
Year: 2023
Spoken languages: Español
Director: Diego Lumerman
Script: Sofía Tarruella, Diego Lumerman
Edition: Susana Leunda
Producer/s: Diego Lumerman, Cecilia Guerrero
Production company/s: Lemuria Films – Chacra Cine
Interviewed: Nicolás Procopiuk, Lorenzo Kelly, Ana Zitti, Oscar Chima Zeballos and more.
Diego Lumerman (1983), He graduated in Film Direction from the Universidad del Cine. Among his notable works are the short films “Extraordinary Territories” (2016) and Bela Veiko (2019), which participated and received awards in numerous national and international festivals. This is his first feature film.
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