Lucas Marcheggiano and Adriana Yurchovich Eduardo de la Serna Directors of ’El Ambulante’

This is not the first time you’ve worked together. How did you begin to collaborate?

Adriana: We met at an actor’s direction class and from then on we started writing, developing self-produced projects and discussing fiction scripts. We did a short film and then this documentary. This is an informal collective, not a company. We just met at each other’s houses.

Eduardo: It’s a collective that only lasts for each film. It’s not an organization that will necessarily continue on making films; there is no plan that forces us to keep on working together.

How can three directors work at the same time?

Lucas: It was accidental. Eduardo found out about Burmeister and he told us his story. We talked about directing it the three of us but we didn’t think much about it. We are all very different. In a way we complement each other. Adriana pays more attention to production issues, Lucas is more worried about the image and I am more concentrated on the narrative. So we trust each other and let everyone have the final word on each specialty.

A: we try to reach a consensus. The most difficult moments were in the post-production phase. Shooting was too fast to allow any discussion. During the editing we discussed pretty much every single shot. In extreme cases, when there was no consensus possible, it went to a vote. It turned out to be a much better picture than if only one of us had directed it because the different perspectives were all included in the film. When one of us wanted to include a shot he or she had to convince the other two.

E: It is a good thing we are three, it avoided a lot of problems. How did you come up with the idea to make this film?

E: I did a small short film with my children called El Refugio de los Caracoles which was selected for a small festival in Argentina. There I was talking to the organizers who told me about this man who travels from town to town making movies with the locals. A few years later the Argentine Film Institute created some subsidies for low-budget documentaries. It was then that we got together to work on the script.

How was working with Daniel Burmeister?

L: It was easy because we were working in a very small town. We respected his time and method of working and we only asked him to do re-takes very occasionally.

A: When we were developing the project we realized that we should concentrate all the shooting in one place and record the process from the beginning to the end.

E: Anyway, if we‘d had to travel from town to town it would have been an odyssey because he works very fast. He once told us that the time it took him to shoot a scene was the same we took to set the tripod (laughs). He was a very charismatic, very funny man. At one point he got tired of being followed around everywhere but that’s normal.

Would you like to one day produce the same kind of films as Burmeister?

L: Not really. What interested us was to see how he worked, his process and method.

E: Yes, what interested us was that anti-industrial and almost revolutionary approach to filmmaking. We wanted to see how this man has managed to make a living from this. In a way we reclaim that anti-industrial approach. We prefer that form to the Hollywood way.

Do you plan to continue to work together?

A: We plan to help each other on future projects, yes. The idea is to keep on collaborating with each other but not necessarily direct together.

Do you feel the Oscar for The Secret in their Eyes has helped change Argentinean cinema?

L: If there is change I haven’t seen it. At least not in practical terms.

E: Yes, I don’t think Argentinean cinema is stronger because of the Oscar. But it is definitely gaining more respect.

A: To be fair The Secret in their Eyes is very different from most of Argentinean productions because it was huge. There are only 2 or 3 of this size per year. But on the other hand we produce something like 60 low-budget films a year.

By Fernando Vasquez