Bettina Perut

Quote:
Los Reyes (“The Kings”) is the oldest skatepark in the Chilean capital of Santiago. This story is about the real kings here: Football and Chola, two stray dogs that have made their home in this open space full of hurtling skateboards and rowdy teenagers. The energetic Chola loves to play with the balls she finds lying around. She positions them at the edge of the bowls where the skaters show off their tricks and tries to catch them just before they fall down. The older dog, Football, looks on impatiently and barks at Chola until she finally drops the balls. The teenagers around them come from very different, sometimes troubled backgrounds. They each have their own story, which they recount to us in voiceover. In this almost fairy-tale-like film, the phenomenal, dreamlike camerawork centers almost entirely on the subtle interaction between the two dogs, as they play with a ball, a stick, a stone and each other.Read More »

Noticias is an observational film that using the fragmented format of a newscast program proposes a cinematic glance to the same reality depicted daily by the media. By means of a radical approach to journalistic and anti-journalistic facts, the film puts into play the ways in which collective truths are made.Read More »

Synopsis
While researching locations for their 2009 film Noticias, documentary filmmakers Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff stumbled upon Salar de Surire, a salt flat in the Chilean Andes at an altitude of 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). “It was like being on the moon,” they explained in an interview. The vast, barren landscape and the thin mountain air left them feeling intensely alienated, and in Surire they make that sensation palpable. The long observational shots capture a desolate landscape in which human life at first seems to play only a marginal role. But the camera challenges this first impression, focusing on the wealth of flora and fauna in the foreground, while off in the distance a colorful convoy of transporter trucks takes away the salt – which, despite Salar de Surire’s protected status, is mined with the approval of the authorities. Perut and Osnovikoff document this disappearing world using their characteristic and highly articulate visual idiom, particularly recognizable for its grand wide shots and the pin-sharp extreme close-ups. The last original inhabitants of the region look on in resignation from a distance at the exploitation of their habitat. Meanwhile, they tend to their llamas, subject the dog to a risky-looking trim and prepare for a trip into town.Read More »