Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina  in 1964, Inés de Oliveira Cézar often includes her country in her films, sometimes as the backdrop and other times playing a main role. For example, in Foreigner, the mountains outside of Córdoba give the film the perfect imagery to represent the harsh geography surrounding the characters, who are at the mercy of the gods. In The Counting of the Damages, Oliveira sets the action in Rosario because she says this Argentinian city has the perfect combination of beauty and industrial landscapes: "para el rodaje tenía que ser Rosario. Porque era el único lugar que tenía esta cosa súper bucólica, con una costanera que por un lado te hiere con la belleza que tiene y a la vez también cuando ves esas fábricas flotando, con los barcos que cruzan. Hay belleza y a su vez presencia de lo fabril, de lo industrial" (Linterna mágica).  In Cassandra, the poverty-stricken northern region of El Chaco becomes more than just a location. The films shows the poverty of the inhabitants, the dry lands, the dust, the rocks and the cactai, but also the squalor, the lack of government support, the lack of tradition, the absence of hope.

     Oliveira not only chooses her locations carefully, but she also pays special attention to the concept of time. Mythology is a recurrent topic in her movies, and she manages to connect cultures that are separated in time and space by interweaving cultures on the screen. Regarding this point, Cynthia Tompkins says: "the director goes beyond Tarkovsky's notion of inscribing time in actions by tracing similarities between civilizations in different geographical locations and periods. [...] In Extranjera and El recuento de los daños, the gesture of cultural crossover is set against ancient Greek myths rehearsed repeatedly through the cycle of tragedies" (Experimental Latin American Cinema, 186).

     If Foreigner presents a personal version of one of Euripides's tragedies, The Counting of the Damages references Oedipus Rex. Even though Cassandra does not have such a direct connection with the Greek classics, the name of the protagonist (and the title of the film) evoke Aeschylus's Cassandra, princess of Troy, a woman who could see the future although nobody believed her. When asked about her interest in Greek mythology, Oliveira says: "Los mitos griegos no tiene fecha de vencimiento, pueden ser tomados y reinterpretados en cualquier momento histórico y cualquier contexto cultural" (escribiendocine).

     One more characteristic that defines Oliveira's fims is the mixture of fiction and documentary. She believes than fiction and documentary are two sides of the same coin: "Ficción y documento, con sus límites difusos, forman parte de la misma narración" (escribiendocine). In fact, her final project, directed in collaboration with Saula Benavente and entitled Gule, gule, crónicas de un viaje, is a documentary.

María José Domínguez

Arizona State University