Pablo César

Pablo César (pronounced [ˈpaβlo ˈsesaɾ]; born 26 February 1962) is an Argentine film director, film producer, screenwriter and film professor. He began his filmmaking career in the Buenos Aires independent short film scene shot in the Super 8 format, making more than twenty works between the 1970s and 1980s, among which Del génesis (1980), Ecce civitas nostra (1984)—co-directed with Jorge Polaco—and Memorias de un loco (1985) stand out. In 1983, César directed his first feature film De las caras del espejo, shot in Super-8. He turned to the 35 mm film format from his second feature onwards, La sagrada familia (1988), an ironic film that works as a critique of the abuse of power, as well as an allegory of the era of the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina. César has been a pioneer in developing co-productions between his country and nations in Africa and South Asia. He is the first Argentine director to film co-productions with India, and the only Latin American filmmaker who has directed co-productions with African countries, among them Tunisia, Benin, Mali, Angola, Namibia, Ethiopia, Morocco and Ivory Coast. His first co-productions were the so-called "trilogy of triumphs", inspired by ancient Sufi poems and texts on different mythologies. It is formed by the films Equinoccio, el jardín de las rosas (1991), Unicornio, el jardín de las frutas (1996) and Afrodita, el jardín de los perfumes (1998), filmed in Tunisia, India and Mali, respectively. In 1994, he released Fuego gris, a film with no dialogues that features 17 original compositions by Luis Alberto Spinetta, the only soundtrack in the musician's career. It was followed by the films Sangre (2003)—in which he veered towards a more realistic and autobiographical style— and Hunabkú (2007), shot in El Calafate and the Perito Moreno glacier.