Tango, Not-For-Export

Synopsis

This collection of 4 short films evokes everyday experiences of music making in the contemporary neighborhood tango scenes of Buenos Aires. They were made as stand alone pieces that co-exist on an interactive website but also work as a collection that chronicles my field experiences in the Buenos Aires neighborhood tango scenes from 2010-2014. Guided by themes instead of a script, the films explore the social aesthetics of neighborhood tango bars, festivals, and other grassroots projects, using filmmaking as a mode through which to evoke sensory understandings of tango that look beyond the genre’s exoticized global stereotypes. Embracing a flexible understanding of locality as a feeling more than as something fixed, these films explore the production of musical intimacy in modern cities–an intimacy capable of crossing national, generational, and cultural boundaries.

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