“Lucía Seles is the + selfless, absorbed and romantic with herself in the world and she doesn’t want to be treated = no director living or dead besides she’s a classical guitarist a graphomaniac better than ella fitzgerald when ef was alive and too many more things than anyone.”
– Lucía Seles’ director bio
Suis generis works of avant-garde comedy, Lucía Seles’ tennis tetralogy, HATE UNCHAINED, are a sight to behold. Filmed over a few days on prosumer cameras working from improvised scripts, the films operate in a language uniquely their own. Seles incorporates on-screen text-based poetry, verbal slapstick, a documentarian’s eye, compelling characters, stray camera mistakes, love triangles, and more into an DIY screwball stew that lands somewhere between The Office, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, the work of El Pampero Cine, and Samuel Beckett. These are films that obey their own logic of dramatic storytelling, film aesthetics, and poetry to an often disorienting degree. During their premiere in Germany, no less than Ulrike Ottinger seemed to be baffled by Seles’ odd rhythms and unique potpourri of experimental techniques. We’re proud to host their New York premieres including a special conversation with Seles after the October 20th screening of SMOG IN YOUR HEART.
Focusing on the petty squabbles and romantic employees of a tennis complex on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the series is best enjoyed by starting with SMOG IN YOUR HEART. Setting the stage for the interpersonal dynamics and romantic crushes of the five main characters, SMOG IN YOUR HEART establishes a screwball workplace dynamic that the next three films continually tease at and subvert through all sorts of absurdist detours. SATURDAYS DISORDERS, for example, sets half of its running time following a Kafkaesque pilgrimage around the suburbs of a small town, while TERMINAL YOUNG completely abandons the tennis complex for a roller rink where one of the characters is having a birthday party mainly filled with strangers.
SMOG IN YOUR HEART (Smog en tu corazón)
dir. Lucía Seles, 2022
Argentina. 112 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15 – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20 – 5PM FT Q&A
MONDAY, OCTOBER 28 – 7:30PM
“How difficult it is when a person owns a tennis complex and mixes that with his other feelings.”
– Lucía Seles’ synopsis
Five characters working at a tennis complex: the owner Manuel, a tennis teacher who only goes by the name La Tenista, new recruit Sergio from San Juan, shy manager Lujan, and a dopey accountant Aristegui. The series begins in a romantic-comedy vein, introducing the protagonists and quickly drawing up a love pentagon between them as they talk about Singing in the Rain and whether people with dark eyes can love people with light eyes. Tensions flare as they consider making a pilgrimage to the cathedral of the town of Lujan, but don’t actually invite Lujan. Less a romantic melodrama than an anarchic cinematic poem of disorder, desire, absurdity, futility, labor, and miscommunication; Seles sets the tone strong in the first film through a chaotic montage of dramatic tensions, visual gags, and textual poetry.
SATURDAYS DISORDERS (Sábados desordenados)
dir. Lucía Seles, 2022
Argentina. 97 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2 – 10PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15 – 10PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29 – 7:30PM
“Saturdays Disorders is a non-professional tennis final linked to a not-so-famous way of the cross, apart from the fact that loneliness is undoubtedly the virgin, the mother and the most beautiful sister of all plans every day of the week.”
– Lucía Seles’ synopsis
Taking a bizarre left-turn from Smog in Your Heart’s labyrinthine romantic entanglements, Saturdays Disorders plays like an extended riff on a late scene conversation in that prior film with Lujan traveling to the town of Lujan to undertake a pilgrimage of the lesser stations of the cross. A seemingly endless Kafkaesque journey through the suburbs of Lujan ensues while the tennis complex holds a tennis competition with only two entreats, Selena Prat (Seles herself, but credited as Selena Prat) and a friend of La Tenista’s father. Injuries, misunderstandings, fairground rides, puffy jackets, on-screen poetry, barking dogs, and some oddly achieved notes of comic futility ensue.
WEAK RANGERS
dir. Lucía Seles, 2022
Argentina. 126 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 7 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 7:30PM
“Neither the cold nor the storms can calm you down when you are faced with a new boss that you would not like.”
– Lucía Seles’ synopsis
The third film in the series showcases Seles’ most chaotic experimentation with time, see-sawing all over the place, simultaneously catching the same characters in various scenes through a relentless montage of poetic asides. La Tenista has taken over the complex, Lujan gets a haircut by Sergio, Manuel’s brother comes to visit (and wrestles him to the ground), and much more. The third film in the series shows Seles at her most rambling and discursive, working completely non-linearly in a disorienting montage of scenes truncated and intercut with each other so that the same characters often appear simultaneously in multiple instances of time. The result is something uniquely Seles’ own: a cubist-esque piece of freeform cinematic comedic poetry.
TERMINAL YOUNG
dir. Lucía Seles, 2023
Argentina. 128 min.
In Spanish with English subtitles
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3 – 10PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 7 – 10PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16 – 10PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 10PM
“A light-eyed man who, thanks to his best friend, is an accountant at a tennis complex, rebels against the universe and himself and becomes an accountant at a flower shop.”
– Lucía Seles’ synopsis
Picking up a year after the first three films in the tetralogy, Terminal Young is set largely during Sergio’s birthday party at a roller rink. Organized by Sergio’s mom, the party is filled with random guests invited by Manuel including a real estate agent and a young blonde choir boy Manuel met at a terminal, nicknamed The Terminal Young. A mix of screwball tensions and awkward miscommunications, Seles finishes off her series in true style i.e. randomly, chaotically, irreverently, and hysterically. Do the romantic tensions established in Smog in Your Heart ever get resolved? Do the characters ever morph out of their bizarre and highly specific archetypes? Does Lujan ever make it to Lujan? See the movie and find out, but for anyone already keen to Seles’ relentless inventiveness, you may already know what sort of odd dramatic teases could be in store.