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Michael set up a coffee meeting late this afternoon at Café Martinez on avenida del Libertador with Alex Sly and Ine Kracht of Rodando Cine. I asked if we could meet after he described their project to me. They are delightful people - smart, well organized and equally articulate in either Spanish or English. We had coffee and shared grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and chips as we talked about their project.
On its face, Rodando Cine is simple. Alex and Ine have acquired the rights to more than 110 movies, mainly Argentine, mainly documentaries, and are leaving Buenos Aires at the end of December in an old van with a portable projector and screen to show movies in remote and often isolated villages from Argentina to Mexico. They estimate the trip will take nine months, and while they have secured a significant percentage of the necessary funding, they need a bit of help finding the balance to be assured of finishing the journey and getting back to Bs As at the end.
Because I did not fully understand the underlying logic and motivation for the project, I had more questions than they could answer during this first meeting. After a few email exchanges, Alex and Ine graciously agreed to meet again for lunch a few days later at Café Elisabetta on avenida Sinclair, even though they were in the midst of intense preparations for their Dec. 29 departure.
The project finally began to make sense to me at this Dec. 23rd meeting. Alex and Ine had worked on an anti-poverty program a few years ago. This program took them to isolated pueblos and villages that often had almost no modern infrastructure nor economic resources. They liked the anti-poverty program, but they began to wonder how they could do more to perhaps draw attention to the often less than optimal conditions in some of these villages while giving something of value to the people living in them.
The idea they hit upon was movies. Most of these villages had no cinema. In some, the people had never seen a movie! While asking themselves what they could give to the people of these isolated areas, something that would be relatively simple and within their capabilities, they realized that taking cinema to the people was a perfect thing for them to do. They could enrich the lives of thousands of people across Latin America with a simple projection of a film, and perhaps draw media attention to the more extreme cases of hardship and deprivation, or on the other hand, garner positive attention for unique cultural and historical locations and their people.
Thus was Rodando Cine (Rolling Cinema) born.
What struck me most forcefully about Alex and Ine was their honesty and their complete absence of ulterior motivation. They were the genuine article. The project was not about their egos or their pocketbooks. Alex and Ine would of course get the satisfaction of a great adventure that would generate media coverage. They would film much of the trip and take thousands of photos. And their adventure was also a quietly fascinating personal love story. But Rodando Cine is fundamentally about giving something back that might enrich the lives of people who often have very little, from Argentina to Mexico. It is also about education and communication in the best and most personal sense.
It is easy to feel quite good about supporting this wonderful project and these two remarkable people in any way possible.
What is America? Rodando Cine is almost certain to provide us with many unique answers.
