Cathy Brown of “Expat Daily News South America” recently interviewed expat Ginger Gentile of “San Telmo Productions” on life and business in Argentina:Sooo, where are you from and how did you end up in Argentina?
I grew up on the eastern end of Long Island in a small town and then went to Columbia University in New York where I studied history and was very involved in the student activism—from union organizing to fighting sweatshops, women’s rights, anti-colonialism. I always felt a bit like a fish out of water in the US. After September 11th, I began to feel uncomfortable with the political situation in the US. After graduating in 2002, I spent a summer waitressing and then headed down to Guatemala to study Spanish in Xela, and then spent a month in Cuba before going down to Buenos Aires. My plan was to stay for a few months, learn Spanish and then head back to New York. I never thought I would make Buenos Aires my home and become a filmmaker, with my own production company before the age of 30!
Tell me a little bit about your latest project, Goals for Girls..
Goals for Girls follows the struggle of a group of girls from the infamous Villa 31 shantytown in Buenos Aires who want to play a sport that is off limits to women in Argentina: soccer. With humor and colorful imagery, this documentary explores what it takes for girls to score goals on the field and reach their life goals when their families and society sees them only as future maids, criminals or teenage mothers. The experiences of these “slum soccer girls” will not only be documented by filmmakers, myself and my husband, Gabriel Balanovsky, who have been following them since 2008, but the girls themselves will contribute though a video workshop where they will learn how to interview and do basic camerawork. The audience can get uncensored view into their world and the girls will begin to take back the narrative of their own lives.
Please give us some insight into the daily lives of these girls.
Like most teenagers, they spend a lot of time texting, worrying about clothes, studying in school and in extracurricular activities—they not only play soccer, but some take music lessons and acting classes. The difference is that they also tend to have a lot of responsibility at home—many of their mothers work as maids, so the last thing they want to do is clean when they get home, so the girls do that. They also take care of siblings. In the shantytown, the goal for many young girls is to become a mother and family is considered to be very important. They also have to deal with living in a neighborhood that is literally across the tracks from the richest neighborhood in Buenos Aires, but lacks sewers, paved roads and basic services. When it rains, it floods. In the winter their houses lack heat and in summer get crowded and hot. And because they and 30,000 others live on public land, there is the constant danger of eviction.
What has been the most rewarding thing about making this film and getting to know these girls?
Seeing the girls grow-up and get better on the field, because getting better means that they learn to work as a team: they pass more, have strategy and don’t get angry at each other. Having a girl look at me and tell me that she always wanted to take photos but never had a camera. When we showed them and their families a cut of what we have been filming since 2008, ( you can see it at http://www.goalsforgirlsthemovie.org/ ) they saw their reality reflected on the screen—how they fight for the space to play, how they rely on each other for support—and something remarkable happened. One family started making the boys (not just the sole daughter) clean house and another girl who was thinking of quitting because of squabbles with teammates began to show up to practice regularly again.The reactions with Argentine audiences have especially been rewarding,considering that female soccer is not even on the radar there.
Independent documentary films like this are expensive and time-consuming. How can readers help you see this project through?
Right now we are looking for donations and corporate sponsors for Goals for Girls. While we have won a grant from the Argentine government, we need funds to start the video workshop for the film and finish the movie. Readers can go to http://www.goalsforgirlsthemovie.org/ to learn more and to donate. Donations are tax deductable in US. They can also become our fan on facebook To help promote the movie, we have assembled a team of 4 expats and 3 Argentines to do social networking and public relations, and we’ve already gotten tons of local and international press. People can also link to us and blog about the movie. And, if they want to raise money in a fun way, we can send them a screening kit so that they can show the short film in their home or at avenue and then pass the hat.
When is the film expected to be released?
Goals for Girls is set to be released in June 2011, during the women’s World Cup in Germany—we want to take advantage of press coverage. There are very few movies about girls soccer (except Bend it Like Beckam, which was a huge success!). Millions of young women play soccer in the US and more play it all over the world, some in similar conditions to our girls, so the potential for interest is huge.
When you’re not filming Goals for Girls, what do you do?
I’m very lucky that when I’m not working on this movie, I’m developing other documentaries and fiction films with San Telmo Productions, my production company. We also offer for-hire production services to foreign production companies. It’s not easy making a living in the film industry, but it’s never dull! I also try to promote filming in Argentina as a low-cost yet high-quality option. Most of our clients are based in North America and Europe and are surprised at the technology and skilled technicians that are available. While producing a movie in Hollywood is out of reach for most people reading this now, producing a documentary or feature in Argentina costs 1% to 10% of what it costs in Hollywood. To give a quick example “The Secret of their Eyes” which won the Oscar for best foreign film cost 8 million dollars, which is a huge budget here, and you can see it through the scale of the production.
What are a few of your favorite documentary or independent movies that you can recommend?
There are so many, so I’ll just recommend Argentine films. “Luca” is a fabulous documentary about an expat-rock star, Luca Prodan, who grew up in Italy to a Australian father and Scottish mother, and was sent to boarding school in England, which he hated. He then wound up in Argentina to kick heroine and fronted Sumo, one of the greatest rock bands you’ve never heard of. The documentary shows how from birth his parents and society led him to kill himself. “Estrellas” is a documentary-comedy about a real-life film producer who lives in a shantytown in Buenos Aires. His goal is to get producers to use real poor people to play them on TV.
Any plans to move back to the US, or do you plan on staying put in Argentina for a while?
I haven’t been back since 2005! I definitely want to go back to participate in film festivals, show my husband my home town and maybe work on a movie, but I consider myself a immigrant. The Argentine film industry is in a very interesting moment as it is moving to a more industrial model, and it is something I want to be a part of, creating a Latin American Hollywood. Most people don’t know that Argentina produces more than 60 movies a year and has a hundred years of film shooting.
Best advice for someone in the states deciding whether or not they should make the move abroad...
Don’t expect to replicate your life in the US abroad. If I stayed in the US, I probably would have been an employee in a company or a non-profit, I would have never started my own business or even thought of being a movie director. While I do these things because I love them, it has been easier for us to create projects than to get work on other people’s projects. Most salary jobs in Argentina require long hours and are low on pay, there is a reason why so many people have their own business.
Ginger Gentile has been living in Buenos Aires since 2002 after graduating from Columbia University. After working in a variety of roles in the film industry, from assistant director to editor, she started San Telmo Productions with her Argentine husband Gabriel Balanovsky, which focuses on providing production services to foreign film shoots and creating original film and TV content. www.santelmoproductions.com. She blogs at www.filminginargentina.wordpress.com
Re-print of the interview “Expat Interview With Documentary Filmmaker Ginger Gentile” written and conducted by Cathy Brown of Expat Daily News South America
The original interview is at:
http://www.expatdailynewssouthamerica.com/2010/06/expat-interview-with-documentary.html
