Enlightened Letters
(Cortázar & Antín, Cartas iluminadas)
Cinthia Rajschmir / Argentina / 2018 / 66 min
CINEFEM Women International Film Festival
Audience AwardTrieste Latin American Film Festival
Habana International Film Festival
BAFICI Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival
Pricing
Related Films
I Owe You a Letter About Brazil(Fico te devendo uma carta sobre o Brasil)Carol BenjaminConnecting the country’s recent past and the turbulent present context, I Owe You a Letter About Brazil investigates the persistence of silence as a ...
About Everything There Is to Know(De todas las cosas que se han de saber)Sofía VelázquezAbout Everything There Is to Know was shot in Santiago de Chuco, an Andean town in northern Peru, where the writer César Vallejo—one of the most ...
Gabo & Cinema(Gabo y el cine)José Luis García AgrazGabo & Cinema is a commendable and well-documented contribution to the general study of Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez’s cultural ...
Nine Letters to Bertha(Nueve Cartas a Berta)Basilio Martín PatinoA student’s correspondence with the daughter of a Spanish exile. Narrated via letters written by Lorenzo, a student who met the daughter of a Spanish ...
Zurita, You Will See not to See(Zurita, Verás no Ver)Alejandra Carmona CannobbioNational Literature Award Laureate Raúl Zurita is one of Latin America’s most celebrated and controversial living poets. He is not only a great poet ...Synopsis
Spanish with English subtitles
With Manuel Antin, Graciela Borges, Dora Baret, Ricardo Aronovich
An exploration of the profound and transformative relationship between two iconic figures of Latin American cinema and literature: filmmaker Manuel Antín and writer Julio Cortázar. Set in the vibrant 1960s, Enlightened Letters delves into their epistolary exchange, which bridged continents and sparked creative collaboration. Through their letters, Antín adapted three of Cortázar’s stories into films, forging a unique artistic partnership that transcended boundaries of medium and geography.
The film not only celebrates their shared artistic vision but also reflects on the enduring impact of their collaboration on Latin American culture. By intertwining personal correspondence with cinematic history, Enlightened Letters offers an intimate glimpse into the creative process and the friendship that shaped it.
Related Subjects
About the Director
Cinthia Rajschmir is a full-time documentary filmmaker. She completed a master’s degree in Documentary Film (Universidad del Cine). She is a Communication Specialist, Pedagogue, and Journalist. She has received 17 awards and has been a member of the jury at national and international film festivals.
Rajschmir is the producer, director, and screenwriter of the documentary films Sara Facio: Haber sido ahí (2023), Cortázar & Antin: Cartas Iluminadas (2018), and of the short film Huyendo del tiempo perdido (2013).
Press
“A journey through a fruitful friendship between cinema and literature.” – Adolfo C. Martínez, La Nación
Notes on the Film
“A few years ago, I had the opportunity to access the letters that writer Julio Cortázar sent to the film director Manuel Antín in the 1960s. These letters, received by Antín, are testimony to his connection with the writer Julio Cortázar, from whom he adapted four stories for the making of three of his first films.
A whole era full of creativity and ideological ebullition opened up through this correspondence and the films directed by Antín, one of which, Circe, was scripted by Cortázar by return mail.
In this way, after having read the letters and listened to the phono-letter sent by Cortázar while they were working on the script for Circe, materials that gave an account of the difficult link between literature and cinema, of the friendship that grew between them defying the difficulties of the mail, economic issues, the discord between both genres, I began to develop the project Cortázar & Antín, Cartas iluminadas.”
– Cinthia Rajschmir, Director