At 14 years, Felix “Chango” Monti He went looking for a destination. He thought that his thing would be the costumes, but when he entered a film studio, he was left with his mouth open, captivated by how the lights and shadows drew climates, put together worlds. And he took on the responsibility of the creator. Let the light be made. And there was light. “I must thank all my training because now there are universities where children know and learn, but my growth was almost like in the baroque era: I would stand behind a teacher and follow him, then with another teacher and so on. I was building experiences and looks. Unconsciously, they were guiding me down that path. As Luis (Puenzo) says in the documentary, we played a lot at work as if we knew what we were doing and we were making it up. In that sense, it was quite an interesting game, ”he says. The documentary he refers to is the one made by Alejandra Martín and Paola Rizzi, “Chango, the light discovers”, which will be seen from Sunday June 5 at Malba Cine, every Sunday until July 3 inclusive. It is a journey through the work of one of the best directors of photography in Argentina, a man who worked with Pino Solanas, María Luisa Bemberg, Lucrecia Martel, Ariel Winograd, Luis Puenzo, Juan José Campanella, among others. Monti is the maker of the only two Oscars that Argentina had, with “The official story” Y “The Secret in Their Eyes”and also left its mark on the theater.
In his apartment in La Boca, the roar of La Bombonera mixes with the cuckoo clock he has in the kitchen. He has just finished filming “The Manager”, Winograd’s new comedy, the seventh film they have made together. “Wino has a very good character. But he has great anxiety, a lot of speed, the time to change a lens already makes him sick, ”he laughs.
News: How do you get along with time?
Feelix “Chango” Monti: Well, we’re fine, we’re like a family now. We get along (laughs).
News: Yours are already 70 years of experience!
Mount: I don’t count them, they are there (laughs). They are just figures. Each film or each structure that one begins to create has its own laws and is built. Also, the times are very different. The cycle that I feel is the most solid is the one at the end of the 80s, with “La historia oficial”, “Sur”, “El exilio de Gardel”. It was the moment of greatest creative work and search. That world that reaches the 90s, with “That is not spoken of”, by María Luisa (Bemberg). There is a union with the theatrical. (in those films) Those two worlds that interest me came together.
News: I heard him say that comedies, a genre he has been doing lately, are not what interests him the most.
Monti: Comedy is difficult, drama helps you, it has a lot of things that support you and you build a structure. Comedy, on the other hand, is so open that it has nowhere to hold on, it makes itself. In that sense, I learned a lot, everything has to be more spontaneous. You have to walk that dangerous path of building but without imposing a gaze, the camera and the light in comedy are more neutral. I feel more comfortable in Pino’s world, for example, but in reality everything interests me.
News: Is that the key, that everything interests you and that you are still looking for?
Mount: Of course, I think every movie is like the path of a crush. First there is a great approach, a great passion, then a stage of knowledge of the structure begins, and you build that image that the text and the actors transmit to you.
News: In the documentary, he is the protagonist. What was it like being the center, being used to putting the focus on others?
Mount: It’s a game of Alejandra and Paola, they kind of managed to convince me to get into that game. It cost me a lot. But I wanted to give them as much freedom as possible, I let them enter with the camera wherever they wanted. I never saw the film, until it premiered at the Mar del Plata Festival.
News: And what happened when you saw her?
Monti: I saw a strange man, with certain familiar features, but not very well known (smiles).
News: You also have a hard time watching your movies, right?
Mount: Yes, it is very difficult for me to see them again. I think that the look you have is always critical. It is like seeing oneself again in a speech, the points of small crises or destructuring appear. Painters like Picasso have the paintings with the image facing the wall. The fact that you have done something that haunts you, there is a great need to be able to learn what you have in front of you, to be able to do it and that is always a very difficult balance.
News: Something always escapes, something from the first idea that slips through the fingers.
Mount: Of course. I believe that precisely what makes a work alive is that it is not closed in a concept that is impossible to deviate from. Every film is full of cracks.
News: The current technological possibilities are very different from those of its beginnings, does that threaten the heart of the piece?
Mount: I think there is always a technical structure that is very strong and rigorous and a total openness to open up, to make mistakes. These two forces, construction and freedom, build your image.
News: It said that, somehow, the creator is persecuted by his creations. How much is that accentuated by being responsible for the only two Argentine films that won an Oscar?
Monti: The prizes are undoubtedly a pampering and do good, but I don’t think they are substantial. They fill us with joy but deep down it is not what moves me the most internally.
News: What moves you the most internally?
Mount: Sometimes, I tell my cameras: “I didn’t fall in love with this shot!” I need to fall in love with the shot. It is like a miracle when you realize that there is something that has been completed, it is something that has been born, has been built and is in front of you, it is like having found the lost note. With the new instantaneous visualization system of what was filmed, it has been lost, but in the analogical aspect, when I entered the room to see the champions in the laboratory, I timidly tried to look at Maria Luisa or Pino, or whoever was next to me , to see what happened to them, what they felt, because only then did someone else see the world that I had felt inside, the world that I was trying to express. Now, with digital, everything is very direct, too much.
News: In the documentary, Luis Puenzo describes him as someone who has a serious view of life
Monti: Yes, they are criticisms that I make of myself and that they make of me constantly. I’m not funny (laughs), I wouldn’t be my friend (laughs more). It seems silly but the structures, the search for mechanisms, the fact of how to build that image, which is a nebula that is forming, make me very serious.
News: When did you realize you were really good at this?
Mount: Well, I think there is a reality: you never arrive, you are always starting, every moment is new, you are always on the edge of the abyss, you are always building, not on the easy path but on the most complex one. Sometimes we plan one thing and when we go on stage I say: “No, don’t put that in, take that out”, because you feel that there is something else. You always have to be aware of what is appearing to you, of what is being born.
News: Speaking of lights and shadows, how is your own balance of the route throughout these years?
Mount: How complicated! I don’t know how to answer that, there are a number of things that were built, images that were formed. There are things that were experienced with great intention and strength and others that leave a paler memory. But they are all like points on which I am leaning and rebuilding myself.
News: Still feel like you can’t go more than two months without your camera and lights?
Mount: Yes, you feel the lack. The end of a film is like the closing of a time, you are left as deprived, that is, leaving that world, those cold mornings, those nights, leaving that world is like leaving life.
The afternoon fades. He turns on the lamps in the living room. From the 12th floor window, you can see the Nicolás Avellaneda bridge. But the poetic is neither in the twilight nor in the steel giant. Not even in Monti’s words. The poetic nests in his gaze.
