Marco Bechis (67) directed one of the most emblematic films made about the military dictatorship. “Olympus Garage”released in 1999, was inspired by his own experience as a captive in a detention centertoday erased from the face of the earth, the athletic Club.
In 1977, Bechis He was captured by the army and locked up in a cell for 15 days. Blindfolded, chained and almost without food, he endured – like all the detainees in the place – long interrogations between torture sessions, where his executioners tried to find out the whereabouts of acquaintances linked to guerrilla groups.
Son of a senior Italian Fiat executive; Marco was born in Chile, but he lived an important part of his life in Argentina, because his father was stationed in Buenos Aires during his childhood. It was precisely his family’s contacts with the local business world that saved the filmmaker’s life. Specifically, Billy Reynalowner of the Austral airline, was the one who interceded before the General Suarez Mason, to free Marco. He went from hiding to a legal prison for a few months (Devoto first, the U9 of La Plata, later) and from there, he left directly for Ezeiza, with the express prohibition of returning to the country.
But the dictatorship ended and Bechis returned a thousand times to film his films and maintain the ties that always linked him to Argentina. His last return, a few days ago, had the objective of presenting the memoirs he wrote over 10 years, to finish fitting together the loose stitches of a wound that does not heal: that of being a survivor who left behind thousands of companions who could not escape death. The book that tells his biography is called “The loneliness of the subversive” (Adriana Hidalgo/A.hache) and covers his life from childhood to the confrontation with his captors, in 2010, in the trial in which he gives his testimony. “If I am here speaking it means that everyone else is dead,” he says in the final pages of the text, where he repeats the detail of his endless grief: guilt and shame but also the awareness of being a victim, like so many others. , to whom their executioners have not even granted the benefit of a confession.
In Buenos Aires, Bechis had a warm and deep talk with NOTICIAS, in which he talked about his history, cinema and how to bring the horror of the past to the screen.
NEWS: How did your experiences during the dictatorship shape your later life?
Marco Bechis: There were several traumas in my life. The first was the death of my younger brother, during my childhood. Then the catastrophe that happened to me when I was 20 years old and that was definitive. From that moment on I live the life of a survivor, who feels ashamed for being alive while his companions are not. Someone who has something like this happen to them has to rewrite their biography. An event like this forces you to review your entire life. And that’s kind of the subject of the book.
NEWS: At that time many young people were at risk. A generation that wanted to change the world and that ends up colliding with a devastating power.
Bechis: If I had not returned to live alone here, in 1975, when my family was already living in Italy, if I had not had a strong need to identify with a planetary movement that sought to live in a different way, what happened to me would not have happened to me. Although it seemed to me that militancy, as it existed in those years, was going to lead to defeat. It is impossible to think that a group of young people can conquer a State, destroying an army armed by the Americans. It happened in Cuba, due to a series of coincidences, and that created an illusion. But I wanted to be a primary school teacher, to dedicate myself to freeing children’s heads.
NEWS: Did the youth of that time have a greater interest in changing the world than today?
Bechis: At that time it seemed that the world could be changed. Today it is self-destructing. This is a fact, unless young people fight to completely change the way of life on the planet. I think the perception of how serious the situation is is identical. But the ways to react are different. Today there are new enemies. When Chile happened in ’73, I was in Italy and we went to all the organizations to support the fight against Pinochet. We had another idea of the world, another map. Today each young person is in the center of the map, with Google Earth. You don’t look at the full map anymore. It is a bit of a metaphor for how a young person today relates to the world. However, they also have feelings of anger. I have a son who doesn’t want to go into the system. He is 38 years old, he does odd jobs, he gets by, he is half a hippie, he is a yoga teacher, has a degree in philosophy and a sound engineer, but he would never work in a publishing house with a fixed schedule. He says it: “I, in this world, am going to do the least possible.”
NEWS: “Garage Olimpo” is a very important film for Argentines, perhaps the best made about the dictatorship.
Bechis: I recognize that it has a persistence that does not depend on me, it goes beyond my hands. In Italy it is a classic. In France too. I made it as if it were an autobiography, although the character is female and does not have the same story as me. But it reflects the same situation I was in. The place is rebuilt as the Athletic Club. I needed distance to make this film. I wrote the script with an Italian screenwriter, in Milan. It was filmed as a documentary. And I used a method. For example, there were 10 or 12 actors. I told them: “I’m not going to give you a script, you have to prepare for a month and a half doing what this man tells you.” That man was a former guerrilla who had been a sailor in the ESMA. The guy was in charge of preparing them militarily. They had to know how to enter a house, use a weapon, march. And for a month and a half they did that without knowing what each of their characters was. I didn’t have it defined either. When I filmed the kidnapping of the protagonist, they decided where they were located in the scene. That gave an innovative language to the film.
NEWS: Argentine cinema has returned very little to that past over the years.
Bechis: The first two films about the dictatorship are “The Official History” and “The Night of the Pencils,” made in 1985, when the film industry was in the hands of people who had the means, like Héctor Olivera and Luis Puenzo. I don’t like either of them. That’s why I made “Garage Olimpo”.
NEWS: And did you like “Argentina, 1985”?
Bechis: It is not a film for Argentines, it is for Prime Video. Because the issue is how to tell the horror. It is the problem that I posed. In “Argentina, 1985” they compressed the horror into the story of two or three witnesses, with a funny first part, where Strassera’s son is a detective or with the little game of casting the collaborators. Strassera is the hero, he appears as the only winner of that story. The structure is completely American to avoid telling the horror. Santiago Miter had made a film that I thought was brilliant, “The Student,” so I have nothing against him. But there is no director here. I’m not interested in objectivity. For that I watch “The Judgment” of Ulysses of the Order, based only on archival material. And when I see Ricardo Darín playing Strassera, it’s as if he was tired of playing himself.
Image gallery
