Screened as part of NZIFF 2010

The Peddler 2009

El ambulante

Directed by Lucas Marcheggiano, Adriana Yurcovich, Eduardo de la Serna

This gentle documentary follows a grandfatherly Argentinean who earns a living travelling from pueblo to pueblo making and showing action movies featuring the locals. “Extraordinary… a real charmer.” — Variety

Argentina In Spanish with English subtitles
84 minutes DigiBeta

Producer

Adriana Yurcovich

Photography

Lucas Marcheggiano
,
Pablo Parra

Sound

Damián Turkieh

Music

Roque Banos

With

Daniel Burmeister

Festivals

Amsterdam Documentary 2009; San Francisco 2010

Elsewhere

Daniel Burmeister is an itinerant artisan filmmaker who travels around rural Argentina making action movies with the locals, in exchange for food and board. He’s got a bundle of ready-made scripts he can easily adapt (this documentary charts the making – or remaking – of Let’s Kill Uncle), and if he has to draft in ringer firemen for communities too small to have their own fire brigade, so be it. In an era when movies are becoming ever more globalised, The Peddler celebrates an island of quirky cinematic calm in which filmmaking is all about community. Sometimes the demands of that community interfere with Burmeister’s plans and the ramshackle, grandfatherly filmmaker struggles to finesse his modicum of clout into the authority necessary to deliver a finished film that his current adopted home will embrace and be proud of. The filmmakers’ approach is as relaxed and easygoing as their subject’s, resulting in a warm, inviting movie that reminds us of how rich and diverse a cultural practice filmmaking and filmgoing can be. — AL