As part of the Year of Cortázar celebrations, organized by the Ministry of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires, the Centro Cultural Recoleta will premiere L'Exotique and Lo Cotidiano, two short films I created based on home movie footage shot by Julio Cortázar himself.
This unique documentary material offers a rare glimpse into Cortázar’s perspective, best known for his novel Hopscotch (1963), which is regarded as one of the most significant works of 20th-century literature and a cornerstone of the Latin American Boom.
“I am thrilled to have been invited to Buenos Aires to participate in one of several round tables about Cortázar at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, and to contribute L'Exotique and Lo Cotidiano to the exhibit,” said Montes-Bradley.
L’Exotique
Exoticism held a significant place in Cortázar’s generation, who once felt a profound connection with Freddy Guthmann, the indefatigable traveler and solitary navigator. However, it was only after permanently settling in Paris that the Argentine writer could personally experience the thrill and intensity of global displacement. His destiny was no longer confined to internal exile in the province of Buenos Aires or at the University of Cuyo in Mendoza. From that moment, Cortázar joined a cohort of intellectuals, including Cabrera Infante, Italo Calvino, and Octavio Paz. In the final scenes of this short film, the then-Mexican ambassador to India welcomes Julio and his wife Aurora Bernárdez in New Delhi, where they join a dance that both seem to embrace with a bourgeois devotion for Orientalism.
Lo Cotidiano
Julio Cortázar’s family life was shaped by foundational myths of which the writer was not fully aware. Consider the alleged status of his father as a diplomat, his "accidental" birth in Brussels, a capricious French accent, and a series of romantic relationships that the author of Hopscotch used as the basis for some of his literary musings. With the documentary spirit that characterized his gaze through the camera, Cortázar captures moments in which he plays at finding himself with Carol Dunlop in common places around Paris. These images, playful and intimate, reveal the other side of the exoticism presented in L’Exotique. In Lo Cotidiano, Cortázar shares his wonder at the familiarity with Carol’s semi-nude body, suggesting yet another exploration.
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