Matías Piñeiro
Isabella - Film - 1h20min - 2020
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 22
Film
Since 2010, I have been developing a series of films that focus on the female roles in Shakespeare comedies: ROSALINDA (2010), VIOLA (2012), PRINCESS OF FRANCE (2014) HERMIA & HELENA (2016) and now, ISABELLA (2018-2020).
These films are not adaptations of the plays. I am more interested in an alternative experimental approach to fiction in which these texts inspire variations for new narratives. Shakespeare´s comedies display a group of women that have a strong connection with the female actors I work with. It is interesting to notice that while the tragedies and history plays bare the names of the male protagonists, the comedies (where women have a more relevant and active role) are titled quite differently: “As You Like It,” “Twelfth Night,” “Midsummer´s Night dream,” “Love´s Labour´s Lost” and “Measure for Measure.” I name my films after the intelligent, funny, and strong female characters of the comedies as a first step toward re-evaluating how we approach Shakespeare and what stories we consider worth telling.
ISABELLA focuses on the work of a female actor towards obtaining a role that keeps on escaping her. The film sets a kaleidoscopic mise-en-scène around the idea of success: What is success? What happens when somebody else makes the decision for you in this regard? What image of ourselves does this idea of success create in us? How do pregnancy and age model this image?
Matías Piñeiro
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1982. He has written and directed the films “Regarding Buenos Aires” (2016), “The Stolen Man” (2007), “They All Lie” (2009), “Rosalinda” (2010), “Viola” (2012), “The Princess of France” (2014), “Hermia & Helena” (2016) and “Isabella”(2020). For more than ten years, Matías Piñeiro has worked with the same group of actors and artists, thereby forming a cinematographic family that allows him to work in joy and unity in each of their projects. His last five films are part of an ongoing series called The Shakespeareads focused on the female roles in William Shakespeare’s comedies.
From 2000 to 2004, he studied filmmaking at the Universidad del Cine (Buenos Aires, Argentina) where he later taught filmmaking and film history for six years until he moved to the USA in 2011 to take up the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University. In 2015, he received an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University. He currently teaches filmmaking at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
His films have been screened in film festivals such as Berlinale, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, among others, and in museums such as Centre George Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain), MoMA (New York), Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Malba (Buenos Aires).
