The Shadow is an intimate audiovisual essay, a confessional narration about the rise and fall of a house, of a family, of a cinematography. And about the director’s father, Hector Olivera, in his success years as the director of “La Patagonia Rebelde” (The Rebel Patagonia); as a co-productor of the grossing movies of Olmedo and Porcel; as a host of the lavish parties that were developed in the house; of the encounter with left-wing intellectuals like Bayer, Soriano, Cossa. The refinement and solitude of the house which worked more as a scenary than a home. To grow in a walled garden that contained the innocence of childhood, while outside a devastating dictatorship occurred. To take down the monumental shadow of the father in order to become oneself.
The movie was realized along 10 years, a process of deep search, in which the director worked with a Super 8 moviola and digital video, mixing formats, finding narrative construction. The sound design, created by ZYPCE, challenging and questioning the image, and generating a sound memoir that rescues sounds from the seventies.
As the director’s family house gets demolished, memory emerges from its hideouts as fragments of super 8 footage. An audiovisual essay where analog images blended with digital ones rewrite the director’s biography and reveal certain clues: the house as a stage and a monument; family relationships; life under Military dictatorship in the 70’s and the father figure as a tycoon of Argentine Cinema.
