One of the most reported trends in the migration from LA to more affordable places involves people who work in Hollywood. While a certain number of these stories focus on moving to places that give tax breaks to film productions, the human-interest beat focuses its attention on the people who take the opportunity to reinvent their careers. A financial crisis in Argentina in 2001 caused professionals in many fields to pursue their passions in the arts, as their formerly reliable careers went belly-up. This caused a flurry of great books to be written and made for a paradigm shift in Argentine cinema, best illustrated by the film collective El Pampero Cine.

Before the crisis, much of Argentina’s homegrown cinema was government-sponsored, and that came at a creative price. Certain subjects and points of view were taboo. Alternative funding for big projects often came with notes that could be as constraining as the governmental rules. The founders of the El Pampero Cine collective (who preferred to avoid funding censorship) decided that a new approach was needed. Filmmaking had become a process where finding funds and marketing finished products consumed too much time. Looking to the French New Wave for inspiration, they decided to work with small crews (where people did multiple jobs) with equipment that they owned outright. This allowed them to work continuously on each other’s projects and led to creative solutions to low budgets. Do you need that special effect if you have good actors reacting to something unseen with good sound design? Can you establish a foreign locale with one of your actors standing in front of a landmark, filmed quickly with an iPhone without securing permits? When filmmakers adopt creative solutions, they can focus on the actual process of making films. 

The collective is gaining a higher profile. Criterion Channel recently offered their four-hour opus, Trenque Laquen (2022) on its streaming service. This has caused more people to discover their 14-hour long La Flor (2018), which has turned up on YouTube. Shot over a period of ten years, it consists of six interconnected films that star the same four actresses. While it isn’t likely to be mistaken for a Hollywood product, the craftsmanship is solid. Perhaps as more people leave The Industry, the ones who are passionate about film will start their own film collectives in unlikely places. It’s a nice alternative to tentpole movies that must please foreign censors in order to exist.