Films flying high: International Film Festival of the Heights in Jujuy, Argentina

Argentina is usually known for two leading film festivals: BAFICI (Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival), known for its attraction to cinephiles, and Mar del Plata International Film Festival, the only A-list festival in Latin America. However, the country has a rich circuit of film events that are little known outside its boundaries, mainly due to their difficulties to secure regular loans and achieve institutional continuity. In this review I explore some dimensions of an overlooked film festival which celebrated its ninth edition in 2024 by focusing on the interplay between its official institutional background, aesthetics, and its potential within the regional context.

In 2014, a new film event was launched in one of the northernmost cities of Argentina: San Salvador de Jujuy, located 1,500 km from Buenos Aires and 300 km from the Bolivian border. Festival Internacional de Cine de las Alturas (International Film Festival of the Heights)[1] emerged as an exhibition where ‘the Nations that integrate the backbone of the Andes, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Argentina, can approach our audiences through their films’.[2] Showcasing ‘the best Andean cinema’[3]– a catchphrase that would become the exhibition’s main slogan – and ‘hosting an authentic celebration of brotherhood and creativity of Andean countries’[4] stand as the principal declared missions of the event. Indeed, the integration of Latin American film distribution and exhibition circuits remains a major challenge for the region, even after substantial institutional efforts in the early 2000s that resulted in only limited transformations.[5] Consequently, the Festival of the Heights stood out from the start in its attempt to bend the stiff inertia of film circulation in Latin America.

An Andean film festival is certainly peculiar in Argentina, where the industry has historically been based in Buenos Aires, and internationally renowned films often portrayed a struggling urban white middle class[6] rather than indigenous cultures. In the recent volume Small Cinemas of the Andes, Coryat et al. (2023) aim to give visibility to the small countries that were overshadowed by ‘the big three’ (Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil) by focusing on communal and non-industrial filmmaking experiences in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. However, the Festival of the Heights aims to blend the so-called Andean culture with the potential of building a local film industry.

Between 6-13 April 2024, I took part in the ninth edition of the International Film Festival of the Heights, where a total of 12 short and 62 feature films were screened, including 48 Argentine productions and 14 from other countries of the Andean corridor. During my stay, I engaged in conversations with the festival’s artistic director Daniel Desaloms, the general producer Jimena Muñoz, the director of the Institute of Audiovisual Arts of Jujuy Facundo Morales, as well as filmmakers, technicians, and even some young cinephiles who run the film club Petra von Kant.

Festival and politics

The initial outlines of the Festival of the Heights were not drawn up precisely in Jujuy, but by two experienced film professionals from Buenos Aires: Daniel Desaloms and Marcelo Pont. In 2014, after applying for loans at the National Institute of Cinema, Pont and Desaloms organised the first edition of International Film Festival of the Heights with the additional support of the municipality of San Salvador de Jujuy, the capital of the Province of Jujuy. The next year, the event achieved larger dimensions and funding when the proposal was put forward to the recently-elected governor of the Province, Gerardo Morales, from the Radical party, whose victory ended a thirty-year cycle of Peronist governors. While Peronism was characterised by nationalism and its alignment with the current left-wing Latin American presidents, Radicalism held values like market economy, institutional transparency, and the modernisation of the state.

As Daniel Desaloms indicated, Gerardo Morales was instantly interested in the festival, an event that could reposition the province in the national arena. The directors’ widespread networks and a clever design of a brand-new concept – ‘Andean Film’ – combined with the governor’s interest in boosting a new image for Jujuy gave birth to an event with regular funding, prominent guests, and growing venues every year in different small towns and villages. Over the years, the festival became part of a broader cultural policy implemented by the Province to stimulate film production. In 2018, the Jujuy Film Commission was launched to promote local natural settings and offer assistance to technicians trained at the local film school. In 2022, the Institute of Audiovisual Arts of Jujuy was founded and the governor’s son Facundo Morales was designated as its president.

Following the accounts of many interviewees, the relation between the festival and the government is quite direct and complete. Instead of including local filmmakers as autonomous figures that take part in the organisation – a typical strategy carried out by festivals to gain legitimacy in their communities – the decisive positions are occupied by officials or experts who have been there from the very beginning. In a nutshell, although the event receives admiration and enthusiasm from local students and filmmakers, it is far from being a bottom-up festival organisation. Moreover, Festival of the Heights is neatly tied with other activities that the local government encourages, as part of a wider strategy towards a progressive image of the administration of Jujuy, in contrast with the more conservative leaders of the Argentine Northwestern region. For instance, the governor Morales boosted the production of cannabis in Jujuy for export, and a sidebar of Cannabis Films was included in the festival’s program.

The direct relation between the provincial government and the exhibition may also prove a double-edged sword. Regular funding is guaranteed every year and the organisers achieved notable expertise; however, any kind of political crisis with the government jeopardises how local and national filmmakers will cling to the event. In July 2023, a reform of the provincial constitution led to massive demonstrations and roadblocks, triggering an intense repression plan carried out by the police, becoming the focal point of attention in national news for several days. The national elections were just a few months away, and the governor Morales was running as the vice-presidential candidate alongside the mayor of Buenos Aires. Festival of the Heights, historically opening in the first week of September, was called off because the ‘logistics’ required for the event were not guaranteed, as the official communication said, but also because many local filmmakers had taken part in the protests. Evidently, carrying out the event in these conditions would have been risky, with filmmakers declining to participate or, even worse, giving negative speeches. In sum, the relation between the provincial administration and film exhibition becomes tricky.

Over the past few years, the promotion of tourism also became a prominent policy in Jujuy in close relation with the visual construction of attractive settings for filmmaking. Breathtaking images of endless dry mountains, a solitary condor gliding across its peaks, colorful rituals in which burned-out urbanites can reconnect with nature, cameos of spiritual and austere inhabitants of isolated hamlets: Jujuy has developed a nice rhetoric to attract tourists, and also filmmakers. As we will see, these aesthetic features are linked to the official interests of promoting the province.

Aesthetics: Portraying ‘the local’

The ninth edition of the festival was inaugurated with Lipán (Gonzalo Calzada, 2024), a documentary on the local indigenous musician Tomás Lipán that guided the audience throughout varied scenes: a fictional conversation between Lipán and the devil (a positive character in local indigenous culture), the musician visiting his childhood’s home in the mountains, taking part in local festivities, and, of course, playing songs. Even though the resulting film was a bit long, the sequences were moving and successfully transported the audience to those isolated locations.

However, when I later went to dinner with some local film students, opinions were noticeably less enthusiastic. ‘All this filming of the mountains… it looked like those tourism videos!’ said one of them, alluding to the well-known promotional advertisements of the Secretary of Tourism. Another student mentioned, ‘It was so obvious that the film wanted to sell Jujuy. That scene at the end, the carnival…’ she said, referring to the appearance of ‘the devils of Susques’ in their typical disguises. ‘That was all really unnecessary.’ Here, for the first time, I heard some tentative criticism against the inclusion of local anthropological rituals as an obvious reiteration of Jujuy’s hallmark. It is important to mention that Calzada, the director of Lipán, is not from Jujuy, but an experienced director from Buenos Aires. Later on, a third student mentioned that the local Institute of Audiovisual Arts works in a similar direction. In his opinion, receiving funding from the institution depends mostly on how remote in the mountains or rural areas the scenes you want to shoot are located. If the story is too urban, he said, they will probably not be interested. In short, the official preference for a pre-set idea of ‘the local’ is problematic for students who are taking their first steps in film production and feel that these stimulus policies, paradoxically, also impose aesthetic constraints.

When examining local films exhibited at the event, all films produced in Jujuy are generally characterised by their aims of representation and realism, whether denouncing inequalities, driven by didactic intentions, or exalting local heritage. Interestingly, these aesthetic styles align with the fiercely rejected features against which the New Argentinean Cinema struggled since its beginning in the early 2000s.[7] Indeed, at least since the 1980s film aesthetics in Latin America ‘became less radically doctrinaire and more centered on “quality art house” cinema’.[8] Therefore, Jujuy’s film production may appear old-fashioned in the national context, especially when compared to the Argentinean films that succeed at prestigious festivals.[9] For instance, the festival’s ninth edition programmed some documentaries – the predominant genre in local production – which addressed the exploitation of women in tobacco plantations, the closure of steel industries, a personal voyage on a river, and the first female sikus band in Jujuy, among others. In a nutshell, the imperatives of representation, denouncing inequality, or providing positive images for tourism may operate as significant constraints for local filmmakers if they ‘have to stand for their communities’ or ‘provide positive representation’[10] of them. These aesthetic features connected to explicit denouncements seem contrary to international trends, casting doubt on further professional possibilities for local filmmakers.

Broadening the audiences

Festival of the Heights has a clear purpose: to reach local audiences – not just cinephiles, but also those who may not have a strong connection to cinema. After a dramatic decline in movie theaters in the mid-1980s in Argentina, a slow recovery began in 1995; but new venues were established almost exclusively in large cities, leaving many small towns without theaters, perhaps permanently.[11] Consequently, many regional festivals in Argentina aim to counteract this trend by bringing the cinematic experience to smaller urban centers. At Festival of the Heights, entries are always free, and nearly half of the films have no restriction on year of production. The selection of Argentinean films aligns with the tastes of non-expert audiences, favoring industrial and genre films featuring famous national stars over arthouse films that may appeal mainly to cinephiles.[12] While the Latin American films showcased at the festival are indeed closer to ‘festival films’,[13] the Argentinean features belong to the industrial circuit, including romantic comedies or audience successes like Argentina 1985 (Santiago Mitre, 2022). In an interview with Daniel Desaloms, he specifically noted concerns about the growing trend of autobiographical documentaries in festivals and admitted his preference for classical stories with appealing characters.

In line with these aims, one of the most touching episodes of the festival was probably the presentation of the ‘Cine Móvil’, an official project that consists of transporting a film projector to showcase films in isolated communities in the mountains. On this occasion, the team of Cine Móvil invited the animator Juan Pablo Zaramella to join a long journey by van, on foot, and donkey to visit a school in Molulo, a small village located 3,000 m asl., to project some of his short films and share time with the children. The crew filmed the whole trip and quickly edited a final version that was presented during the festival.[14] Zaramella was also present to speak about the experience, joking about how exhausting the odyssey had been. In the following days, there was also a conference on accessibility, featuring the director of the Deaf Film Festival of Buenos Aires, and a relaxed projection for people on the autistic spectrum.

We can observe a close relation between the Festival’s intentions to reach new audiences and its top-down organisation, insofar film screenings are often framed as acts of social inclusion. At the end of the video projected at the Cine-Móvil event, after the children shared cake with Zaramella for his birthday, each child received a white school smock and a backpack from the secretary of social welfare. In this way, Festival of the Heights carefully maintains its ties with common culture. Ultimately, the Festival seems intent on showing that public funds are not allocated to a superficial arty event, but rather attending to more morally acceptable demands, like helping the dispossessed.

Final reflections

When speaking with Argentine filmmakers, Festival of the Heights is often cited as the ‘third most important’, thanks to its website, attractive iconography, and a stable team. However, it faces significant challenges in fulfilling its ambitious mission of connecting Andean cinemas. Foreign films are always few, mostly due to the high exhibition fees they demand. As producer Jimena Muñoz noted, these costs are often negotiated with filmmakers in exchange for plane tickets. Nevertheless, similar agreements are not possible with international distributors, who often ask for steep charges in dollars, unaffordable for a provincial budget. Having been plunged into a prolonged economic crisis since 2017, Argentina ended 2023 with a 211% inflation rate, the highest in the world. In its 2024 edition, Festival of the Heights could not offer travel or accommodation for foreign guests, who were the most notable absentees. Furthermore, due to the unstable economic situation, there were practically no filmmakers or cinemagoers from other regions of the country. In short, budgetary hardships pose significant barriers to the Festival’s internationalisation and possibilities of connecting filmmakers.

However, despite the ongoing difficulties, the government of Jujuy has strong reasons to support the festival. Unlike other regional exhibitions, the festival has a permanent team of directors, producers, and official authorities who compose the committee practically since its first edition, achieving an expertise that guarantees the smooth running of the event. It is worth noting that the key positions of director, executive producer, and programmer are held by professionals from Buenos Aires, allowing the Festival to benefit from their networks and proficiency at film events. Nevertheless, an important next step could involve having local film professionals in these key positions. The Jujuy of 2014, when the event was born, is not the same as in 2024, with a film school that is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary and a local Film Commission that provided considerable work opportunities and experience for its graduates by promoting productions in local settings. If Jujuy looked like a desert of film professionals at the festival’s first edition, that landscape has progressively changed, and it might be time to include local film professionals in curating and programming roles.

One of the main aims of the festival is to reach new audiences, as the presentation of the Cine-móvil screenings in Molulo showed. In contrast, cinephile tastes seem to be less integrated into the program. Political documentaries, national films with industrial aesthetics, local landscapes, and cultural heritage: the space for arthouse, strange, or even contentious films was rather non-existent, just as there was no special sidebar for classics or a director’s oeuvre. In sum, the festival seems to turn its back on cinephiles. In a province with no tradition of film clubs, film magazines, or film industry, it might seem that cinephiles do not constitute a relevant target. However, the local Petra von Kant film club demonstrates the contrary. Founded in 2022 by a group of students, this space gives a good example of a weekly exhibition that pushes the taste of Jujuy’s audiences beyond mainstream preferences. Likewise, Festival of the Heights could also include more challenging films in further editions, incorporating cinephiles as its key allies. Even more, they are well-positioned as potential organisers for future editions, when the festival will inevitably need to recruit young local experts to maintain its vitality.

Pablo Salas Tonello (Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf)

References

Aguilar, G. Otros mundos. Ensayos sobre Nuevo Cine Argentino. Buenos Aires: Santiago Argos, 2006.

Burucúa, C. ‘La presencia del cine latinoamericano en el TIFF (1976-2016): datos en contexto’ in Cines Latinoamericanos en Circulación. En busca del público perdido, edited by A. Mantecón and L. González. 2020: 137-156.

Coryat, D. León, C., and Zweig N (eds). Small cinemas of the Andes: New aesthetics, practices and platforms. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Desaloms, D. and Pont, M. Untitled in Festival Internacional de Cine de las Alturas. Edición 2016.

Falicov, T. ‘Festival Films. Film Festivals as Cultural Intermediaries’ in Film festivals: Theory, history, method, practice, edited by M. De Valck, S. Kredell, and S. Loist. Routledge, 2016: 209-229.

_____. ‘The interlocking dynamics of domestic and international film festivals. The case of Latin American and Caribbean Cinema’ in The Routledge companion to Latin American Cinema, edited by M. D’Lugo, M. López, and L. Podalsky. New York: Routledge, 2018: 266-278.

Moguillansky, M. Cines del Sur. La integración cinematográfica entre los países del MERCOSUR. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi, 2016.

Pont, M. and Desaloms, D. Untitled in Festival Internacional de Cine de las Alturas 2014.

_____. Untitled in Festival Internacional de Cine de las Alturas. Edición 2017.

Quintar, A. and Borello, J. ‘Evolución histórica de la exhibición y el consumo de cine en Buenos Aires’, H-industri@, 14, 2014: 81-120.

Ross, M. ‘The film festival as producer: Latin American Films and Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund’, Screen, 52: 2, Summer 2011: 261-267.

Rud, L. ‘Participación de filmes latinoamericanos en el Festival Internacional de Cine de Jeonju (Corea del Sur)’ in Cines Latinoamericanos en Circulación. En busca del público perdido, edited by A. Mantecón and L. González. 2020: 157-170.

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[1] https://cinedelasalturas.com.ar

[2] Pont & Desaloms 2014, p. 24. It is necessary to point out how strategic the frame ‘Andean cinema’ is, as it excludes Brazil and Mexico, the two largest film industries in Latin America and competitors of Argentina in international festivals. For instance, they constitute by far the three Latin American nations with the most films programmed in Toronto (Burucúa 2020) and Jeonju (Rud 2020).

[3] Desaloms & Pont 2016, p. 12.

[4] Pont & Desaloms 2017, p. 14.

[5] Moguillansky 2016.

[6] For instance, Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film The Official Story (Luis Puenzo, 1985), or nominees like Son of the Bride (Juan Jose Campanella, 2001) or Argentina 1985 (Santiago Mitre, 2023).

[7] Aguilar 2006.

[8] Falicov 2018, p. 270.

[9] For instance, Jeonju has favored more experimental Latin American films, unlike the programs of other festivals, which have historically focused on poverty and marginality as the main topics (Rud 2020, p. 168).

[10] Ross 2011, p. 266.

[11] Quintar & Borello 2014.

[12] The only exception was probably the four-hour Trenque Lauquen (Laura Cittarella, 2023), a film that had great previous impact and coverage, as it was chosen the best film of the year by Cahiers du Cinéma.

[13] Falicov 2016.

[14] The projected video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvxqwjgvwVw&ab_channel=CinedelasAlturas