Mariano Llinás’s 868-minute La flor was one of the highlights of IFFR 2019; now, the Argentinian director is back with a film about Italian-Argentine singer Ignacio Corsini. “The greatest singer of tangos and Argentine classics”, says Llinás, who, like in La flor, regularly appears in front of the camera himself. On 9 July – Argentina’s Independence Day – Llinás sets off in Buenos Aires with his regular cameraman Agustín Mendilaharzu to re-record ‘Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel’, an album made in 1929 by lyricist Hector Pedro Blomberg and composer Enrique Maciel, as an ode to Juan Manuel de Rosas, leader of the Argentine Confederation.
Llinás visits the places that feature in the songs and goes in search of the stories behind the album. Resulting in great entertainment, with songs such as ‘La pulpera de Santa Lucia’ including lyrics like ‘she was blonde, her blue eyes reflected the glory of the day, and she sang like a lark’.
