Finding Pablo Tabernero

Charlottesville, May19, 2018I don’t remember when was it that I heard the name of Pablo Tabernero for the first time. It could have been on “Prisoners of the land” (“Prisioneros de la tierra”) film review by Jorge Luis Borges, or during a casual conversation with other filmmakers in a café in Buenos Aires. In fact, it was most probably the latter, since, to the best of my recollection, Borges didn’t name the man behind the camera, he simply concluded the review saying the photography of the film was admirable.[1] Coming from Borges, this was quite an extraordinary event. However, Borges doesn’t name the photographer, he admires his work. The unnamed remains in the shadows of a film which is unique, in many ways because of his contribution to the film.

Back in March, I travelled to Normandy to visit with Ricardo Aronovich. Aronovich, considered by Cahiers du Cinéma one of the best directors of photography of his generation, was himself a disciple of Tabernero. Aronovich believes that directors of photography go often unrecognized, unnoticed in the shadow of the director. That clearly seems not to be the case with writers and composers, and most certainly not so with members of the cast. According to Aronovich, the symbiotic nature of the relationship between film director and cinematographer requires a clear split to preserve the integrity of the former, always dependent on the knowledge and capabilities of the latter.

I live now in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the foothills of Appalachia. Buenos Aires is a distant place, a fading memory. Then, why Pablo Tabernero, why Borges and “Prisoners of the Land”. I suppose there are no easy answers, although a few coincidences do speak loud and clear: About seven years have passed since I met Henry Weinschenk for the first time. Henry is also an expat living in Charlottesville. It was he that introduced me to The Tuesday’s Lunch Club, sort of an unofficial and very eclectic Argentine delegation in exile. I haven’t missed many lunches since, and I enjoy the company of fellows with whom I share a common past, a code of sorts, a similar sense of humour, and the shared understanding over a myriad of issues. In certain opportunity, perhaps more than once, Henry mentioned that his father had been a well-known director of photography in the gilded age of Argentine cinema and that he remembers growing up surrounded by movie stars like Hugo del Carril, and film directors like Mario Soffici. However, for some very strange reason, one that I don’t quite understand today, the talk never quite evolved into a more meaningful conversation about the role of his father as a pioneer of the film industry in Argentina, not until very recently.

Suddenly I found myself immersed in the details of an extraordinary life that began at the turn of the twentieth century, a life defined by an extraordinary passion for film and photography, a life crossed by the Weimar Republic and the Bauhaus, and by the events as they unfolded in Nazi Germany, in Spain during the Civil War, and in the Argentina of Peron and Evita that I grew up hearing about from my own father. By the time I figured I was getting way too deep into the story and on my way to make a documentary film, it was already too late to quit.

Most recently, I learned from Paula Felix-Didier, director at the Museo del Cine “Pablo D. Hicken” in Buenos Aires, that “Prisoners of the Land” was currently being restored by Scorsese’s The Film Foundation in Los Angeles, and that the commune of Bologna is planning a screening on June 24th, in the context of a local film festival (Il Cinema Ritrovato), dedicated to the best works on film from around the world. Perhaps it’s time for Tabernero to step out from the shadows and be recognized for his contributions to world cinema.

[1] Sur, Revista nacional publicada bajo la dirección de Victoria Ocampo. A?o IX. Buenos Aires, Imprenta López, 29 de setiembre de 1939, pp.91 y 92.