An Acquaintance of Interest

Author

Diego Márquez Todeschini, Bard CollegeFollow

Date of Submission

Spring 2019

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Film and Electronic Arts

Project Advisor 1

Elizabeth Kruger-Chandler

Abstract/Artist's Statement

An Acquaintance of Interest was born out of the combination of two elements:

1. A love/hate relationship of Latin American politics. Complete with its

extremes, and rationale-defying histories.

2. An absolute love for portrayals of political intrigue and espionage in both

fiction and non-fiction media.

For me, An Acquaintance of Interest serves as a form of release from political

impotence. An impotence that fills me in equal terms with anger and hope; anger at

the current state of the region, and the unfortunate cast of characters that either

by total ignorance, or facetious compliance, promote and perpetuate the worst

idiosyncrasies of the Latin American political mindset. And a hope that one day we

can overcome these idiosyncrasies, and that we can see past the Cold War-era

narratives that still dictate (or rather, are maliciously used to manipulate) the

collective subconscious.

An Acquaintance of Interest represents freedom from years of internal tension

between unbridled political idealism, and acid cynicism: two emotions that

perfectly describe my relationship with Latin American politics, and two emotions

portrayed by the characters of Lucas and Rodrigo in the film.

The narrative of the film was created with these emotions in mind, and mixed with

specific sensibilities and forms of the much-beloved espionage and political

intrigue genres. Said genres have been vital in my formation as a filmmaker,

especially that of the espionage film, which I consider one of the purest forms of

cinema, due to the endless possibilities of deception and narrative heft that can be

carried out through visual language and dialogue in film.

In An Acquaintance of Interest, there are traces of Ian Fleming’s Bond escapism, as

well as the complexities and linguistic nuances of John LeCarré. Graham Greene’s

Our Man in Havana provides the basic plot through-line, as well as some of the

small, specific moments of humour in the film. The results never veer to the campy,

adventurous form of a Bond film, but they also do not cross the super bleak,

borderline a-cinematic world of Le Carré espionage. It merely attempts to

underline the “magical” , as Gabriel Garcia Marquez would put it, qualities of Latin

American politics and history: A history of contradictions, deceptions, devotions,

and an endless string of “what ifs”, stretching from the Panama Canal, and all of its

geopolitical importance, to Ushuaia; a city still reeling from the trauma of the

Falklands War.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Márquez Todeschini, Diego, "An Acquaintance of Interest" (2019). Senior Projects Spring 2019. 311.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019/311