Short Film: Sunday in Plaza Almagro (2014)
This is the most recent film I made about tango in the Almagro neighborhood. It takes place during the 2012 neighborhood tango festival in Almagro on a Sunday afternoon in the Almagro neighborhood plaza. For this film I took on the challenge of using only shots and sounds taken from the event itself with the goal of editing the sounds and images I recorded that day together to evoke a feeling of what these festivals feel like and why they are important in the construction of locality for neighborhood tango scenes. Much of my research has focused on the neighborhood as a central trope in the construction of alternative imaginaries for contemporary urban tango scenes. In this sequence I use this festival to illustrate how singing about neighborhoods in neighborhoods in a community event creates a powerful sensory environment for the production of these imaginaries. The plaza where this takes place is situated right next to Roberto's bar--perhaps better said, Roberto's bar is located on one corner of this plaza. Therefor, not only does the plaza represent a symbolic place of neighborhood in the general urban imaginary, but also represents a specific location where many contemporary tango histories began. This festival represented the 1 year mark of my arrival to Buenos Aires to begin my fieldwork. The images of me playing in the end of the film are indicative of my participation in these communities not only as a researcher and filmmaker, but also as a violinist, honored to be invited to accompany the legendary Osvaldo Peredo in this event.