22 films from 18 countries will be competing for the Golden and the Silver Bear, as well as the Audi Short Film Award, worth € 20,000, and a nomination for the European Film Awards. ‚T.R.A.P.‚ is one of them. Filmmaker Manque La Banca is answering to some questions in this interview about ‚T.R.A.P‘, the special about shortfilms and his future plans.
Born in Bariloche, Argentina in 1990, Manque La Banca studied film at the Facultad de Bellas Artes in La Plata and photography at the Sindicato de la Industria Cinematográfica Argentina (SICA) in Buenos Aires. In 2012 he and his brother, Antu La Banca, set up the Parquee label for films and music. He has directed various shorts and a feature film and works with Super 8 and 16mm; also released several albums with his band ‚Nunca fui a un parque de diversiones‘. Manque La Banca develops all his films at his own film lab at home.
So he did with ‚T.R.A.P‚ – A film about a mystical place telling an enchanted story: A group of knights go ashore on the banks of the Río De La Plata. They are searching for a grave to perform a ritual. As they pass through the jungle, things happen that cause them to land in the present day. This past summer an individual disappeared during altercations with the police and demonstrations in southern Argentina. “Never again” has been the widespread sentiment since the end of the dictatorship in Argentina, now the old threat seems to be looming again. The filmmaker takes up prevalent stereotypes and breaks them open in order to tell his own story free of hegemonial interference.
Still from ‚T.R.A.P‘
What is your ambition in the film?
I wanted to tell a story that started on a romantic universe and ended up becoming an intimist contemporary tale, showing a facet of young dissidents in this current Argentina governed by the most conservative political party that the country has had in the last 40 years.
Another interesting point that we explore on ‚T.R.A.P‘ are related to sexual diversity as a form of resistance to dominant discourse. With ‚PARQUEE‘ our audiovisual label, we have been investigating the breaking of stereotypes through images. We are convinced as audiovisual artists that in order to disarm the power structures that govern the world, it is necessary to create stories that question from the heteronormative logics.
What do you like about the short form?
The short form allows to experiment with small ideas that can be the germ of something bigger. There is a kind of liberty on the short films that is difficult to find in other kind expressions. In my case this liberty is achieve with lot of planification, when I start a project of a short film I immerse myself in a meditative state, I draw a lot of images and I write in a free poetic way. For me is very important to find the axis of ideas on paper, because I have a limited amount of time.
What are your future plans?
At the moment I’m writing a new feature film called ‚JERMANS‘. It is a film whose story is derived from ‚T.R.A.P‘ the short film that I am presenting at the Berlinale. I’m exploring the mix between adventure genre films and experimental cinema.
Manque La Banca
Berlinale Shorts 