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DILETANTE

By Kris NIKLISON

Documentary - Completed 2009

Bela Jordán is 80 years old and lives at the family’s estancia by the Paraná River. An aristocratic widow.With the physical energy of a teenager and the wisdom of an old lady she is proud of never having given her time to the consumer society and sees her old age as “the best time of her life”.

- Year of production
- 2009
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- ARGENTINA
- Languages
- SPANISH
- Duration
- 72 mn
- Director(s)
- Kris NIKLISON
- Writer(s)
- Kris NIKLISON
- Producer(s)
- Kris NIKLISON (Basata Films), Lita STANTIC (Lita Stantic Producciones S.A.)
- Synopsis
- Bela Jordán is 80 years old and lives at the family’s estancia by the Paraná River in the Argentinean countryside. An aristocratic widow, she dedicates her time to active leisure: she reads by the riverside, makes 2000 piece puzzles, cuts grass on her tractor and surfs the internet with her laptop. With the physical energy of a teenager and the wisdom of an old lady she is proud of never having given her time to the consumer society and sees her old age as “the best time of her life”.
  Bela holds permanent conversations with her maid Cata, in a surprising discussion about both the trivial and the profound. While Cata cooks, the two women reflect upon life and death and Bela reveals herself as lucid and authoritarian, cruel and charming, stingy and bon vivant.
  Cesar, the handy man, is lonely and mysterious. He daydreams of finding the woman of his life and spies on Bela in his obsessive fear of finding her dead. His passivity and fears are mute: as Cata is a voice that never appears in camera, Cesar is a presence that does not talk.
  Like the pieces of the puzzles that Bela slowly assembles; the inner universe of these three people is revealed piece-by-piece, time progresses fragmented and the exuberant environment unfolds in parts.
  Everything seems to come together when Bela remembers the first time she heard the word dilettante and thought it was something she would like to be when she grew up: “someone with no ambition in life other than having fun”.
  This intimate portrait that begins in Holland, is made by Bela’s daughter, who returning to Argentina after 20 years closes a personal journey and immortalizes the condition of her anarchistic mother.
- Beginning of shooting
- Nov 01, 2009