Argentina. Francisco Moreno was one of Argentina's most influential explorers. Known to his colleagues and compatriots as the expert ,he led during the 19th century several scientific expeditions that made history.
His travels took him through the unknown land of Patagonia, and he incorporated into his country unexplored places that lay between Chile and Argentina. Perito documented in his diary his journey through the southern territories and his relationship with the Mapuches, Tehuelches and Araucanos, the original peoples who lived there.
In an equally epic adventure, the production company Poncho Cine faced the challenge of bringing one of the expert's journeys to the big screen.
"In Argentina, they teach you in school who the expert was. He was one of the first men to discover Patagonia and establish our borders with Chile," explains Javier Zevallos, who founded Poncho Cine with his partners Nadia Martínez and Francisco D'Eufemia. "Francisco —the co-director of the film— read the book "Reminiscences of Francisco Pascasio Moreno", which collects the travel diaries of the expert in Patagonia. The book recounts his memoirs and does so in a very cinematic way, because Moreno liked to magnify the events and give them a novelesque tone."
The story inspired Javier and his partners to produce "Fuga del País de las Manzanas", focusing only on six days of Perito's day. Javier describes his team's unique approach to filmmaking, compared to the traditional forms of period cinema in Argentina:
"In our country, when making historical dramas or period cinema, you usually fall into the encyclopedic story, you try to tell too much about the characters and in a somewhat cardboard way. We wanted to concentrate on the drama of a man, with all its contradictions and virtues, to lower the Procer from his pedestal. We wanted to make a film with a lot of vitality, an action-adventure story, a kind of Western Gaucho. That's why we took a snapshot of Perito's trip, 6 days only. This allowed us to explore in detail the forces of his destiny instead of trying to crowd into a single work everything that happened to him in his public life: it is only about his escape, his survival in that still virgin territory, within the framework of a crucial period of our history when we were still a young nation.
Javier, Francisco and their team set out with cameras and production teams – among which were the BlackMagic Cinema cameras – to follow in some of the expert's footsteps in an intrepid attempt to live in their own flesh the emotion of their great Patagonian adventure.
For the production team of Poncho Cine, filming for eight weeks in the most desolate areas of Argentina turned out to be much more than just a Sunday walk.
They divided the film into three different main locations, and in each of the small towns they visited they lived in cabins without any of the modern amenities.
In general, Poncho Cine uses the Blackmagic Cinema camera of its property for documentary projects, since in these the filming plans can easily change from one moment to another. Although the production of "Fuga del País de las Manzanas" had an inflexible deadline, the unpredictable nature of the filming and the aesthetic proposal of the film resembled those of a documentary.
Filming entirely outdoors, the Poncho Cine team had to capture the abrupt charm of Patagonia, in order to reflect on the big screen the deep relationship of the expert with the landscape of the region. Javier confirmed that the Blackmagic Cinema camera was perfect for this purpose.
The three-person team has made great strides with their new film, and while they won the support of important characters in the film field – such as Vanessa Ragone, Oscar winner and associate producer of the film – they did so without sacrificing their creative freedom. "That's the advantage of making independent films... the downside is that... you have to get the money yourself!... It was very important to have the freedom to film in our own way to realize the vision of the story we wanted to convey."
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