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This is Orson Welle’s swan song, and it comes with a warning. We cannot pass an unoriginal piece of art as a masterpiece. This message transcends all mediums of art. Banksy translated into his medium in “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, and Elmyr is a complete persona of Terry from the previously mentioned film. I really wish I would have seen this movie before “Exit Through the Gift Shop” because it cemented in my mind that Banksy created a completely fake film in order to challenge the way that street art is moving. Both films give a warning about art in our current culture and both do so in a similar fashion. I think F for Fake moves forward too slowly for it’s own good, and that lack of direction is the one thing holding it back. Otherwise an insightful and brilliantly crafted commentary on art, or the lack there of. But I can’t explain this film nearly as well as Mr. Orson Welles:

“What we professional liars hope to serve is truth. I’m afraid the pompous word for that is “art”. "

“Ladies and gentleman, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact. "

There are films that are a simple way to recognize the reality and with it we realized that some things are strange and even misleading. Orson Welles one of the biggest names ever movie and beyond. Produced and directed numerous works have been recognized by critics as authentic reinvention of cinema itself. He was a producer, director, screenwriter and actor and pioneering genius of cinema. With their works could renew the aesthetic language of narrative cinema. He was an influential figure because of his metamoforse aesthetics that can be seen in works like Citizen Kane. Who has seen this film manages to realize its quality for photography, which, although black and white, was highly innovative for its time, and planes that have created standards that film are still used by filmmakers, and the concept of depth of field . For me one of the greatest qualities of audiovisual product that can be admired, not just in traditional film, but in a more evolved in that way again became fashionable to see movies, 3d.
Citizen Kane was conducted and produced with the use of truthful information of an American citizen. But the movie I want to say is what I was able to envision. By the way was the last work of Welles and is part of an audiovisual genre that is not fiction, but the documentary. Perhaps it is pertinent to understand what the differences between the various genres. The literature is vast and there are many authors who try to explain, in academic essays the various elements that differentiate them. I could look closely the best definition of what really differentiates the two genres, but the truth is and is not a post that I can find and publish what I believe differentiates one from another. In simple words, and as your own sense is, fiction is distinguished by how the documentary captures the reality.
But look what the experts say about it:

If the narratives focused on the fact of taking exponentials appear as central in the coming work of the stylistic Cinema Truth / Direct, there is the history of documentary cinema as a whole, a kind of centripetal force that draws the viewer into the image and the presence of subject that holds the camera in the making.

Fernão Pessoa Ramos

I guess what I’m trying to say is that fiction is not the same as the documentary. I try every day to realize what the real consistency in the way of representing reality. What is the most complicated thing that humans have to understand in its existence. We can understand reality as a story that was written and we just have to follow. Or we can see reality as mere constructs representations between what is real and what is fictional. Every day we go through situations that make us think what distinguishes between one another. Since the emergence of form in movement of representation that humans came into doubt about what is reality and what is fiction.

La oda al engaño de Orson Welles, F for Fake, nos interna en el mundo de las falsificaciones y las personas que viven de este arte, no importa si son cineastas, pintores, escritores o el espectador mismo.

Welles narra la historia de Elmyr de Hory, quizá el más grande falsificador de arte de todos los tiempos, pero al mismo tiempo la estructura y narración de la cinta nos hace preguntarnos ¿es realmente Elmyr un ladrón?

¿No es el cineasta al mismo tiempo ladrón de la realidad?

No existen grandes diferencias entre Elmyr de Hory o cualquier cineasta, el cine no es más que capturar la realidad mientras escapa con el tiempo, congelar una escena, plasmarla en celuloide y repetirla una y otra vez para revivirla, a pesar de que nunca podrá existir nuevamente.

Como acusar a Elmyr de delincuente, si sus trazos son igual de exquisitos, inclusive mejores, que los originales. Son tan buenas falsificaciones, que todos los expertos de arte de cualquier museo los aceptan y elogian.

Mentir, es una habito innato en el ser humano. Mentimos para sobrevivir y mimetizarnos con el medio en que nos desempeñamos, la realidad es un juego de apariencias y el arte es la extensión del engaño.

Inclusive Orson Welles se inició engañando a su audiencia, su salto a la fama se da después de esa legendaria transmisión de La Guerra de los Mundos, el terror causado por el relato llevó al público a pensar que realmente unos marcianos se entrevistarían con el presidente Roosevelt y paso seguido conquistar la Tierra.

¿Pero, quién es el verdadero culpable del engaño?

Sin duda el engañado que se dice experto en cierto tema, para quienes no es importante la firma sino el resultado de la obra que están apreciando, si son falsas o autenticas no tiene repercusión.

Es necesario tener un gran talento para crear imitar la obra de otro artista, o para absolverla, digerirla y expresarla en algo nuevo. No podemos decir que Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick, y muchos otros, sean estafadores (aunque hay algunos cineastas que si hacen falsificaciones burdas, ¿verdad 500 días con ella?).

No era el mismo Neorrealismo Italiano, un intento por reproducir la realidad tal y como se vivía y respiraba después de las grandes guerras y sus devastados paisajes.

¿Quién se engaña? ¿El que redacta o el que lee este texto?

My personal favourite Orson Welles cinematic illusion. Simply put, this un-categorizable “new kind of film” gets better and more intriguing with each viewing (multiple screenings of the excellent Criterion edition are a must). And as a close-up illusionist myself (strictly a hobbyist), F For Fake is as close to a magic routine, in both structure and execution, than any film I’ve ever seen. Being a skilled magician in his younger days, Orson clearly understood the world of magic incredibly well, and he translates the psychology of conjuring flawlessly into the form of the picture. Not to mention the amount of fast-paced cuts/edits made throughout its duration predates the MTV generation. Pure genius from start to finish. Subversively enchanting and a film that is truly worthy of being recognized as the final Wellesian masterpiece.