Five Inspirations is a series in which we ask directors to share five things that shaped and informed their film.
Rodrigo Moreno's The Delinquents (2023) is showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries.
INSPIRATION #1
Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961).
Many years after Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini's revolution of Neorealism in Italy, others took the relevant elements of that manifesto—using natural actors, filming real spaces, and incorporating social and political concerns—to find a cinematic poetry based on an accurate mise-en-scène. Here is Ermanno Olmi, one of the greatest Italian directors: sensitive, original, personal, and above all, subtle. I copied this frame and pasted it into The Delinquents.
INSPIRATION #2
The constant detour
Maine-Océan (Jacques Rozier, 1986).
In every one of Jacques Rozier’s films (here are two frames from the great Maine-Océan [1986]) it is impossible to guess what’s next. Apart from an always improvised and lively mise-en-scène that takes everything close to the abyss, its narrative progression is based on the mystery of the detour.
INSPIRATION #3
Buenos Aires
Photographs courtesy of the author.
The best city in the world. Where I was born, where I live, and where I make films. There is not one day without taking pictures in the street, of people, signs, and buildings. One of my favorite things to do is to wander around the city (by foot, by car, or by public transportation). Developing the power of observation was fundamental to my work.
INSPIRATION #4
Notebooks
Photograph courtesy of the author.
I try to maintain a writing practice—unfortunately not every day, as it should be—taking notes or drawing sketches on paper. I don't know if that practice takes me strictly to a new script, but it keeps me awake and on alert. Jean-Claude Carrière said that his work with Buñuel involved telling each other a new story every morning as a way of training the muscle of imagination.
INSPIRATION #5
Atahualpa Yupanqui, “La lluvia y el sembrador”
Many times YouTube works as a source of music, fragments of old television or radio, or any other rarity that helps me a lot when I’m working on a film. In this case, I discovered this old record by Atahualpa Yupanqui, which was uploaded by a user from Buenos Aires many years ago. I contacted that user, who was a dentist in his seventies, in order to obtain the original tape. I went to his house, which was full of VHS tapes that he had recorded in the ’80s from Argentine television. His archive was incredible. In this case the file I was looking for was a concert Yupanqui gave to the public television in the ’80s. This is the only tape existing because most of the Public Television archives were erased during the Carlos Menem’s presidency in the ’90s. On that program Yupanqui played a unique version of a folk song he had written and first recorded in the ’50s titled “La Lluvia y el Sembrador” (“The rain and the sower”). Now he played it with new arrangements and different lyrics from the original. I used this version in A Mysterious World (2011) during a sequence where Boris spends his New Year’s Eve with the mechanic of his Romanian car. The music made that sequence magic and special.