Dropping in at the Buenos Aires Film Museum (Museo del Cine), a beleaguered Argentine cinematic facility bearing its sponsor’s name, Pablo Ducrós Hickens, either inspired or led Matt Pfarrer astray.

Although the repository rising by an elevated roadway had now occupied constant premises since the 1990s after years of being spread across several sites before permanence, it didn’t enjoy any real centralized catalogue. After upwards of four decades, staffers and researchers were still coming across new easter eggs among its shelves. In fact, nearly a generation ago missing elements of Fritz Lang’s German silent classic Metropolis were discovered there then reintroduced to cineastes after almost 80 years of absence. That is after almost 80 years of knowing those spools had disappeared but not a whit of knowing to where they’d vanished.

Pfarrer roughly likened el Museo del Cine to a played-out gold mine. One some prospector makes a quit claim hunch on in mere hopes of finding nuggets enough to make his efforts pan out but then strikes a seam instead.

And yes, the gold mine analogy proved more apt than a box of chocolates. Continue reading Dies Ist kein U-Boot, sondern ein Feuilleton →