Ms. Olga 's School
La
Escuela de la Señorita Olga
cliquee aquí por la
versión castellana
(1991, 16mm)
Director: Mario Piazza
Photography: Tristán Bauer
Direct sound: Eduardo Safigueroa
Editing: Laura Bua and Mario Piazza
Running time: 50 min.
The enlighting educative experience conducted by teacher Olga Cossettini between 1935 and 1950, in a grammar school at the outskirts of Rosario city in Argentina. With the testimonies of her former students and of her sister and principal collaborator, teacher Leticia Cossettini.
Awards
* Special Prize, Jury of
the Subsecretary of Culture of the Province, Festival of
Argentinian Cinema of Santa Fe, August 1991.
* Best Editing, Encounter of Film & Video Makers "Ciudad
de Santa Fe", September 1991.
* "Films Andes" Prize to Best Film, Contest of
Independent Film & Video of Mendoza, November 1991.
* Cined Prize of the Ministry of Education of Cuba, Festival
of the New Latinamerican Cinema, December 1991.
* Best Short Film, International Film Festival of Uruguay,
Montevideo, April 1992.
* Prize "Prof. Horacio Bertholet", Workshop of
Audiovisual Production , Superior School of Journalism and
Social Communication , National University of La Plata,
November 1992.
* Special Mention, Documentaries Section, Iberoamerican Film
Festival of Huelva, Spain, November 1993.
* First Prize, Documentaries Section, National Contest for
Cultural Short Films 1984/94, National Secretary of Culture,
1994/95.
* Selected for Festival of Viña del Mar (Chile), the Short
Film Days of Bahía (Brazil) and the Latinamerican Film
Festival of Trieste (Italy).
* Screened at the Casa de América of Madrid, and at the
Municipal Conservatorium of Music of Barcelona, presented by
the Education Area of the Municipality, 1993.
* Screened at the National Cinematheque of Caracas, during
the 3rd. Iberoamerican Congress of History of Latinamerican
Education , June 1996.
Comments
A valuable and moving documentary.
It should be declared of Special Interest and shown through
television and in all the schools.
Daniel Sendrós / Criterio Magazine, Buenos Aires, Dec/26/1991
A gem. "Ms. Olga's School" recovers facts from a
past that has been forgotten twice, with a view in which the
rigor in the exposition is only excelled by the warmness of
rememberings and the power of exemplariness.
Ricardo García Oliveri / Daily Clarín, Buenos
Aires, Dec./8/1991
This film is, above all, a
conversation, an exchange of feellings about an educative
experience, a way to meet life, without intermediaries.
It' s not easy to find such a valuable reason to make a film
as this experience, which certainly seems to run over any
container. Nevertheless, Mario Piazza found the needed form,
the most valid means: to asume himself as the executor of an
act of justice, which consists just in showing facts with
verism and poetry. Not to consider this a little achievement,
as we know that those two imperatives, to be such must also
be beautiful and true. And beauty arises diaphanous from
those plenty faces that make the certitude of their lives the
best hommage to what they have lived. And cinema take them
back to join beauty to usefulness, an alliance ofttimes
forgotten in the name of art.
Juan Carlos Arch / El Litoral Daily, Santa Fe, Dec/29/1992
"Ms. Olga ' s School"
leads us to meet back our flogged wishes to be teachers in
spite all (...) It's a cardiac massage that reactivates our
creative impetus, our -sometimes- withered feelings that if
we have the will we can practice what books read... building
a school to learn life through love, to appreciate our
surroundings to afterwards act over it.
María Esther Rodríguez / Novedades Educativas, June 1992
A delitious documentary. With great
sensibility, refurbishing old scenes of dances, rummaging the
faces from old pictures and film takes, Piazza brings to
present a piece of a singular story. A sensation of
tenderness interweaves with the emotions of the grateful
spectator.
Graciela Pedraza / La Voz del Interior, Córdoba, Oct/26/1992
For the impressive historical,
social and profoundly political achievement that "Ms.
Olga 's School" means, for its documental, testimonial
and human values, and as a stimulus to audiovisual
productions endeavored to regenerating a weft of solidarity
and democracy, from the most poetic vision.
Foundations of the "Prof. Horacio Bertholet"
Prize / Workshop of Audiovisual Production of the Superior
School of Journalism and Social Communication of the UNLP /
La Plata, Nov.
1992
"Ms. Olga 's School" moved
me as never a documentary did before. Mario Piazza has
succeeded in consolidating his own style, which installs him
in a privileged place among argentinian documentarians.
In his unique narrative way there are, at least, three
aspects that I'd remark: the affective relationship
stablished between protagonists and the audience, telling
through allowing the others to speak, and the impeccable
rythm of editing.
Raúl Bertone (Licenciado en Cinematografía UNC,
founder and director of the Provincial Film & TV School
of Rosario, ex Subsecretary of Culture of the Province of
Santa Fe)
Few times a film moved me so deeply.
I felt it very much and it is a true jewell.
Osvaldo Bayer (writer and scripwriter for film and TV)
It is a work plenty of intelligence
because it is not leaned upon a mere nostalgia but on the
valuation, warm and moving, of what has been lost. Outlined
as an uncompleted puzzle, the account brings considerable
information but is especially valid at the level of the
emotive memory.
Daniel Briguet / Rosario/12, Oct./2/1991
My heart of santafesinian teacher
beats this night of August 13th with an incredible
acceleration. ¡God be praised! We must make known all what
is beautifull and edifying of "ours" that can
transform and energize daily life and culture. Let the
santafesinian television stations say their word.
María B. Dagatti de Assenza / Readers' Letters,
Daily El Litoral, Santa Fe, 18/08/91
It is moving when youngs devote to
searching the past with a prospect view and without an
arqueological sense. A community that allows its roots to get
rotten certainly has no future. The heritage of Olga
Cossettini didn't fade and for sure won't.
Jorge Miguel Couselo / Daily El Tribuno. Salta, January 5, 1992
Exceptional, as Ms.
Olga: Piazza has had sensibility enough to synthesize in
"Ms. Olga' s School" the emotion and the ideology,
making his documentary a true expressive work.
Patricia Fasano / Magazine Análisis. Paraná, May 1992
Being an spectator of
your film broadened my soul and my heart. It made me laugh
and cry. I found a model to follow and this makes me
extremely enthusiastic (...) I thank you for the contribution
you have done to society and to my own self.
Laura Molochnik / Florida (Vicente López, Buenos
Aires)
Mario Piazza ' s film
is a little moving chant to liberty and experimentation:
there is not one without the other.
Jorge Ruffinelli / History and film Professor at
Stanford University.