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.

 

Available in PAL or NTSC, VHS copies in original Spanish version with English or Italian subtitles.

 

 

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