This is the going away party (“despedida”) of Dany Glusman and his girlfriend, Jose*, who have headed off to live in Panama for a couple years. It took place at the great Parilla La Dorita in Palermo, Buenos Aires, on January 4, 2009.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK2985-EKpk]
My little movie aint much, as it’s just me futzing around with my Canon G9 and iMovie to try to learn some basic storytelling skills using motion. I knew it would be hard but damn!
Quality aside, the movie still gives a peak into typical family life of middle-class porteños. The despedida event is common because–besides liking any excuse to come together and celebrate–families in this immigrant-oriented culture move around a lot internationally to find opportunities and simply out of a love of extended travel. The casual, long, festive nature of dinner is just typical porteño, despedida or not.
The juvenile, inside joke in the movie involves Mauricio Macri, the governor of Buenos Aires, who makes an appearance. He just happened to be dining a couple tables away, no security, real mellow. There was no ogling by other guests, but there certainly was distaste at my table. Macri is a right-wing conservative and all of the porteños I know are left-wing liberals (not that they use the phrase the same here). So they seemed content to ignore him while I shot a few minutes of stealth footage.
Carla Rein, my date and Dany’s cousin, ordered me to not put Macri in my movie, but I couldn’t help it. I mean shit, it’s my first celebrity footage. Still, as a compromise I kept Macri’s appearance to two-second bursts followed by the same close-up shot of chorizo, which is Argentine sausage, if you get my juvenile joke. (Head straight to minute 2:32 if you want to skip the family stuff.)
Anyway, best of luck to Dany and Jose in Panama!
(* You know, it’s like in English when women are called Chris, Sam, Alex and so on.)