Edgardo Cozarinsky

Edgardo Cozarinsky (Spanish pronunciation: [eðˈɣarðo kosaˈɾinski]; born 1939 in Buenos Aires,^[1] Argentina) is a writer and filmmaker. He is best known for writing Vudú urbano.

Life

Edgardo Cozarinsky grew up to an Argentine family of Ukrainian-Jewish descent. His last name comes from his grandparents, Ukrainian Jews immigrants who arrived in Argentina from Kiev and Odessa in the late nineteenth century.

After an adolescence spent in neighbourhood cinemas showing double bills of old Hollywood films and reading an inordinate amount of fiction in Spanish, English and French (favourite authors – Stevenson, Conrad, some Henry James), he studied literature at Buenos Aires University, wrote for local and Spanish cinephile magazines and published an early essay on James which developed out of graduation work – El laberinto de la apariencia (The Labyrinth of Appearance, 1964), a book he later suppressed. He was barely twenty when he became acquainted with Borges, Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, all writers of prestige whom he saw frequently during his years in Buenos Aires. In 1973 he won a literary prize with an essay on gossip as narrative device in James and Proust. In 1974 he published Borges y el cine, a book enlarged in every reprint (Spain, 1978 and 2002, and translations) which he also does not want reprinted now.

After a first nine-month stay in Europe and a visit to New York between September 1966 and June 1967, he returned to Buenos Aires with the desire and the decision to leave behind his life as a literary idler. After dabbling in journalism, in the culture section of the weeklies Primera Plana and Panorama, he made a first film, an underground feature shot on weekends throughout a year, knowing that it could not pass the local censorship of the period. It was nevertheless screened at festivals throughout Europe and the United States. Its title was already a challenge – ... (Puntos suspensivos – Dot Dot Dot).

In 1974, in the turmoil of political agitation and imminent repression, he left Buenos Aires for Paris. There his film making career fell roughly into two categories – fiction films and "essays", mixing documentary material with a personal, even private reflexion on the issues raised by the material. The most distinguished of these is La Guerre d'un seul homme (One Man's War, 1981), a confrontation between Ernst Jünger wartime diaries and the French newsreels of the occupation period. At a time when the arts' departments of several European television networks were willing to support such ventures, Cozarinsky was able to develop this approach in a series of very original works.

He did not write much during the 1970s and '80s, but his only published work of the period became an instant cult book – Vudú urbano (Urban voodoo, 1985), a mixture of fiction and essay not unlike his film work, with prologues by Susan Sontag and the Cuyban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.

After the end of the military regime in Argentina, he visited Buenos Aires. Three years later, he made a film in Argentina, in the far South, a "Southern" – Guerreros y cautivas (Warriors and Captive Women). From that date on he started visiting his native country more and more often, occasionally shooting there material for his European "essays". His most adventurous later films were Rothschild's Violin and Ghosts of Tangier, both made between 1995 and 1996.

In 1999, he spent a month in a Paris hospital for a backbone infection, during which time he was diagnosed as having cancer. In his own words, he felt the ringing of a bell telling to stop wasting his time – "I always wanted to be a writer, and had not dared publish, even finish what I started..." It was in hospital that he wrote the first two stories in his prize-winning book La novia de Odessa (The Bride from Odessa). From that date on, his film work became sparse and he started publishing "all the books I had not put on paper", fiction mostly but also essays and chronicles. He became established as a writer to reckon with in the Spanish language, and was translated into English, French, German and several others languages.

It was at this point also that he started spending most of the time in Buenos Aires with regular but short stays in Paris. His impatience with a settled, recognized persona led him to investigate other creative areas. He wrote and directed a play (Squash), the mini-opera Raptos (Raptures), both in 2005, and he appeared on the alternative stage together with his GP, Dr Alejo Florin, in one of Vivi Tellas' "documentary theater" ventures -Cozarinsky y su médico. In 2008 he started work on the libretto for a chamber opera with the musician Pablo Mainetti – Ultramarina, based on motives from his own novel El rufián moldavo (The Moldavian Pimp).

An inveterate nomad, Cozarinsky has shot at least part of his films not only in Buenos Aires and Paris but also in Budapest, Rotterdam, Tallinn, Tangiers, Vienna, Granada, Saint Petersburg, Seville and Patagonia. He rarely spends more than three months in any one place and considers Buenos Aires his pleasure basis and Paris his cultural "department store".

Books (selected list)

• Vudú urbano (Urban Voodoo), stories, essays, memories, 1985.
• La novia de Odessa (The Bride from Odessa), short stories, 2001. (First prize to a volume of short stories, City of Buenos Aires; Platinum prize to a volume of short stories, Konex Foundation.)
• El pase del testigo (Passing the baton / The Witness Goes By), essays and chronicles, 2001.
• El rufián moldavo (The Moldavian Pimp), novel, 2004.
• Museo del chisme (Museum of Gossip), essay and stories, 2005.
• Tres fronteras (Three Frontiers), short stories, 2006.
• Palacios plebeyos (Plebeian Palaces), chronicles and a short story, 2006.
• Maniobras nocturnas (Night-time manoeuvers), novel, 2007.
• Milongas, chronicles and short stories, 2007.
• Burundanga, short stories, 2009.
• Lejos de dónde (Far from where), novel, 2009. (Prize for the best novel 2008–2010, Academia Argentina de Letras)
• Blues, chronicles and memories, 2010.
• La tercera mañana (The Third Morning), novel, 2010 (Spain); 2011 (Argentina).
• Dinero para fantasmas (Money for Ghosts), novel, 2012 (Argentina); 2013 (Spain).
• Nuevo museo del chisme, essay and stories, 2013.

Film work (feature-length and short films, fiction and "essays")

• ... (Puntos suspensivos) (Dot Dot Dot), 1971.
• Les Apprentis-sorciers (The Apprentice Sorcerers), 1976.
• La Guerre d'un seul homme (One Man's War), 1981.
• Autoportrait d'un inconnu – Jean Cocteau (Self-portrait of a Man Unknown – Jean

Cocteau), 1983.

• Haute Mer (High Seas), 1984.
• Pour Memoire – Les Klarsfeld, une famille dans l'Histoire (To be Remembered – The Klarsfelds, a family in History), 1985.
• Sarah, 1988.
• Guerreros y cautivas (Warriors and Captive Women), 1989.
• BoulevardS du crépuscule (Sunset BoulevardS), 1992.
• Scarlatti à Séville (Scarlatti in Seville), 1994.
• Citizen Langlois, 1994.
• La barraca: Lorca sur les chemins de l'Espagne (La barraca: Lorca on the road in Spain), 1995.
• Le Violon de Rothschild (Rothschild's Violin), 1996.
• Fantômes de Tanger (Ghosts of Tangier), 1997.
• Le Cinéma des Cahiers (The Cinema of Cahiers du Cinéma), 2000.
• Tango-Désir (Tango Desire), 2002.
• Dans le Rouge du Couchant (Red Dusk), 2003.
• Rond Nocturna (Night Watch), 2005.
• Apuntes para una biografía imaginaria (Notes for an Imaginary Biography), 2010.
• Nocturnos, 2011.
• Carta a un padre (Letter to a Father), 2013.

References

• Enrique Vila Matas. París no se acaba nunca. Barcelona, 2003.
• David Oubiña. "Los bordes del silencio". Buenos Aires, 2011.
• Juan José Sebreli. "Cozarinsky: sobre exilios y ruinas", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 613–614, Julio-Agosto 2001.
• Jason Weiss. The Lights of Home. New York, 2002.
• Jonathan Rosenbaum. "Ambiguous Evidence: Cozarinsky's Cinéma indirect". Film Comment, New York, September 1995.
• Heinz-Peter Schwerfel. Buenos Aires Intensiv. Cologne, 2008.
• Dominique Païni. Le Cinéma, un art moderne. Paris, 1997.
• Henry Taylor. Krieg eines einzelnen. Zurich, 1995.
• Emilio Toibero. Abecedario Cozarinsky
• Ignacio López Vicuña: "La perspectiva excéntrica de Cozarinsky". Revista Hispánica Moderna, junio 2013.