a young man in a yellow jacket and a young woman in a red jacket sit next to each other on the couchalr

Silvia Prieto

Martín Rejtman and Carlos Gutiérrez in Conversation
Recently Restored
$15 Special Event Tickets
Directed by Martín Rejtman.
With Rosario Bléfari, Valeria Bertuccelli, Vicentico.
Argentina, 1999, DCP, color, 92 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.
DCP source: Filmmaker

Rejtman’s effervescent masterpiece is a glittering screwball-inspired comedy of shifting identities that centers around the ardent efforts of its strong eponymous heroine to suddenly lead her life in a radically new direction. Everything goes differently when she discovers there is more than one Silvia Prieto. Buoyed by its fanciful, rapid-fire dialogue and at times hilariously absurd story, Silvia Prieto is saturated by a Pop sensibility that belies a gently ironic fascination with bright logos, television slogans and the rich contradictions of consumer culture. Rejtman’s deep appreciation of nonprofessional actors led him to prominent, popular Argentine singer-musicians in key roles, including Vicentico and Rosario Bléfari, who brings a spontaneous grace to her portrayal of Silvia Prieto as a young woman spinning at a crossroads of her own design. Guided by Bléfari’s mellifluous voice in a wonderfully disjointed voiceover, Silvia Prieto offers an affectionate portrait of romantic folly that, at its end, reveals an unexpected bridge to Rejtman’s lesser-known documentary work. 

The Harvard Film Archive will also screen a beautiful English-subtitled 35mm print that now forms part of the HFA’s Cinema Tropical Collection.

Silvia Prieto introduction and post-screening discussion with Martín Rejtman, distributor Carlos Gutiérrez and HFA Director Haden Guest.

Part of film series

Read more

The Practice (and Other Works) By Martín Rejtman

Other film series with this film

Read more

The Comic Art of Martin Rejtman, or Love in the Time of Late Capitalism

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas