Orquesta Tipica started by accident when director/producer Nicholas Entel was walking through the streets of San Telmo - one of Buenos Aires' oldest neighborhoods.
"Just as many other Argentineans my age, I didn't care much for tango...until, by chance, I came across the Orquesta Tipica Fernandez Fierro playing on the street. First I saw twelve guys looking like wannabe rock stars pushing a piano down the street. Then I heard them play. Their sound was as elaborate as it was raw and powerful...filled with beauty and passion. It was love at first site. After that, I was also impressed by their political commitment and their understanding of music as a way of practicing cultural resistance. I also discovered elements which have been historically linked to counterculture, from Dada and cubism to jazz and punk rock music: all these components were present in their re-interpretation of a Typical Orchestra and Tango, a genre more than a hundred years old. Finally, it was very important for me as a citizen of Buenos Aires to discover how deeply tango was rooted in my unconscious."
Orquesta Tipica was shot in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as during the first European tour of the Orquesta Tipica Fernandez Fierro, which included Holland, Germany, Switzeralnd, Italy, and Austria.
Shooting was completed in early 2005, and was followed by eight long and harsh off-line editing months. The unusual duration of this process finds its roots in the fact that Nicholas Entel and editor Pablo Farina decided to cut the documentary employing a narrative language typically found in fiction films. Orquesta Tipica does not utilize voice over narration, and the use of on-camera interviews is brought down to a minimum. In relation to this strategy, the film's director tells us: "The only way to be coherent with the subject of our documentary is to make aesthetic choices as strong as the ones they make and push them to their last consequences...just as the Orquesta Tipica Fernandez Fierro does."
Santiago Melazzini, the film's Director of Photography whose influences can be traced back to experimental photography - and whose world-famous animated flip books can be purchased at the MOMA in New York City, gives his opinion about the film: "Tango has achieved the impossible: to be contemporary with itself; with documentaries about Tango a similar process takes place. The challenge was to achieve with the camera what Fernandez Fierro accomplishes through its music - to convey a sense that one is in the presence of contemporary, up-to-date style as opposed to music from 30 years ago."
"We also took a few strong decisions," adds Nicolas Entel, "in relation to the punk-rock nature of the project, such as utilizing amateur cameramen as if they were a sort of teenage garage guitar players. Or the fact that we always use straight cuts between shots rather than dissolves or other montage affects - another resource which contributes to the film's visceral feeling."
