ARGENTINE FILM MAKER’S NEW CAREER DIRECTION

Making films in Argentina requires directors to be clever and versatile. Like many young film makers, Eliseo Subiela survived the years of military dictatorship by making commercials. “There have been so many dictatorships that I’ve made commercials all my life!” acknowledged the 42-year-old director of “Man Facing Southeast.”

This science-fiction drama whose special effects have more to do with poetic imagination than high-tech high jinks won the international critics prize at the Toronto Film Festival. When it had its U.S. premiere at the Miami Film Festival, the reaction was a tumultuous standing ovation.

Subiela was quite gratified for practical as well as personal reasons: “I saved my house,” he said with a smile about the film made for less than half a million dollars. “I produced the film myself by mortgaging my house. I was going against the commercial rule of using actors who are unknown in Argentina.”

“Man Facing Southeast”--and playing at the Cineplex Beverly Center and the Royal in Los Angeles--begins in a mental hospital where Dr. Dennis (Lorenzo Quinteros), a wry, rumpled and rational man, seems to have little faith in what he’s doing.

A mysterious patient appears, claiming to be an extraterrestrial; but before either the doctor or the audience can laugh him off, the young, intelligent and charismatic Rantes (Hugo Soto) becomes the idol of the other patients.

He has no history, medical records, address or relatives. His only possession is a box of newspaper clippings about recent human history, telling of things like annihilation, brutality and starvation. Rantes calmly explains to the doctor that he has been sent to Earth to study these inexplicable events. And every afternoon he goes out to the yard, facing southeast, to give and receive transmissions.

Sometimes comic, sometimes poignant, “Man Facing Southeast” is aimed at an adult audience that can empathize with the doctor’s irony as well as his potential for a leap of faith. When asked about the origin of the film, Subiela answered, “It’s based in part on a real person who lives in my neighborhood in Buenos Aires. His bride abandoned him right after their wedding, and then he always looked southeast because her house was there. He went crazy.”

And the supernatural aspect? “It comes from me,” replied the director. “I look southeast every once in a while, too! I’ve never been sure, or wanted to be sure, whether Rantes comes from another planet or not.”

Although this may sound a bit wacky for pragmatic American audiences, Latin American art consistently manifests a belief in the supernatural--from the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to the films of Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Indeed, critics have noted the influence in “Man Facing Southeast” of such Argentine writers as Bioy-Casares.

Subiela agreed that there is an “indirect influence,” and added, “people see Borges in the film, but I’m not conscious of it, and others said the influence of Cortazar is visible, too. Their perfume floats around the work.”

This magical aroma coexists with the hard realities of the film, as Subiela shot “Man Facing Southeast” in a functioning mental hospital. There may be poetry in the fanciful propositions of the characters, but the locale roots the film in a gritty authenticity.

Subiela noted that the actors were brought to the hospital before filming began in order to study actual patients, “focusing on their posture, physical dispositions, and silences. The actors pretended to be patients, and many of the actions of mentally disturbed behavior in the film resulted from their observation.

“During shooting,” he continued in Spanish, “doctors and nurses sometimes mistook actors for patients and tried to send them to their rooms or order medication for them! The crew--the entire shooting process--was fascinating to the patients, who saw it all as a new kind of insanity.”

These actors were primarily from the theater, as Subiela felt that recognizable actors’ faces would diminish the credibility of his tale. For example, Soto is a stage actor, painter and sculptor, while Quinteros’ experience includes theater directing and teaching.

“Emotions are the real subject of the story,” the director insisted, “and for me, the music expresses this.” In particular, Dr. Dennis plays a mournful saxophone in his apartment, while drinking Scotch and watching home movies of his ex-wife and children.

The source for this music is that Subiela is “a frustrated sax player. I bought one, hoping to play it. It’s the equivalent of the doctor’s voice-over, his way of letting feelings out.”

Subiela’s first feature was “The Conquest of Paradise,” which he described as “totally different from ‘Man Facing Southeast’--tropical and less dramatic. But it was also about a man who lost his chance to be happy.” His next film is being planned as a bilingual co-production with an American company.

He admits that the situation for Argentine cinema has improved (“It’s the first time we’re working without fear”), but that the economic situation is still bad. He is therefore gratified that new American companies like FilmDallas Pictures--for whom “Man Facing Southeast” is the first release--are beginning to distribute Spanish-language pictures.

FilmDallas was recently formed as a joint venture between FilmDallas Inc. (the corporate successor to the Dallas capital group that invested in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “The Trip to Bountiful”) and New World Pictures. According to its president, John Ives, “Our emphasis is on high-quality, low-budget, independently produced films. We plan to focus on the release--and indeed production--of English-language films, as well as occasional foreign-language gems like ‘Man Facing Southeast.’ ”