Yama, una danza de ángeles

Abstract

This text presents an evaluative analysis of Yama, considered one of the most significant works in the filmography of Alberto Honik. The author highlights the work's visionary nature, placing it even beyond the aesthetic standards of experimental cinema of its time, both Argentine and international.

Honik, who worked as a physician, links his life experience to the creation of the film: the images he recorded emerged so forcefully from his surroundings that he could not separate his hand from the camera. This union is interpreted in McLuhan's terms as a prosthesis of the gaze, but what emerges from it is not merely a technical extension, but rather images that become organs of perception, possessing an unheard-of nakedness and an almost sacred harmony.

A parallel is drawn with representatives of Absolute Cinema (such as Ruttmann, Eggeling, and Fischinger), as Honik constructs a symphonic visual rhythm in a silent film. Following Michel Chion's question about what we hear from what we see, the text suggests that the images—torn from the flow of life—evoke sounds and music through their rhythmic and precise succession.

Finally, the text underscores the uniqueness of Honik's gaze, comparing it to that of a Tuareg: its beauty lies not in an art conscious of itself, but in the ability to bear witness to a nature that finds, almost by chance, a gaze worthy of it.