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Artist Amalia Ulman Makes Her Feature Debut with Sundance Contender El Planeta
Anna Marie de la Fuente, provided by
Jan. 30, 2021
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Running time: Running time: 82 MIN.
Courtesy of Holgas Meow Pictures/Sundance
Among the films in World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year’s virtual Sundance is the darkly comic “El Planeta,” the debut feature of Spanish-Argentine artist Amalia Ulman, who has worked in video, sculpture and performance art.
Ulman is best-known for her 2014 performance art piece “Excellences and Perfections” (more on that here), which was included in a group show at the Tate Modern. Her multidisciplinary art involves the use of social media, magazine photoshoots, interviews, self-promotion and brand endorsements as devices for her fictional narratives.
Premiering as part of the world cinema dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival, “El Planeta” is the feature filmmaking debut for interdisciplinary artist Amalia Ulman, who wrote, directed and stars in the movie.
Ulman gained notoriety in the art world for her work that reflects on gender, class and technology. Perhaps her best known work is 2014’s “Excellences & Perfections,” in which over several months she posted to Instagram a scripted performance piece that some misinterpreted to be real.
Born in Argentina, Ulman grew up in Gijón, Spain, before moving to London to study at Central St. Martin’s college of art. She then lived in Los Angeles for five years before recently moving to New York City.
El Planeta (2021)
Amalia Ulman,
El Planeta, 2021, DCP, black-and-white, sound, 79 minutes. Leonor and María (Amalia Ulman and Ale Ulman).
EL PLANETA, billed as “a comedy about eviction” and the first feature film by artist Amalia Ulman, is loosely based on the real-life Spanish mother-daughter petty-crime duo Justina and Ana Belén. Arrested in 2012, the penniless yet elegant pair posed as wealthy ladies and scammed countless restauranteurs and shop-owners who’d trusted the apparently well-heeled women to eventually settle their bill out of thousands of euros. In
El Planeta, lead actor Ulman (who also wrote the screenplay) plays fashion student Leonor who, in the aftermath of her father’s death, can no longer afford her London university and is forced to return to her seaside hometown, the drizzly and geriatric Gijón (where the Belén family also resided). Leo awaits news about an uncertain scholarship with mother María (the director’s real-life mother, Ale Ul