Coppola counsels Argentine film students

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Francis Ford Coppola, in Buenos Aires for his next film project, has some advice for young Latin American cineastes.

‘Have faith in life, don’t be frightened, something will turn up,’ the acclaimed director told students in a lengthy chat and Q&A at the Argentine national film school, reports the daily Clarin. The headline: ‘Coppola gave a class on life and cine.’

Though best known for blockbusters such as ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘The Godfather,’ Coppola talked up smaller-scale, more personal projects. ‘You have more control, it’s cheaper and you eat a better lunch.’

His dream, he told the students, was to be a poet, working on projects more artsy than commercial in nature.

He says he chose to film in Argentina for ‘the climate, the food, the wine.’ A laptop was stolen in a break-in this year at his Buenos Aires production house, but he seemed to harbor no ill will toward the capital.

‘They can rob you anywhere,’ Coppola noted, adding that he had made extra copies of the script for his new film, ‘Tetro,’ the saga of an artistic clan of Italian descent living in Argentina, where much of the population has bloodlines to Italy.

For now, Coppola is a man about town, notes Clarin, ‘Francis Ford Coppola makes the rounds in the city of Buenos Aires as if he were just another Argentine.’

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires