Original subtitles

IN 1997, A GROUP OF TEENAGERS FROM HAEDO

IN THE WESTERN AREA OF THE BUENOS AIRES SUBURBS,

MADE THE FIRST LIVING DEAD MOVIE IN ARGENTINA.

THIS IS THEIR EPIC AND BLOODY STORY.

I see it and say “man, we were boys having fun, making movies...

We weren't even 20, and we were doing that. So strange!”

We started Plaga in the middle of 4th year,

and in 5th year, everyone we met in the senior trip became zombies.

For me, it was a movie as the ones we saw in Hollywood.

Although we were 17, we were serious and fully committed.

Why aren't any more home-made movies as Plaga Zombie,

which is ok, a movie with music and everything,

but you can tell it's done in a house,

with people wearing their own clothes.

At some point, our big dream

was seeing Plaga Zombie among other VHS.

That was our dream:

Being part of those movies we used to see.

A MILLION ZOMBIES

THE PLAGA ZOMBIE STORY

COPYRIGHT MMXXI. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A documentary by Nicanor Loreti & Camilo de Cabo.

With Pablo we met when we were two in a daycare, a kind of nursery.

Called Seo'ora Luna, in Haedo.

Our parents took us there and we became friends.

Then, we did the kindergarten together.

We were close, we drew

and were really noisy.

They say we did what the other one was doing.

After the kindergarten, we remained friends forever.

We must have asked our parents to go to Pablo's

or Hernán's, whatever.

And we met to play.

We drew.

We would spend the afternoon drawing and eating cookies.

When computers appeared, the Commodore 128,

we started drawing with it, making animated films.

We understood what animation was when we were around 10.

We recorded Popeye's cartoons from the TV in VHS

and then we analyzed how they had animated each thing.

They did a magazine, I helped them. They did radio shows

recorded in a cassette.

Later on...

my brother Diego was dating a girl who had a VHS camera.

That was something new. It was like "Wow!",

being able to shoot and see the result instantly,

making short movies.

When he was around 11,

Pablo wins a motorcycle

in a raffle,

and decides to exchange it for a camera.

So he trades it for a Panasonic.

A semiprofessional VHS camera.

It was good, because it included a title maker,

so we could add titles at the beginning and the end

of the short films, and we could replace the music.

Once we had the camera, we started making more short films.

First of all, we liked to use it, seeing through the viewer,

making tests with the iris, the light, the focus.

And that gave us ideas of things to record.

We've always been real fans

of the mainstream product.

So, if you make a magazine it has a publishing house.

It has the credits about the team, the text about where it was printed.

To add all that information to the fanzine we were making,

so that it looked professional, we made a publishing house up.

We did the same with the short films,

and it was Farsa Estudios, or Farsa...

Farsa Productions appeared from the beginning.

There was obviously always a friend from school that joined us

in our adventures.

And we met people in different places.

In fact, the first one I met was Hernán

and our relationship was like any kid's friendship,

playing with He-Man dolls, etc.

I met Pablo in 7th grade,

just before secondary school.

And I went to Pablo's one day, and Hernán showed up.

And it was like, "Hernán, Pablo, great!"

"Let's make short movies."

And, of course, the big guy had arrived.

I was always big size, so they said: You'll be the bad guy.”

I tricked so many idiots today. Amazing!

Dance! Dance!

- Dance! - What are you doing, boy?

What are you doing?

Dance! Dance!

Well, I...

since I am Spanish, from Asturias...

I came to Argentina at the early 90s.

December 1990.

And, at the School 8 in Haedo,

where I finished the primary school, only 7th grade

the adaptation was really hard,

and I had to fight three or four times

because they told me a couple of things.

And I remember that the day I met Pablo,

I fought a boy, and ended up making a short film at his house.

I was like the king of nerds. You had the most popular ones,

and I had my group of nerds, who saw movies, videogames.

And Walter first went with the band of the coolest ones,

but one day, he had a fight with another classmate,

Roman Waldoni,

and since I kind of hated him,

I defended Walter and became friends,

like in Back to the Future.

I remember the whole school was cheering on the other one.

I thought: “What is this nightmare?”

And, since Pablo hated this guy,

was the only one on my side. That's how I met him.

Exterminate him!

We copied what we saw on TV.

We used to watch movies in, say, Super-action Saturdays,

and they used a neutral language: “Hey, Bill, you know,

you have to go to your brother's...

So we thought that was...

the correct way of sending a message.

Listen, Ray, I don't want you to kill any more people.

I've heard you killed many people and I didn't know it, Ray.

And that makes me really angry.

Because that made it credible.

There wasn't a great culture of local movies in Spanish,

with horror, science fiction stories.

So the neutral tone was a way of getting in the mood,

belonging in that world.

The ideas for the movies were based on what we were wearing,

If we were all in black, Let's play ninjas!

We put a cloth here, and we created something with that.

Optimizing our resources, in a very natural way.

What do feelings have?

They used everything they had at hand to film.

They would call any guy, anyone, not even an actor,

anyone who was eager to get involved

became part of Farsa to do things

and had some kind of role, based on what they were able or wanted to do.

They were, precisely, kids

proposing ideas constantly,

and saying: “No, wait, wait!” One of them always shouted,

suggested an idea, we all laughed,

and improved that idea.

Or, let's say, we opposed to it.

The idea was always there

and we would create around it.

You are finally here.

During the 90s, you could edit with two VCRS connected,

you put REC in one and PLAY in the other,

and shoot one scene after another.

Or in the same camera.

You shoot one scene, rewind,

go back exactly where it would end, and shoot the next scene.

In the first short movies, we did the edition with the camera.

We were kids playing, and we were lucky to record our games.

It was our way of escaping.

Instead of playing football as kids do

when they are 13 or 14 years old,

we got together to do short movies.

Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen! How are you?

Here we are, once again, to receive together

the best Farsa Academy Awards celebrities.

The fact of ending up in Haedo in 1990,

meeting Pablo and his brother Diego,

who would download from Akira to the Eternauta.

It's like, I couldn't be more grateful.

Haedo was our place,

the blocks we knew.

I lived two blocks away from Pablo.

It was always a residential area, with single-story houses.

A small business area that still has 3 blocks.

Haedo has always been our home, the city itself.

So we always felt comfortable

filming on the street, anywhere.

We filmed a lot at Pablo's house, on the street, the sidewalk.

Pablo seemed to be a kind of millionaire,

because he lived in a big house in Haedo.

In Spain, the people who lived in a house like that were rich.

Pablo had a basement with tools,

his brother was a cartoonist.

So for me, it was a house with many stimuli.

I feel part of that first stage,

as a helper, a supporter,

being there with the boys.

There was no Internet.

So you were isolated in a kind of Springfield with your friends.

The only way to express yourself back then was doing this kind of things.

Pablo Parés, for The invisible man.

VHS was everything.

It was basically going to the video store

and see everything that was available.

We were fans of seeing movies and staying up late watching them.

We saw Acción Mutante for the first time

in a VHS that Walter's grandma brought from Spain.

And, for us, seeing Acci-n Mutante was like.

“Oh my God, I can't believe I am watching this

in Spanish, our language! I am seeing a movie..."

We couldn't believe it.

One day I went to a video store inside a Shell gas station,

and I saw a cover, kind of Robert Crumb style.

"What the hell is this?" It was Bad Taste.

We took it home, and the guys flipped out.

The stranger, the better.

"This is really strange? Let's watch it!"

And that movie left a mark on us.

Absolutely.

At that point, we were watching

exactly all those movies that left a mark on us.

I mean, Sam Raimi, Braindead, which blew our minds...

"Right! These mother fuckers are doing just what we want to do!"

"The same thing."

When we saw Braindead, we said:

“Let's make a supergore short movie”,

And we bought brains at the butcher's...

There was such a smell!

They were like our guides.

"Wow, these guys are making The Three Stooges with blood

and chainsaws."

I am an alien

and I will go to Earth to take those human's blood.

We did many short movies for many years.

Around 1991 to 1996.

And we did many, one each weekend,

one every two weekends...

"Done, we did a short film. Let's do another!”

Let's do the second part of the one we did before.

We recorded in one afternoon.

We put a title at the beginning, one at the end.

That was a short film. Done!

In a play date.

And that became bigger

and bigger, and bigger...

And it was a mix of experimenting, copying what we saw,

and implementing what we discovered with the tools, the camera.

Discovering that the baking color powder, a small pot,

could be used as blood and make-up, even if it wasn't professional,

was the start to get closer to these movies we saw in the genre.

We've always taken it seriously,

as a game.

The short movies always had music, titles...

We always tried to imitate real movies.

On my side, I participated as an observer

of that explosive creativity seed among the four of them

I've seen amazing things, really amazing!

These kids were strange. It was weird seeing four kids

doing things that kids didn't usually do.

Since they had taught us that if it lasted more than an hour,

it was a full-length movie,

for a long time, almost since 1995,

we started trying to do our first movie.

Until one of the short movies that we did every weekend,

which, back then, was called Bienvenidos a la Tierra,

got longer and longer, and it became our first movie.

I don't remember the plot, but it basically was

a guy at home watching TV, and he suddenly hears a noise

from upstairs and goes to the terrace.

The movie was going to be about that, an alien invasion.

That's why it was called Bienvenidos a la Tierra.

Not very shocking.

It was about aliens that came to infect some people

so they killed each other.

That was the premise.

We didn't know much about zombies and things like that.

Later, we learned about it, but first it was like:

“We are doing this short movie.”

The original idea came from... we went to Berta's house,

he had a terrace.

We thought: “We can use this terrace for an alien abduction”.

A UFO comes and takes him. It was the X-files time.

Everything started from that idea.

The zombies theme simply came up because the victim

had an alien virus which slowly turned him into an alien.

So he went through a decomposition phase,

and that was it.

Instead of becoming aliens,

they stay at the intermediate status, and start being zombies.

So, we started calling the movie Plaga Zombie, after them.

At that moment the zombies weren't that famous.

You had Night of the living dead

and Romero's saga.

The Italian ones, those by Lucio Fulci.

And then, The return of the living dead

by Dan O'Bannon. That was it.

Hollywood hadn't adopted them yet.

We were more influenced by Gremlins.

The attitude and the comedy style,

zombies who laugh, make faces,

and are out of control, crazy.

Zombies are... easy...

It's an enemy that is easy to do, to execute,

and you can have many enemies and characters on screen.

The fact that zombies are colored is also a coincidence.

And then we took it as a style.

The first one we did was yellowish,

with red and brown, like a zombie, like Return of the living dead.

And at some point, we were filming another scene,

there was no one to put on make-up, so Berta started doing it.

And when he saw what he had done, one of them was green, another blue,

it was like: "Ok, now we have crazy zombies, with colors."

What the hell is going on?

I have no idea, John.

I do know we need to do something about it.

Yes! We must leave this place as soon as possible!

No.

If we leave,

we are going to die.

We put the characters together once we decided who played each part.

Berta would be the wrestler, John West,

and for Bill and Max, we flipped a coin to see who would play them.

Pablo got Bill and I got Max.

Bill had to be a doctor,

because in the first scene he healed a friend.

And it was an excuse for everyone going to his house to heal.

I was young, so we said: “he is a medical student,

he lost someone and was traumatized.”

On, Bill, Bill, you have to stop blaming yourself for the accident.

Haven't you considered going back to medical school?

My friend, we have already talked about that.

At Pablo's, they had strange scissors.

So we said: “This is good to do something”, I don't know what.

That's why he's cutting the plants with the scissors.

The guy is like a gardener that transforms himself.

"Ok, so he is a gardener, too."

"He is a doctor who likes plants.”

Something like that...

And Max was like the computer nerd, the typical...

Again, based on Revenge of the Nerds,

the character from Day of the tentacle, the videogame.

He was the crazy computer guy that went mad.

John West... We had always wanted to make a character

who was a former catch wrestler.

It was like an ironic consumption, we loved wrestling.

We thought the concept was funny, that of a wrestler.

Those suits made us laugh. We thought it was funny.

Pablo said: “Catch suits have a thin strip,

up to here."

The body is really seen,

and I remember it was embarrassing for me.

So originally, for the first suit, which I was in charge of,

I asked my mum's neighbor to do it,

and she said: “Oh, those have thin strips”,

so I told her: “Don't make them too thin, I want them a little wider.”

Because I was really embarrassed to wear that wrestler suit,

Then I got used to it, “it's fine, it's Plaga Zombie.”

“I am already in this, let's do it.”

But at the beginning...

I was like:

“Do I have to show my breasts?, the fat guy breasts?"

"No, please, have some mercy!"

This is a shooting.

Today we will shoot, first scenes like commando, I paint myself.

Then they tear my clothes,

and they tear everything, and I dress up as a zombie.

- For now... - I saw that in a movie.

Plaga Zombie developed as the other things we did.

On the weekends, on Saturday, after lunch, around 2pm.,

to shoot until it was dark.

And we had always done that.

Plaga Zombie I was entirely edited with the camera,

so we didn't lose the quality of latter generations,

and because it was more accurate than editing with two VCRS.

They said: “Ready, set, go”, and it was “Ready, set...

go”.

Ready, set...

go.

From the moment you pressed REC

until the camera started recording,

there were two or three seconds of delay.

It was a tape that started moving, very obsolete.

So, you said “go”, and started recording,

and the actor had to mentally count two or three seconds

before performing.

But, to avoid missing it, he had to be kind of moving,

in case he didn't count correctly.

It was very difficult to calculate, so you were always...

waiting for the lines...

“Yes..”

There are many faces like:

“Maybe...”

Actually, there were many people waiting to perform.

Sweet dreams.

Year 1996.

Ramos Mejia.

Argentine school in the western area.

I was in 3rd year,

thinking of studying cinema.

And in 5th year, a guy I knew like Chavez

that's how they called him

I saw he did things with other people

outside school, and I thought what they were doing was great,

and I wanted to be part of it.

And one day Chavez came to me,

introduced himself with his real name, Hernán Sáez,

and said: “On Saturday, we are shooting

a zombies short movie, do you want to be a zombie?"

I said yes, of course.

And that Saturday, September 21, 1996, it was raining,

and it was my debut in what would then become Plaga Zombie.

After we finished, we got together to see the edited scene.

When the day ended,

we watched Plaga Zombie together.

The part we had, from the beginning up to that moment.

That VHS tape was worn out!

You filmed something and saw it finished the same day.

That generated a synergy

that allowed not to hold projects back.

It was wonderful,

it was like seeing a real movie,

being part of a film.

And I kept going on Saturdays and never left.

I ended up being the movie's co-producer

when I was 15.

The technicians here in charge, Mr. Sáez, Mr. Parés, Mr. Pau...

- Paulo? - Soria.

Paulo comes, and we finish setting the Gestalt, let's say, you know?

Because I think they work that way, like a Gestalt. At least, back then.

It was five guys, each one of them chemically worked inside a group.

Bill, thanks for everything you've done, my friend.

I will take Willy to the hospital.

Ok, my friend.

You know, I think it's an epidemic.

Plaga Zombie had a two-page, three-page script.

It was like...

We wrote "Scene 1", and there were five scenes together,

what it was about.

We did a lot at the moment,

what they would say, the dialogs.

The fun part was achieving...

things.

“Ok, with this play dough”...

we did a thin dough, and put paste and colorant below it.

So when you cut it,

and we only had one to do what we needed to do...

So, that moment of achieving something

finding the perfect shot and saying “Ok, let's shoot now"”.

Waiting for three seconds, and making the effect.

And that was it. No second chance.

Very funny, really funny!

Very creative too, with the zombies make-up.

It was like a discovery as well.

"Ok, blood and drops..."

And we created a style with the things we had,

without knowing you were creating a style.

I also did this one, believe it or not.

And saying: “Perfect, that's it, done. What's next?”.

Ideas, ideas that came up...

We shoot whatever came up,

the way we could and thinking how we would do it

without any prior formula, but experience.

Another thing with the VHS camera

was that when you started recording, it rewound a little and ate a bit

of the previous shoot.

And that's how we lost a lot of parts of the movie,

even shots with unique effects,

like a head crushed.

We started shooting the next day, it rewound and erased it.

Also, when Plaga Zombie I came the camera was so worn-out,

because of all the short movies, blood and gore,

that, at times, it wouldn't work.

Everyone was with the make-up trying to make the camera work.

Sometimes, we couldn't shoot.

There were many frustrating days, too.

That was terrible.

Like: “Let's do the vomit scene”.

Pablo was in horizontal position,

and we threw a bucket with vomit from above

to clean the make-up on his face.

And that shot went wrong because the camera cut his head,

so we had to do it again.

I remember it was so frustrating.

The shot is useless.

Because you had to cut exactly what I had to cut.

And the cuts don't match.

- And...? - It's useless.

You can see the chair, and it took too long.

I thought... You cut my head in the entire shot, dude.

I couldn't move from there.

Ok, I'll have a shower now.

We will do it again next Saturday, guys.

That's how it is at Farsa.

And, as we moved forward, we achieved more things.

We invited more friends,

so there were more zombies.

- Diego's second shooting. - This one will be better.

- Chilindrina zombie. - Leave it there, dude.

- She is with her period. - Is that your period?

It was fun achieving things at a cinematographic level,

narrating things with the camera, the image.

Doing shots with skates and the camera on top,

to achieve movement.

Once we saw it finished,

we felt the same than with the short films.

Though it took longer, it was like:

“OK, let's do copies in VHS", and it started circulating.

I remember I saw the VHS and said:

“I don't know what will happen in my life”,

because I was 20.

“I don't know what will happen in 20 years, I have no idea.

But if I have kids and grandchildren someday,

they will see this and say 'at least grandpa or dad

had fun dressing up as a wrestler and killing zombies.

He had a good time'.

I've always had that idea

that someone in the future will say: “he had a really fun life”.

I don't know...

This is Forum.

Attention, please.

We will start a new session in Forum.

We have the litigating parties.

This is Hernán Sáez, the plaintiff, who claims Sebastian Muniz

to accept filming the last scenes of the movie they made together.

Sebastian Muniz, the defendant, states he won't finish his acting

if the plaintiff doesn't change the script.

We had seen “History”, by Santiago Segura,

where Segura went to different TV shows

in which he was paid,

and got prizes there.

And I don't know who told us

they paid 100 pesos/dollars.

If you went to Forum and took a case.

Good afternoon.

What is the problem you have?

Well, in April this year,

he didn't want to shoot anymore

because he says I didn't tell him

that he had to die in the end.

We went to Forum, we were really scared,

we took different cabs,

because we thought we were swindling someone, you know?

We were swindling Luis Moreno Ocampo,

who was the prosecutor of the Board that sent Videla

and Massera to prison.

We were lying to that guy.

We weren't lying to an innocent kid.

- Many people worked on it. - How many people worked there?

- Around 70 people. - 70 people working with you?

- Considering extras... - How much did the movie cost?

- Around 650 pesos. - Right.

A low cost production.

As a promotion, it was actually amazing.

Because we were half an hour in prime time on Channel 13,

talking about Plaga Zombie,

and we even got paid.

- This is unprofessional, because... - I don't know...

If he has to work in another movie,

he will also say he doesn't want to?

And when we went back,

we saw everything was fake, I don't know,

and told Walter and Pablo,

“You must go, it's a joke!”

This is the plaintiff, Walter Cornás, who claims Pablo Parés

to recognize that the characters he published in a comic magazine

belong to him.

The defendant, Pablo Parés,

is not willing to recognize the plaintiff

as the character's creator.

So they went, and you can tell that Pablo and Walter

are more relaxed.

And only now that it is published he is interested in the characters.

- He only wants fame. - Is his claim due to vanity?

Yes, absolutely. The only thing he's ever wanted.

- To show off. - Fame...

As me and my brother are cartoonist.

And we could always publish these things,

he was always kind of jealous.

And Pablo and Walter were like: “He is an asshole”, more bitching...

Switch places. Go to his place.

Switch places.

Right.

Ok, let's make an experiment.

You are him.

Concentrate.

- You are, what's your name? - Walter.

- You are Walter. - Ok.

- You are Walter, for a while. - Yes.

Right?

So, you did that cartoon.

Tell me what you did 5 years ago.

I did those cartoons, put them away and forgot them.

- But... - It's like that!

He never used them.

But Walter says he is furious because his friend betrayed him

and didn't publish his creation.

You're Walter. Tell me what happens.

No, because...

this is fake, it doesn't make any sense.

No, it's not fake.

Doing that we collected

400 pesos,

and paid for the first VHS copies of Plaga Zombie.

The main driver was...

having it finished,

so that people watched it, in a VHS format.

Suddenly, we had a movie.

First, we took the movie to the video store.

That was wonderful!

It was available where we rented the movies we watched,

we were in the rack!

We couldn't believe it.

The movie wasn't lost. It was where it had to be.

We sold Plaga Zombie ourselves.

You had to call a phone number,

which was my home number, or my mum's,

or Hernán's mum house, or Pablo's mum,

and order a Plaga Zombie VHS.

“'How much is it?”, “50 pesos”.

“Ok-”.

Then, I took the train or the subway,

got to the door and said: “50 pesos,

your Plaga Zombie, bye!”

Those of us who had done it, sold it.

There was no distributor, nothing.

We worked hard, and did whatever it took.

We started seeing the interest the movie created

when it started spreading.

With that first edition

we began to observe

people bought them in Parque Rivadavia, for example.

I was amazed by that.

We began to ask: “Do you have Plaga Zombie?”.

“No, but I can get it for you.”

And we thought “'where does he get it?”

And then, we saw pirate tapes, photocopies,

I remember I thought:

“Ups, it got leaked”.

And this is not a meme...

They were VHS.

Someone had to bother to press Play in one machine, Record in another,

to sell some copies in VHS format.

As an spectator, the movies the guys make,

seemed to me, and still do,

original, in a way.

It's not something I have never seen before,

but it wasn't something I had already seen here,

done here.

The movie became alive by itself,

started spreading and caught a lot of attention,

because if was a bunch of kids

making a kind of movie which is not usually done here.

Made with a low-budget...

So everything was new.

We started giving interviews.

And that made the movie circulate.

Some articles appeared on newspapers.

People were interested.

I remember a funny article that said something like:

“The youth...”

Or “A new kind of Argentine cinema”.

There was a picture of Hernán, with something Pablo had said.

It was great, because Hernán said, “I didn't say that.”

It read: “Studying cinema it's like being locked inside a box.”

Period.

And we started having some issues.

For example, who stands out more in the article, who worked harder,

“They don't mention me in this article.”

There was like an internal unease,

but, after the 150th interview,

you don't give a damn.

And it's like: “Walter gave an interview? Great!”

“Oh, this guy gave an interview? That's great!”

The movies, from the first one, started to have some repercussions.

In the first movie, some guys created a website.

Someone else had created the Plaga Zombie site.

And other people collaborated with that one, and...

Some guys made a song, Commando X, based on Plaga Zombie.

Compared to nothing, anything was interesting.

This encouraged us a lot,

we thought of planning a second part.

For the second movie,

we went through many stories.

We couldn't think of a plot.

Everyone had died, only my character was alive,

but he had been caught by the FBI.

So it was like: “Ok, these are new characters...

We created some stories with different characters,

and we weren't convinced.

Until we had one of those revelations:

“Plaga Zombie is these three guys fighting zombies.”

That's it.

The movie starts with their release.

And Berta returns, if he doesn't, there is no movie.

Pablo and I started studying cinema, so in Plaga Zombie 2,

we started using things we had learned at college:

How to write a script,

that one script page can take a minute in the movie,

so we had to think of about 90 pages...

The framing, breaking the frame or not,

that is, in a dialog, the two people looks in different directions.

At the same time,

some computers appeared, where you could edit.

So, the issues related to quality loss,

and editing in the camera,

was left behind,

because, now, working digitally, we had gained in accuracy.

All those things led us to a more ambitious movie.

In Zona Mutante, we replaced Plaga Zombie 1 coloring with latex.

As I had started studying FX, I was learning new things

I could contribute to the shooting.

We wanted to continue the story,

the first one was set in a house,

so the second one is set in a town...

So, what we thought would be a four-month shooting

as planned in the script,

we realized would take us much longer.

We also repeated the shots more, to edit them later...

We tried to do a better work.

Fantabaires came up, and the Zombie Piggy Bank.

People put money there, and we gave them

a “Plaga Zombie 2 Producer” certificate.

I think today, many people who have that certificate can say:

“I was a producer in Plaga Zombie 2.

Those shootings were also a consequence

of what was happening in Fantabaires.

And at those gatherings which expanded the closed core

we were in Plaga Zombie 1, that was us and our school friends,

So some beautiful people joined, but, in many cases, they were wild.

And strange things happened.

We were six months shooting one single battle.

We met every weekend for six months on the same street,

and we kept shooting the same fight, over and over again.

We could just let the Haedo police know.

“Yes, the guys who are shooting.”

Like “The crazy corner-man'”, we were “The guys who are shooting”.

That little town spirit gave us calm when shooting.

We took advantage of it.

One day we found out we had to go to the police station,

talk to the person in charge of the streets, and say:

“We live in the neighborhood, and we are shooting a movie.”

That's it.

Because the neighbors called all the time

to say there was a dead guy on the street, etc.

So the police came, they got to know us...

It's a town, we were fine.

There were some old people

who didn't like us being on the street shooting,

and they would call the police all the time.

The police already knew us and said: “Who are they?”

"Go there and ask for Pablo, for Berta, for Urco,

and if they raise their hand, come and we'll continue talking.”

So they stopped them directly when they called.

Farsa was like friend's club.

We got together to play football and maybe, we made a barbecue

and didn't play football at all.

Maybe we got together, put some make-up on, ordered a pizza

and started talking, and some problem came up,

and we ended up not shooting.

I was with my friends, having fun,

whether we shot or not, I was doing what I liked.

I didn't take it as a pain in the neck or a problem.

As it could be taken today.

Like, the producer could say: “I am losing money. Start shooting!"

Not at all.

I was going to the club, to the swimming pool,

my brother remembers, we were riding our bikes,

and I got away from him,

because I saw a leg laying on the street,

blood, prosthesis, people screaming, and...

instead of going to the club, I spent the afternoon watching them.

They said they would be around shooting and stuff like that...

And then I found them when the movie had progressed,

in a tunnel in Haedo, where they were shooting a battle

and I stayed.

I think that, for those who came to shoot,

it was also kind of amazing.

In the sense that no one was worried with...

I mean, we were far from having an insurance

for those who came.

But, really, we were only worried about

what appeared in the camera.

So, sometimes it was like:

“We need to jump this ditch full of glasses”,

and Hernán said “Action”.

The part where Bill gets into the sewer...

It's a real sewer.

It's full of excrement, dead rats, and we had to go through there.

So it became pretty punk.

Also, the movie was growing, a lot of people came.

And I think that was because...

For example, a neighbor came and enjoyed one afternoon,

and everyone was part of a kind of community thing.

At the audiovisual level,

we made many experiments.

In Plaga Zombie 1 everything was more unconscious,

it had unconscious experiments.

Plaga Zombie 2 really was much more experimental.

The type of shot, the length, the movement with the camera,

and we also wanted to do take it more seriously.

Even more... now we knew better

how to do things.

Or what we had to do to achieve them, but we still didn't know.

We knew how it had to be to get the right shot,

but something that now would take us

three shots, then took us 20.

They listened to everyone.

It wasn't like: “You have no idea”.

Boys were heard, women were heard,

also the old guy who probably knew nothing.

If a little kid came to give his opinion,

it was considered and improved,

it was considered and improved.

I do think we had a much greater ambition of achieving perfection,

that we didn't have in the first one,

and a much greater self-demand.

So we went a little mad.

It's unbelievable how many ideas are involved in each shot,

And how they are implemented...

And when you realize how it is done, it also has an extra value.

When you realize how they were done,

I think it makes even more sense.

In Zona Mutante we wanted to show how well we could shoot, just that.

The movie is a style exercise, and it has really nice things.

At that time, we had this kid spirit of “Let's do whatever!”

“We can do anything. We are capable of doing a full-length movie”.

“Let's make an ambitious full-length movie,

and shoot wherever we want to,

and we won't fall and get hurt with that nail,

because we are shooting Plaga Zombie”.

We could fall and get hurt with the nail.

And if you did, you had to go on.

Hernán and I argued more, we were studying cinema,

each of us was taking a very different path.

There were many fights.

As in every group of friends, some may argue playing football

and then, everything is fine.

And we argue when shooting.

Hernán was at some point in the direction role

that was insane.

Holding the camera, he would grab your head and say: “Do this!”,

And you were like...

“Let me go! Don't touch me or I'll kill you!”

He was unbearable.

At that moment he was unbearable.

I mean, it was...

an obsession.

But the truth is, you can see all that in each shot.

It's there.

But then, when we were doing it, we were up to here.

That's it. Stop it, that's all we have.

But Hernán wanted to get to the next level.

One of us thought we had to do it in a certain way,

the other thought differently.

And you don't know until you try it,

so there you start losing time

arguing about how to do certain things.

Because in your mind, you think:

“If we do it like this, it will be perfect”.

The argument was never:

“You're an asshole because, whatever...”

It was: “You're an asshole because your idea for the shot

is wrong, and mine is right.”

I think it ended up being beneficial for the movie in many aspects.

But at that moment it became very tedious.

We were exhausted

about the movie, the characters, us, everything.

There was a script for the second one,

but I think Hernán never read it.

He shot the concept of the scene and improvised.

I don't know, I only wanted for the movie to make progress.

John, help me!

John!

Consider that Pablo and I stayed up until 3 or 4am doing the effects.

The day before, we used to start shooting around 9:30am.

You stay up working on the effects until 4am, you get there at 9:30am,

if 3 or 4 people arrive at 11am because they fell asleep,

You start saying:

“God damn it, I did this...”

The biggest problem was that Walter and I

had many responsibilities.

We were up all night preparing an effect,

we slept two hours and had to shoot the next day.

And that created some friction

because we wanted to share the load more equally.

It was hard because usually we put the make-up on,

and we also said: “Come on, help us!”

Not everyone felt like doing it.

So there were irregular moods.

We canceled the movie every three months,

we felt like it was impossible to continue.

But then we resumed, and everything was fine.

Like a couple that has good sex, but argue a lot.

They started recording and it was all happiness,

freedom and pleasure again.

Even in the worst moments, when we hated each other,

and didn't talk to each other,

the shooting run smoothly.

But it wasn't all the time, at all.

There were a couple of fights or...

“I don't want to do it anymore!” “But we need one more!”,

and the argument begun. But, after that...

Maybe we didn't talk for a month, or two...

I don't remember how much time exactly.

But, at least in my head, it was like:

“We are shooting. We have to finish it”.

I was just wondering, what for?

What also happened in the second one

was that Berta started working in MTV.

He was a host in MTV when he was 19 or 20 years old,

So suddenly...

he was the mega star

and didn't want to shoot anymore.

He was fed up.

So that added another conflict.

- Is Berta your name? - No, they call me Berta...

- Why Berta? - This is terrible.

Héctor Rondoni,

better known as the devil, or Satan,

was the one who named me Berta.

He said...

- He had the decoder for porno movies. - Yes.

And he there was one character called “Berta, the wicked fat lady”.

Plaga Zombie 2 was endless.

It was really...

We couldn't stand it anymore.

It took us...

four years to finish that movie.

And it was very strange, because I was 21

and I was suddenly an MTV host for Latin America,

I was seen from Mexico up to Ushuaia.

It was crazy since real start-system things happened to me

and, at the same time,

I was the guy who took the Sarmiento train

with the Plaga Zombie guys.

The second movie is full of conflict, it's tug-of-war all the time,

all the time arguing, fighting.

Because I am John West! Do you get it? John West!

You are not John West.

You are a failure.

The fight between John West and Max

is almost a subtext

of what was going on in there.

“You are not John West”.

At that time, Berta was on MTV,

he was 21 years old.

Sometimes he was an idiot, but it's part of everyone's growth.

You are always bossing around! “Let's go here, let's go there!”

- Shut up! - Go there! Get that bag!

The bag, the bag!

The scene on the terrace

where Max and Bill argue, and Max says:

“You are always bossing around, let's go here, there”,

It was just like that!

- Easy, Max! - You know what?

It will never be the same anymore! This is all your fault!

When those things started to happen, we had more than half of the movie.

Since we were a group,

someone would always lead the way.

There was always someone.

We finished the second one thanks to Hernán.

He was the one who kept everything afloat.

If it was it for me, we wouldn't have finished.

If I was mad, he rang the doorbell and insisted.

And he did the post-production and the editing.

He worked really hard.

In the second one, since we didn't know how to shoot,

we filmed from 10 different perspectives.

From the front, the side, up, down, here and there.

When you have to edit that, It's madness.

You have millions of options for each scene.

We finished it in two stages: The first release in December 2001,

the country was a mess,

we rented the Cosmos theater to have four shows,

but one was canceled because of a pot banging riot.

We sent it directly from the Premiere,

the editing program,

because we hadn't had time to render the whole movie.

So it was sent directly from the software.

We'll play the movie

directly from the computer, a huge risk.

It can get stuck, the sound can desynchronize,

anything can happen.

I remember people were arriving,

and Pablo and Hernán were defragmenting the computer disk

so that it would reproduce as smoothly as possible.

There was a total tension, you know?

Meanwhile, the country was falling apart.

But we had that problem.

And then there was a second stage,

because we had remove 40 minutes, there were some gaps

in between, which could not be fixed at some points.

So we shot new things.

Then, we really finished it.

Don't worry. It's done.

The movie started circulating in festivals, like Sitges,

San Sebastian...

Paulo went to Brussels, it was great.

Fangoria released a DVD in the US,

and Canada.

It was dubbed into French in France,

and into German in Germany.

Spain.

This is the edition of that movie in Spain, this the one from Italy,

this is the one from France,

and this is the German one.

All original movies,

versions of the same movie, all of them edited abroad.

It was the wildest thing of the under world up to then.

It was getting to the highest we could produce independently.

Because, after Plaga 2,

they founded the film production company and all that.

Today we continue with the new Argentine fantastic cinema movement.

We will meet Farsa Producciones,

the most representative group of this growing phenomenon.

After 2002, when we sold the movies to Fangoria, and Italy, Spain, etc.,

we had to set up a film production company to receive the money.

It stopped being a game, the movie,

we discovered a business.

“We can do this for living.”

Farsa Producciones is an Independent film production company.

We started 20 years ago,

doing short movies and full-length movies.

We started working a lot, we did many video clips.

It was like the emblem of that stage of Farsa Producciones as producers.

Actually, many people know Farsa for that,

And they may not know Plaga Zombie.

So, we were already in our twenties,

we liked what we were doing, but it was also a business.

You get money, and you need to agree on how it is distributed.

And you start having problems.

Getting along in the everyday things as partners and not friends

also started to cause friction.

One thing is doing a movie for pleasure, because we want to,

and you only invest your time on the weekends.

And another thing was: “We have a business and a bond,

we are partners, and also, we are friends.”

And everything mixes up.

One day, I won't say who, they'll have to do it,

they almost got into a fist fight.

So we said: “We need to do something”.

With Hernán. I argued a lot with Hernán.

Yes. One day I arrived to the company, and...

it was terrible.

I punched him one day.

They had to stop me because I was going to beat him up.

Yes, I swear.

What a mess.

And Walter and Paulo said: “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

I wanted to kill him.

Anyway,

problems every group has.

We were doing a lot of things at the same time,

and I think we didn't take the time to talk.

“We could try group therapy?”

We did it.

Did you try group therapy at some point?

We did.

Oh.

I met them when they were riding high,

they were taking their first steps as a top production company.

Their work was different,

their video clips seemed short movies.

Yes, I remember they were doing group therapy,

which seemed strange to me,

it was like: “How cool!”

I don't remember how the group therapy came up.

Like Metallica, but a shitty one.

And it was very good for us, at that moment.

It was good for us.

I think it was a good thing.

I think that group therapy was the worst thing that happened to me.

I heard things there, from people I love,

such hard things, that are still a burden nowadays.

Because you know when someone doesn't like you.

But when they tell you things,

you never forget it.

It gets into you.

Body language when the five of us were sitting there...

was like a photo... I don't know.

I would like to see it now.

Because those who didn't feel like talking were leaning back like...

Swallowing something that...

I was scared just by seeing that gesture.

I don't know.

Some will think it was a good thing, others not.

I don't know.

It completely destroyed me.

I was like the leader who moved on, and was conquering the world.

If I had to argue with someone, I did it.

We needed that, I got it. We had to shoot with 8 pesos...

And after group therapy it was like I got inside my shell

and I think I could never go out.

It did leave a very funny trailer for the Plaga Zombie 3 shooting.

There are some Plaga Zombie 3 teasers,

with comments from the accountant we had back then and our therapist.

Like a special.

The accountant told us not to make the movie

because we were going to lose money

and we wouldn't work for a month.

And the therapist said it would be good to strengthen our bond.

Well, my name is Florina Perez Luis,

I am the psychologist at Farsa Producciones.

I wanted to tell you that I unconditionally support

the job you will do in December 2008,

because I think it means going back and recovering things you had lost.

And it's going to be very good for you.

The problem was that Berta didn't want to do the third one.

I didn't want to make Plaga Zombie 3 at all.

When you spend so much time doing something, you say:

“Not again! John West and wearing that suit again?”

I mean, how many years will we go on with this?

It was like getting into something that was...

a pain in the ass.

We tried doing it several times

for example, in 2005...

and we couldn't,

And at some point, we were getting older,

I was getting bald.

Our body was really changing.

And we said: “We have to do this now

or it will be unfinished”.

And it's disrespectful,

because the second part doesn't have an end.

It has a very open ending.

So, if we didn't do a third one it was like letting the world down.

So it was due to pressure. “If we don't do Plaga Zombie 3 now,

it will be unfinished”.

It was the right time to do it, we felt it like that.

That year, we had saved money

from other jobs.

We wrote a script.

One year, the five of us, that year we were all there

because we were partners.

Among five people,

each idea is questioned by the other four.

We thought of everything so that the trilogy had the best closure possible.

Despite having shared so many years,

SO many years together, so many things we had gone through

and shot, etc.,

getting into Plaga Zombie 3 as a screenwriter

was an achievement for me,

a big one.

Personally, it felt like writing Star Wars.

It was like writing a Han Solo's adventure.

We had a shooting plan

and, for the first time, we decided we would film the movie

all at once.

Well, for me it was like: “Ok, I agree”.

The idea was to stop the production company

stop doing things for other people,

and investing what we had

in a one-month shooting,

full throttle, every day,

to make Plaga Zombie 3.

Perfect. I agreed with that.

I simply didn't want to start something

in eternum that I didn't know when it would end.

No, I've been there.

So at one moment we bit the bullet,

“Let's do Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante. Revolucién Tóxica”.

And we got into it.

Last-minute news confirm that there are only three survivors

from the first infallible hours of the invasion.

Their names are Bill Johnson,

Max Giggs

and the famous wrestler,

the 200-kilo hunk, John West.

And it fact it was the most pleasant shooting among the three of them.

Because we had more certainties, we were older.

We had a lot of experience shooting.

We had also done many professional shootings.

And in fact, at that time,

we could also detach from many aspects

we were used to be in charge of before.

Now we had three producers,

we had makeup artists, we could delegate many more things.

I remember it was a big shooting, it was big.

Many people worked in it.

Many people came to collaborate.

A lot of extras.

We really wanted to have an actual zombie plague in that movie,

because we had never had a zombie plague

in a trilogy called Plaga Zombie.

In the third one we said: "Let's do the biggest shot we can

with a lot of zombies".

Pablo didn't have to worry about doing zombie make-up for the shot.

No, we had people in charge of the zombie make-up

and Pablo was in charge of directing.

The shooting was super fun, we did Plaga Zombie with friends.

Social networks were starting, so people actually got together.

That was the social network.

Filming with 20 friends.

Things happened there, not on Instagram.

Everyone was there.

If you had a problem, there were 10 guys trying to solve it.

It was a great experience.

Shooting for a month and a half

with total freedom

everything you want to do, to make a new movie, the trilogy's last one,

it was the best!

- Wait. - Ok, we are done.

We wanted the third one to have the agility from the first one,

to be fun as the first one, but cool as the second one.

The third one moves forward, you press PLAY...

and you finished it. Done!

Plaga Zombie.

Plaga Zombie.

The power of friendship will save the planet.

And no one will be able to stop it.

I think that the ultimate message of Plaga Zombie at the end

is mentioned in the final song.

The power of friendship will save the planet.

Right? So I think it's a movie about friendship,

done by a group of friends

and for friends.

Considering...

how...

amazingly sensitive Hernán and Pablo are,

the fact that they could express...

IN a musical where the lines...

say that the power of friendship will save the whole world

I think that is, I get emotional,

but I think something in there

it reflects very well the things that maybe they couldn't express.

They were able to say it that way.

That's personal because everyone went their own way after that.

At one moment we thought,

or I thought, that the power of friendship was unbeatable.

Then years went by, and I realized that I was wrong.

I think that Plaga Zombie 3 closed the era,

it closed an era of Farsa Producciones activity.

When Farsa dissolved as a company,

somehow, we prioritized our friendship, and not the company

because companies ruin friendships sometimes.

And we thought it was better if we could still get together

for a barbecue or a birthday party,

rather than

hating each other forever.

Each one grew individually, so interests change,

and each one has it's own battle.

I always have this image of balloons you have inside a net,

but each one wants to go its own way.

We are still in touch,

we still shoot get together to talk,

do things, play videogames,

party with friends.

I mean...

that's the most important thing, and...

It's good those things continue.

That we can continue through the journey of life

nearly on the same road.

Or we think of a new project that maybe we abandon later.

Like those movies,

a thousand movies we thought of on a Saturday night and then

we never shoot.

That still happens.

I still do the same. I film with friends.

We are doing a movie with friends now.

Hernán comes now and then, Paulo composed some music,

it only does not have Farsa's logo.

I understand that when we ended the shooting of Plaga Zombie 3

that was it.

It was a trilogy.

And one day, Hernán and I said: "Let's make Plaga Zombie open source”,

Plaga Zombie belongs to everyone.

It started like a game among us,

let's make it a game that everyone can play.

Whoever wants to make something about Plaga Zombie, can.

They have the copyrights to do whatever they want to.

They can make money or not.

There are fan films, music, cartoon strips made by people.

Even us, when we earned money

from Plaga Zombie, we invested it on other artists

so they could make their own versions.

Gustavo Sala did the comic strip.

El Bruno is making a cartoon strip.

Ayar B did the cartoon.

And everyone is absolutely free.

It's your Plaga Zombie version. It's yours. Do whatever you want to.

At least it will be still alive, it will move on.

The movie has fans in Italy, Germany, France, I don't know how.

It's so strange.

But when some guy in the US said: “I want to do a Plaga Zombie remake”,

it was like:

“How come? Movies come from there, not the other way around”.

Sr. Presidente, cerca de las 12 h,

el virus alienígena tomó a una Ciudad entera.

He wrote to us: “I want to make a movie like this”.

We said: “That's great. Do it.

It would be wonderful if it were a sequel, instead of a remake”.

I think Garry was quickly convinced that it was better to do

a new Plaga Zombie,

and then we started calling it Plaga Zombie 4.

I never imagined that there would be a Plaga Zombie 4

and that it would be made in the US.

It's good for our souls.

There's a new Plaga Zombie and we will be able to watch it

without having to do it.

Great! A new family member.

We are already dreaming that a Japanese guy

will do Plaga Zombie 5

and an Italian guy will do Plaga Zombie 6.

The fact that someone has that energy so that...

so that the world continues growing is great.

We are the first fans

of everything we did, from the first day, always.

We were a rock band

making movies,

Basically.

We were that.

Rockers making movies.

A team hits it off with the same thing,

and thinks it's invincible.

Because you feel you're invincible when...

when you're with other people who think like you

and you are creating the same thing.

I think the movies Plaga Zombie generate enthusiasm.

The energy they have causes enthusiasm.

So that makes you feel like, “I want that too. I can do it too”.

I will never forget that first day, that September 21st,

because it was an absolute turning point in my life, let's say.

I do what I do because of that day.

Due to that eye Pablo showed me, Hernán's call,

having fun with Gaita, and then with Berta.

When I see it, more and more distant,

I realize how important it was.

Having been part of it somehow and having the good idea

to stick with those guys doing all that and more,

instead of leaving, because, I don't know,

I didn't agree with something one day

or was interested in something else.

They've been a very privileged group at finding each other

and generating what they generated.

Because it also meant finding

not only a thing to do, but also

to be inside a team, right?

Being part of a team and finding my friends.

Because we remained friends forever.

They are my friends.

Obviously, we'll probably won't make a new Plaga Zombie, ourselves.

Maybe a spin-off or something like that.

But the trilogy is done. For us, those are the characters.

We may do it sometime, but it's not remotely in our plans.

Maybe when we are really old it will be funny

with that distance.

To see how the characters grew old.

It couldn't continue immediately.

Or it will be a crazy comedy.

If someone wants to invest money to make the fifth one.

We are here.

SHORTLY AFTER THE PREMIERE

OF PLAGA ZOMBIE: ZONA MUTANTE REVOLUCIÓN TÓXICA (2011),

FARSA PRODUCCIONES STOPPED EXISTING.

SEBASTIAN “BERTA” MUNIZ CONTINUED WITH HIS CAREER AS AN ACTOR

AND PRESENTER IN CINEMA, THEATER, RADIO AND TV.

HIS JOHN WEST IS STILL ONE OF THE MOST REMEMBERED

AND EMBLEMATIC CHARACTERS OF LATIN AMERICAN FANTASTIC CINEMA.

PAULO SORIA IS STILL ACTING, PRODUCING,

DIRECTING, COMPOSING MUSIC AND, MAINLY, WRITING MOVIES SCRIPTS.

HE STILL THINKS OF ZOMBIES EVERY SPRING DAY.

WALTER CORNÁS BECAME A WELL-KNOWN ART DIRECTOR

AND CONTINUES ACTING IN FILMS AND TV.

HE STARRED DAEMONIUM: SOLDADO DEL INFRAMUNDO (2015)

BY PABLO PARES AND STILL WORKS WITH HIS FORMER PARTNERS.

HERNÁN SÀEZ DROPPED THE CINEMA AS A PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY

TO WORK ON VIDEOGAMES DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT.

ANYWAY, EVERY TIME HE CAN, HE GOES BACK IN FRONT OF OR BEHIND A CAMERA

WHEN THEIR FRIENDS CALL HIM.

PABLO PARES CONTINUED HIS CAREER AS FILMMAKER AND ADVERTISING DIRECTOR.

HE DIRECTED DAEMONIUM: SOLDADO DEL INFRAMUNDO (2015),

BRUNO MOTONETA (2018) AND SOY TÒXICO (2018), AMONG OTHER FILMS.

DESPITE HE DOESN'T BELIEVE ANYMORE IN WHAT BILL, JOHN AND MAX SANG

IN THAT MUSICAL, HE STILL MAKES MOVIES WITH FRIENDS.

A MILLION ZOMBIES