Leaving Salta: Recent Shorts and a Lost Film

This chapter investigates the nine-year period between Martel’s third and fourth features. It argues that after completing the Salta trilogy, the director deliberately sought to alter the direction of her career. The project of adapting the sci-fi graphic novel, El Eternauta, even though ultimately abandoned, points toward her making of Zama, while several of the surreal shorts made during this period allow glimpses of what her sci-fi film might have looked like. Other shorts, both from this period and earlier, highlight her interest in the fate of Argentine native populations, which becomes very important in Zama, while also pointing to her current work in progress.