VIDEO: Ilan Stavans and Marcelo Brodsky: Once 9:53 – a fotonovela
by Habitus · 04/28/10
Last year, Habitus editor Joshua Ellison introduced Mexican American scholar and writer Ilan Stavans to Argentine photographer Marcelo Brodsky. Soon afterward, the two began a collaboration, re-imagining the fotonovela, a form of photographic comic book that was once beloved throughout the Spanish-speaking world, as a vehicle for literary experiment and political commentary.
Once 9:53, forthcoming later this year in Spanish and English editions, is set in Buenos Aires’ historically Jewish Once neighborhood, in the hours leading up to the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center building. As the story unfolds, photojournalist Roli Gerchunoff stumbles across the bomb plot—and realizes that he may have a chance to change its outcome.
Stavans and Brodsky have shared an early draft of the book with Habitus, and in the video below speak about their work on on the project, their reasons for reexamining the AMIA bombing, and their enduring affection for the fotonovela.
