Argentina's underside

Every country has its Skegness. Just 4 hours by car from "Bs As" (as the trendy Buenos Aires seems to be called now), past Fray Bentos and just south of Bovril is a little town called Nogoya. Proudfoot had gone there to make a documentary about a film maker who had chosen the town as a location because of its unique qualities, namely inertia and a tendency towards bad weather. As we met people from the town and visited their houses, characters and stories seemed to unfold before our very eyes. Our film maker had found a rich source of inspiration. Old crumbling houses with silver spoons hung from the walls, and well-used rifles left on mantle pieces each projected a new scene or shot onto our film makers internal cinema screen. Nogoya, like Skegness, is not a town likely to be on page one of its country's holiday brochure, but, again like Skegness, you learn more about the culture and psychology of a nation going to places away from the global spotlight than their better looking, glitzier cousins down the road.