IdeaMe: is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. Each week, the Indy features and promotes one project every week, with the aim of helping the creators finance and achieve their dreams. This week: Ciclos de Cine Para Vecinos, by Biblioteca Popular Eduardo Martedí.

“To spread those films, those directors and those ideas which as of yet are not widely known and seem to us that they would be of interest to others”.

Such is the goal of the Ciclos de Cine para Vecinos project, according to Martín Echenbaum, a spokesperson for the team at the Biblioteca Popular Eduardo Martedí that has proposed this project on Ideame.

The Biblioteca Popular Eduardo Martedí was founded in 2010 by a group of students from the University of Buenos Aires with the idea of “encouraging reading, education… but in a comprehensive way, not only to encourage the culture of reading – that is, the written word – but also a more comprehensive political education.”

The library – which today holds around 3,000 volumes – is housed in what was formerly the garage of the Spanish Cultural centre Centro Español de Sada y sus Contornos.

Martín explains that the library was founded with the hope of making books more accessible to all. Asking only “minimum requirements” for membership – such as a fee of $2 per month – the library seeks to confront challenges to the accessibility of books in Buenos Aires.

Martín observes several obstacles in this regard. First, he notes, “there is generally not much familiarity today with the concept of public libraries. You walk down the street and you don’t find a public library.” And second, he remarks that “books are very expensive”, and that because many books are imported to Argentina, “they come at a price that is vey difficult to access”.

While books are central to the library’s mission, however, Martín also observes that “we thought that with a library alone isn’t sufficient.”

In this spirit, the library not only offers its members the chance to borrow books, but also a wide range of activities. Taking advantage of the space of the Centro Español de Sada y sus Contornos, the team has organised “book presentations, discussions about a variety of themes, including literature, politics, history, anthropology, music presentations, poetry readings, theatre.”

Now, they would like to add one more activity to their agenda: Los ciclos de cine para vecinos, or Cinema Cycles for Neighbours. In order to make this project a reality, the group has turned to crowd funding on Ideame to raise money to purchase a projector and a screen.

The idea of the cinema cycles is that each cycle would be based around a particular theme; proposed themes to date include the Spanish civil war, World War I, and Italian cinema, among others.

Martín observes that the topics of the cycles are “themes that are important to us… and in which there is also an interesting cinematographic production that allows us to unite the two goals that we have: on the one hand, the artistic question, the cinema, the language; but also the political and cultural issue”.

He emphasises, “we’re not interested in having a projector and holding cinema cycles to show films that can be seen at the cinema, but rather to approach history, politics; these are the things that interest us”.

The themes, Martín says, “are very important historical events with which all of us have some familiarity, but if we accompany them with reading texts and watching films, we can see them in a new way, with new depth. We can take something away from all of this.”

To support the Ciclos de Cine Para Vecinos project, click here.

Libraries have been recognised as a cornerstone of social development and knowledge since the recovered temples of ancient civilisations revealed some of the earliest methods of archiving history.

It’s hardly surprising then, that here in Buenos Aires, there also resides a bountiful selection of libraries – perfect for getting yourself out of the heat and into a book.

Whilst some are better to sit in, others are better to borrow from, so we thought we’d start with the prettiest and work our way down.

Biblioteca Nacional Del Maestros (Photo: Wikipedia)

Biblioteca Nacional Del Maestros

It’s hard to believe that the interior of Biblioteca Nacional Del Maestros could possibly equal its outer glitziness. But prepare yourself – this library is breathtakingly beautiful.

Though its 70,000 pedagogical volumes of educational information may fail to serve you, it’s a perfect place to sit down with your own work.

Opened in 1870, and made public in 1884 in accordance with constitutional laws of public education, you’ll find it clean, spacious and surprisingly colourful.

Beige, green, pink and mahogany combine classically in the Sala de Lectura, whilst high ceilings, large windows and bookshelves ascending to similarly majestic heights impress upon you the importance of education.

A second room, Sala Americana, was inaugurated in 1998 and, accessible via a spiral staircase from the main room, contains hundreds of books on the history and political sciences of Latin America.

Less crowded, its curtained windows and ambient antique lighting lends a sense of importance to whatever it is you’re there to do.

Several private rooms can be viewed on request, one of which is Laboratorio de Conservacion, a historian’s wet dream containing specialist equipment for the viewing and restoration of old texts. A map of the building can be browsed at the entrance.

Biblioteca Nacional Del Maestros, Pizzurno 953, Monday to Friday 8.30am – 9pm, Saturday 9am – 2pm, www.bnm.me.gov.ar

Military Library in Plaza San Martin (Photo: Blanka Hay)

Biblioteca Nacional Militar

Hidden within the historic Círculo Militar and facing Plaza San Martin, this impressive palace serves as a perfect reminder of Buenos Aires’ ever-present military power.

Rich in design, plentiful in materials, and screaming aristocracy, this library feels too fancy to be public. But even if you’re not a military fanatic, it’s an unexpected treasure not to be missed.

With desks upholstered in leather, mirrored walls, a marble fireplace and a gold plated door, the reading-room is nothing short of a spectacle. There’s even a throne-like chair thrown in.

But appearances aside, Biblioteca Nacional Militar is not just a beautiful building. Its collection contains some 60,000 volumes of magazines, books and military reports on topics including war tactics, military history and political science, as well as foreign military publications from countries such as Spain, France, Italy, Brazil and the United States.

The collection began in 1923, when the ministry of war donated its entire library along with $20,000 towards the development of a library that brought together a necessary variety of resources to improve military knowledge among officials and sub officials.

Drawing inspiration from Paris’ Palais du Louvre, French architect Luis Sortais was commissioned to design the military palace that currently houses the library in 1938. Now open to the public, it accommodates up to only 15 people at one time, making it a perfect place to enjoy some tranquil alone time.

And if you don’t have the urge to read, the building alone is worth a visit.

Biblioteca Nacional Militar, Santa Fe 750, Monday to Friday, 12.30pm – 6.30pm, www.circulomilitar.org

Biblioteca Nacional Argentina (Photo: Gustavo Márquez Villegas)

Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina

As the oldest and the most extensive library in the country, The National Library of Argentina is not only Argentina’s most significant store of knowledge, but also one of the most important in all of Latin America.

The institution itself has existed for over 200 years, but not always in the same place.

Founded by Mariano Moreno, it was originally situated in the Microcentro of Buenos Aires, and later in Montserrat, until an incredible unravelling of history allowed for the construction of the current building in Recoleta.

The land, originally occupied by the privately owned Unzué Palace, was usurped by the government in 1937 and appointed an official presidential residence of Juan Domingo Perón. His wife, Eva Perón, died in the eastern wing of the palace facing the sea.

Following the military coup that overthrew Perón in 1955, everything relating to the couple was destroyed, including the palace. Less than a decade later, permission was granted to the library director, Jorge Luis Borges, to erect a new home for the library in the current location.

Today, its post-war architecture represents an amalgamation of its entire history – the mature trees that surround it serving as the only hint of the palace that once stood in its place.

The building itself is a maze, with 13 floors unconventionally arranged horizontally and vertically, rather than lying on top of each other.

Many rooms are restricted to authorised researchers, another is dedicated for use by the visually impaired, and the National Association of Journalists permanently reserve an area for meetings.

The reading rooms that are open to the public are studious and spacious. The basement houses catalogues, magazines and newspapers dating from colonial times, as well as current daily editions of every newspaper in the country, for the public to read.

The largest room, Sala Moreno, resides on the fifth floor, where a stunning set of one hundred year-old seats and desks remain continuously occupied by students who rarely look up to the Buenos Aires skyline, or the view of the Atlantic sea in the distance.

Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, Agüero 2502, Monday to Friday 9am – 9pm, Saturdays and Sundays 12pm – 7pm, www.bn.gov.ar 

Microfilms in 1967 (Photo: Queen's University Library)

Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación

This monumental library resides beside Congress and has been providing ‘information, documentation and advice’ to members of the public for more than 150 years.

As you surrender your possessions to security and enter the high ceilinged foyer, the marble and bronze torsos of Rivadavia and San Martin welcome you to a library that proves more spacious and less busy than the others, though with the same mix of students and older, wiser, researchers.

If, like me, you sometimes find that libraries can be overwhelming, rest assured this library is easy to figure out.

An impressive 3 million bibliographic pieces are all located on one floor, almost all within the framework of one large foyer and divided into sections such as multimedia, reading, magazine archives, reference and microfilm.

And to make life easier, employees will happily retrieve titles for you, so all you have to do is whiz through the online catalogue and make a note of the codes – you’ll even find some English language titles.

A personal highlight was the microfilm room, where, taken aback by humungous ancient screens that bore the semblance of modern technology, an obliging assistant showed me they were in fact readers, capable of projecting newspapers from as early as 1810 that had been transferred on to rolls of film.

Opting for the Eva Perón period, I sat mesmerised by advertisements and random news stories from news publications such as La Gaceta, La Nación, El País and La Razón whose editions are carried from the 19th century until almost the present day.

Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación, Hipólito Yrigoyen 1750, Monday to Friday 8am – 8pm, www.bcnbib.gov.ar

Pop Art Borges (Photo: Gisela Giardino)

Biblioteca Municipal Miguel Cané

This library differs from the rest in that, whilst the library itself is nothing to shout about, it has the invaluable asset of being at one time, the work place of the famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Above the main reading room lies the room once continuously occupied by the author, and which still preserves his original desk along with various bibliographic artefacts. Visited by Mauricio Macri, current mayor of Buenos Aires, along with many national and international writers and journalists and now me, the renowned Spanish writer Juan Cruz Ruiz describes it as “a mark of homage to Borges, retaining something that should never be taken away.”

Definitely worth taking a peak, the process of doing so is interesting in its own right. Once inside the rusty public library you’ll be escorted by a librarian up some narrow stairs and through a room that seems to have no direct association with the library, before reaching a small doorway leading to Borges room.

Like a blast from the past, first editions of his books are presented in a glass case, whilst a pile of his translations lie on the table and a version of the Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Europe and Latin America, which no longer exists as a joint encyclopaedia, is displayed along with his portrait and an acknowledgement printed over 30 years before his death. Whoever said you had to die before you became famous?

Biblioteca Municipal Miguel Cané, Carlos Calvo 4319 with access through the main door at 4321, tel. 4922-0020 beforehand. Monday to Friday 8am – 10pm, Saturday and Sunday 9am – 8pm. For more information visit their website