When I moved to Charlottesville in 2010, my only contact was Jared Loewenstein, funder and curator of The Jorge Luis Borges Collection at Alderman Library at the University of Virginia.
I met Jared back in 1999 when I visited the University as a guest of the Spanish Department. The purpose of that visit was to show my film on Jorge Luis Borges, meet with students to discuss Borges and frolic on grounds conceived by the all-mighty Thomas Jefferson.
Jared was a knowledgeable man, intellectually generous, and fun to be around. Unlike most faculty, Jared was always ready to talk about Borges’ visit to Charlottesville or his travels to Buenos Aires in search for documents and first editions which account today, along with those of Austin and Notre Dame, as one of the three best collections of Borges papers, or Borgeana.
After the permanent move to Charlottesville with my family in 2010, I proposed a documentary film about him to Jared, and he accepted. The film is now as old as my third child, born in Charlottesville in 2012. Jared and I had lots of fun making this film, a short documentary vignette in the life of a noble Southerner that remains one of my favorites.