Fabián Polosecki

Fabián polosecki

Fabián Polosecki, known as “Polo” was an Argentine journalist who knew how to shed light on common stories of anonymous characters on TV. He was innovative in his way of interviewing, some related him to the style of “Perro Verde”, an intimate interview program conducted by the Spanish Jesús Quintero. Others, like his friend Ricardo Ragendorfer, would later say in the documentary “On the Sidewalk of the Shadow,” that his style was more similar to that of Roberto Galán, active listening with lateral input to the interviewee that achieved substantial answers. . Much of the information indicated here was taken from the interviews that make up that documentary made by Gustavo Alonso in 2003.

The Poloseckis lived in Belgrano, on Congreso Avenue, when Fabián came into the world on July 31, 1964. A few years later the family moved to a house on Fragata Sarmiento Street in La Paternal, which would forever be their neighborhood. loves. Gustavo Fabián was the son of a progressive Jewish family (ICUF family, sending the boys to the Zumerland vacation colony, in Mercedes). When he felt like a journalist, at ten, it was during certain Saturdays when his brother Claudio Polosecki, who worked at Gremiales de Clarín, had to “stand guard” during the afternoon. The editor's little brother went to the newsroom, sat at the typewriters and wrote, or made him write. Judging by his later originals, that was his only apprenticeship, never a Pitman academy. “I'm writing a note about the situation,” he once told Sábat, who was making him “little drawings” to entertain him, in that small-town calm of the newsrooms on the weekend.

In his adolescence and youth, Polo had an active participation in the Communist Party, and he wrote for Diario Sur until its closure in December 1990. It is said that once the Berlin Wall fell, the newspaper ran out of paper that came with it. of the East German unions, and precipitated their definitive closure. In this newspaper he was a colleague of the renowned journalist Carlos Polimeni, who, according to what he says, the idea of the newspaper was to compete with Página 12. In addition, Ricardo Ragendorfer, who also shared the editorial staff, says that, with the closure of the newspaper, a style of journalism came to an end. and bohemia of that time, where people still wrote by typewriter. A funny fact, which Polimeni and Ragendorfer tell in the documentary, is that at the time of the closure, the journalists collected the compensation with their typewriters and their drawing boards. Polo was not far behind and took his typewriter, this machine is the one that appears in his programs.

When he finished high school, Polo enrolled in a Sociology degree, but it lasted a year. At twenty he left his house to live with a friend who had come from Santa Fe to study theater. Later, he had his first stable relationship, with Martina, who was from Córdoba and loved the word militant. At twenty-four, Polito was already working at Radiolandia, under the orders of Catalina Dlugi: he had managed to enter the world of journalism professionals, after years of working for the love of art or the Party. It was clearly not the kind of job that made him proud. In that magazine he meets and begins to work with Pablo de Santis, who would later be his friend and scriptwriter for one of his programs.

Polo “hardened” the bohemia of Buenos Aires a lot. According to their friends Nacho Garassino, Claudio Beiza and José D'amato, they used to frequent the “La Paz” café, located on Avenida Corrientes and Montevideo, in the San Nicolás neighborhood, where today a 24-hour kiosk and a cultural center called “ Peace Above.” They also used to go to eat at “Pepito”, located at Montevideo 383, in the San Nicolás neighborhood.

In the program “Rebelde sin pause” hosted by Raúl Becerra on Channel 7, Polo finds a great opportunity in his career, promoted by the host to do an interview with the prize of winning the position of street “notero”. That's when Polo conducts an interview with a doorman of a prostitutes' bar. The success is such that he keeps the space on the program to continue doing this type of interviews.

After this work he begins to produce his own program. He had first named it “The Dark Side,” but when he took his proposal to Gerardo Sofovich, director of ATC at that time, he told him that it was better for the program to be called “The Other Side.” In this Polo program, he begins to unfold his magic, where topics such as equal marriage, the psychological damage of train drivers, weapons, taxi drivers, truck drivers, models, car lovers, the city of Buenos Aires Below, the prisons and dozens of other stories are told in a unique and personal way, as has never been seen on Argentine television.

Polo used to go to see the rock band “Los Piojos” with friends, that is when a relationship begins that is reflected in the episode “Estación Terminal”, where part of the band talks about the sensations of traveling on the roofs. of the trains. This experience is described in the lyrics of the song “Ay Ay Ay”, which gives name to the album released by the band in 1994.

Another key moment was when a brawl broke out in a cantina in La Boca because in the middle of the celebration they decided to throw flour at the owner of the cantina who did not agree with the cantina being filmed.

After two years of success with “El Otro Lado”, and having won two Martín Fierro awards in 1993, one for revelation and the other for best journalistic program, Polo embarks on another adventure called “The visitor”, where makes a character who reviews his life looking at his own videos from the future, but this second project would not have the expected success.

After these two cycles, they offered him projects to work on television but it was nothing concrete, says Pablo De Santis, Polo's friend.

According to his brother in the documentary, all these stories disturbed him a lot, at the stage where he could not find a way to get his career back on track, a person appears who begins to be part of his life. As a counselor, he appears at work and personal meetings. At that moment the change of clothing and his physical appearance seemed very abandoned, it was beginning to be the prelude to a sad end.

In one of the “The Other Side” programs, a train driver tells where they can't see if people throw themselves onto the tracks. This part, which according to Claudio Polosecki, was removed at Polo's request so as not to give the viewer ideas. Unfortunately, it ended up being the place where Polo himself would meet his final on December 3, 1996 at age 32.

References:

"En la vereda de la sombra", Hugo Alonso (2005)

07/2021