Cinema of Argentina refers to the film industry based in Argentina. The Argentine cinema comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of Argentina or by Argentine filmmakers abroad.
The Argentine film industry has historically been one of the three most developed in Latin American cinema, along with those produced in Mexico and Brazil.[5][6] Throughout the 20th century, film production in Argentina, supported by the State and by the work of a long list of directors and actors, became one of the major film industries in the Spanish-speaking world.
In 1896, French photographer Eugene Py was working for the Belgian Henri Lepage and the Austrian Max Glücksmann at the 'Casa Lepage', a photographic supplies business in Buenos Aires. The three all saw the debut of the Lumière Cinématographe in Argentina,"with a picture of the Lumiére's, took place on 18 July 1896"[9] at the Teatro Odéon, only a year after its debut in Paris.
Lepage then imported the first French cinematographic equipment into the country and though Eugenio Py who, using a Gaumont camera in 1897, is often credited for the first Argentine film, La Bandera Argentina (which consisted of a flag of Argentina waving in the wind at the Plaza de Mayo),[10] the credit belongs to German-Brazilian Federico Figner, who screened the first three Argentine films on 24 November 1896 (shorts depicting sights of Buenos Aires). Earning renown, Py continued to produce films for exhibition at the Casa Lepage for several years, following up with Viaje del Doctor Campos Salles a Buenos Aires (1900, considered the country's first documentary) and La Revista de la Escuadra Argentina (1901); by that time, the first projection halls had opened, working as part of the cross-national film production, distribution and exhibition system developed by Glücksmann in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.
Early developments
Amalia (1914), the first full-length movie of national production.
Several Argentine artists continued to experiment with the new invention, making news shorts and documentaries. Eugenio A. Cardini filmed Escenas Callejeras (1901) and Mario Gallo made the first Argentine film with a point-of-view: El fusilamiento de Dorrego ("Dorrego's Execution," 1908). Other directors such as Ernesto Gunche directed early documentaries.
The Argentine history and literature provided the themes of the first years of film-making. One of the first successes of the national cinema was Nobleza Gaucha of 1915, inspired by Martín Fierro, the gaucho poem by José Hernández. Based on José Mármol's novel, Amalia was the first full-length movie of national production, and in 1917 El Apóstol, a satiric short on president Hipólito Yrigoyen, became the first animated feature film in world cinema. Another notable 1917 debut, for Francisco Defilippis Novoa's Flor de durazno, was Carlos Gardel.
Towards the end of the decade, directors such as Julio Irigoyen began to release films such as Alma en pena in 1928. Films such as these began to feature the Argentine culture of tango dancing into films, something which rocketed later in the 1930s after the advent of sound.
In 1930, Adiós Argentina became the first Argentine film to have a soundtrack. The film was written and directed by Mario Parpagnoli for Cinematográfica Valle and finished in December 1929. The film starred actresses such as Libertad Lamarque and Ada Cornaro who both debuted in the film.
In 1931, José A. Ferreyra directed Muñequitas porteñas, the first Argentine film to be made with Vitaphone sound synchronisation. That year, Ferreyra made a second sound film, El Cantar de mi ciudad, encouraging other early directors to make the transition to sound.
Movietone arrived in 1933 and it allowed both voice and music in motion pictures. The first two Argentine cinematographic studios were created: Argentina Sono Film was founded by Ángel Mentasti; Lumitón was created by a partnership led by Enrique Susini, who was instrumental in the introduction of television to Argentina in 1951. Susini created a hub for audiovisual development. He launched the film "Los tres berretines" which was the first Argentinian film with a plot and a spoken script.
Manuel Romero was a prominent director of the mid-to-late 1930s and worked in comedy based films often with rising Argentine star Luis Sandrini in films such as Don Quijote del altillo. Romero was also a tango lyricist, one of the creators of magazine theatre and playwright that wrote more than 180 plays. He directed more than 50 films in total, most of which based on his own plot and composed the music with a tango film.
The film industry in Argentina reached a pinnacle in the late 1930s and 1940s when an average of forty-two films were produced annually. The films usually included tango, but even when a tango theme was omitted most cinema from this period still included humble heroes and wealthy villains.[11] In these films, it portrayed hard work and poverty as ennobling and depicted the poor as the primary beneficiaries of Juan Perón's economic policies. These films, in part supported by Perón, were seen as part of the political agenda of peronism.[11] By supporting a film industry that attacked greed and supported the working class, Perón was able to influence the attitudes of his constituency to build public appeal.[11]
The growing popularity of the cinema of the United States, pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and increasing censorship during the Perón presidency limited the growth of Argentine cinema somewhat, not least because harassment led to the exile of a number of prominent actors, among them Alberto de Mendoza, Arturo García Buhr, Niní Marshall and Libertad Lamarque, whose rivalry with her colleague Eva Duarte turned against her when the latter became First Lady in 1946. Argentine cinema began losing viewership as foreign titles gained an increasing foothold in the Argentine market. The problem eventually became so bad that Argentina tried to curb the influx with the Cinema Law of 1957, establishing the "Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía" to provide education and funding.
Among the era's most successful films were: Historia de una noche,Luis Saslavsky, 1941; La dama duende, Luis Saslavsky, 1945; Malambro (Lucas Demare and Hugo Fregonese, 1945); Albeniz (Luis César Amadori) starring Pedro López Lagar (1947); Pelota de trapo (1948) and Crimen de Oribe (1950), Leopoldo Torres Ríos; and Las aguas bajan turbias, by Hugo del Carril, 1952. One of the few Argentine actors who made a successful transition into directing was Mario Soffici, who debuted behind the camera in 1935 to acclaim with El alma del bandoneón and went on to become an institution in Argentine film over the next generation; among his most memorable work was the film adaptation of Marco Denevi's bestselling mystery, Rosaura a la diez ("Rosaura at Ten O'Clock"), for whose 1958 screen release Soffici wrote, directed and starred.
In 1958, the film Thunder Among the Leaves directed by Armando Bó was released. The film featured the later sex-symbol Isabel Sarli in her first starring role, and marked the beginning of her partnership with future husband Armando Bó, which would span almost three decades and made numerous sexploitation films.[12][13][14] Now considered a classic,[14][15] a scene in which she bathes in a lake was the first one to feature full frontal nudity in Argentine cinema.[13][16] The film was a highly controversial box-office success; it has been described as a "boom" and "scandalous" and shocked the mostly Catholic Argentine society.[14][17] In November 1958, The News and Courier reported "[a] saucy Latin lass has smashed South American box office records with the most daring dunking since Hedy Lamarr disrobed to fame in Ecstasy."[18] The movie's premiere in Montevideo, Uruguay broke box office records, and Sarli's bath scene "rocked some Latin American capitals".[18] However, Sarli was panned by fellow filmmakers for the nude scene.[18]
The horror genre, little explored by Argentine film-makers, was explored by Argentine director Narciso Ibáñez Menta.
Television, as in the United States, began to exert pressure on the film market in the 1950s; on the air since the 1951 launch of Channel 7 (public television), Argentine television programming is the oldest in Latin America.
Since the late 1950s a new generation of film directors took Argentine films to international film festivals. The first wave of such directors was Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson, who "explored aristocratic decadence",[19]Fernando Ayala, David Jose Kohon, Simon Feldman and Fernando "Pino" Solanas, who began by making La Hora de los Hornos ("Hour of the Furnaces", 1966–68) the first documentaries on the political unrest in late-1960s Argentina (at great risk to himself).[19] The movie combines new and old film footage to explain the history of Argentina and the wave of revolutionary fervor that swept many countries in Latin America. From the Spanish invaders to modern military concerns financed by foreign powers, this feature examines racism, social upheaval, native massacres and the precarious political situations that could change in the wake of revolutionary rebellion. This outstanding documentary launched the Third Cinema movement and put Latin American cinema on the international map.
The trend towards Ciné Vérité so evident in France in the early 1970s found an Argentine exponent in stage director Sergio Renán. His 1974 crime drama La tregua ("The Truce"), his first foray into film, was nominated for an Oscar. The same year, Osvaldo Bayer cooperated with the Province of Santa Cruz to make La patagonia rebelde as an homage to a violently quelled 1922 sheephands' strike.
Nostalgia was captured by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, whose reworking of Argentine literary classics like The Hand in the Trap (1961), Martin Fierro (1968), The Seven Lunatics (1973) and Painted Lips (1974) earned him a cult following. Similar in atmosphere, Jose Martinez Suarez's moody Los muchachos de antes no usaban arsenico ("Older Men Don't Need Arsenic", 1975) takes a turn at murder. It was memorable as Mario Soffici's last role.
"During the early 1970's, Argentina came apart. Government repression was met by insurrections and terrorism. Solanas and Getino contributed by filming two documentary interviews with the exiled Peron. They also founded a magazine, Cine y liberacion. Getino directed El Familiar (1972), an allegorical fiction feature on the destiny of Latin America. Other film makers continued to make Peronist films, and ultra-left groups such as Cine de Base emerged."[20] "In 1976, this period of militant documentary and cinematic innovation was violently ruptured by the murder/disappearance of three documentary filmmakers by the Argentine military: Gleyzer, Pablo Szir and Enrique Juarez."[21]
Heavily censored from 1975 until about 1980, Argentine film-makers generally limited themselves to light-hearted subjects. Among the productions during that era was Héctor Olivera's adaptation of Roberto Cossa's play, La nona (Grandma, 1979). The dark comedy became a reference to the foreign debt interest payments that later saddled the Argentine economy. One director who, even as a supporter of the military regime, delved into middle-class neuroses with frankness was Fernando Siro, an inventive film-maker seemingly insensitive to many of his colleagues' tribulations, many of whom were forced to leave during the dictatorship. Though his attitudes distanced him from his peers and public, his 1981 tragedy Venido a menos ("Dilapidated") continues to be influential.
Early 1980s
Following a loosening of restrictions in 1980, muck-raking cinema began to make itself evident on the Argentine screen. Plunging head-long into subjects like corruption and impunity (without directly indicting those in power), Adolfo Aristarain's Tiempo de revancha ("Time for Revenge", 1981), Fernando Ayala's Plata dulce ("Sweet Money," 1982) and Eduardo Calcagno's Los enemigos ("The Enemies," 1983) took hard looks at labor rights abuses, corporate corruption and the day's prevailing climate of fear at a time when doing so was often perilous. Petty corruption was also brought up in Fernando Ayala's El Arreglo ("The Deal," 1983).[22]
Post junta cinema
A new era in Argentine cinema started after the arrival of democracy in 1983; besides a few memorable exceptions like Alejandro Doria's family comedy Esperando la carroza ("Waiting for the Hearse", 1985), the era saw a marked decline in the popularity of slapstick comedies towards films with more serious undertones and subject matter.
A second group of films includes portrayals of exile and homesickness, like Alberto Fischermann's Los días de junio ("Days in June," 1985) and Juan Jose Jusid's Made in Argentina (1986), as well as plots rich in subtext, like Miguel Pereira's Verónico Cruz (1988), Gustavo Mosquera's Lo que vendrá ("The Near Future", 1988) and a cult favorite, Martin Donovan's English-language Apartment Zero (1988). These used metaphor, life's imponderables and hints at wider socio-political issues to reconcile audiences with recent events.
The 1990s brought another New Argentine Cinema wave, marked by classical cinema and a twist from Independent Argentine Production.
In 1991, Marco Bechis' Alambrado ("Chicken Wire") was released. That same year, activist film-maker Fernando "Pino" Solanas released his third major film, The Journey (1992), a surreal overview of prevailing social conditions in Latin America. Existential angst continued to dominate the Argentine film agenda, however, with Eliseo Subiela's El lado oscuro del corazon ("Dark Side of the Heart," 1992) and Adolfo Aristarain's A Place in the World (1992) – notable also for its having been nominated for an Oscar.
Later in the 1990s, the focus began to shift towards Argentina's mounting social problems, such as rising homelessness and crime. Alejandro Agresti's Buenos Aires vice versa (1996) rescued the beauty of feelings in the shadows of poverty in Buenos Aires and Bruno Stagnaro's Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes (1997) looked into the human duality of even the most incorrigible and violent individuals.
Political history was re-examined with films like Eduardo Calcagno's controversial take on 1970s-era Argentine film censor Paulino Tato (played by Argentina's most prolific character actor, Ulises Dumont) in El Censor (1995), Juan J. Jusid's indictment of the old compulsory military training system, Bajo Bandera ("At Half Mast," 1997), Marco Bechis' Garage Olimpo (1999), which took viewers into one of the dictatorship's most brutal torture dungeons and Juan Carlos Desanzo's answer to Madonna's Evita, his 1996 Eva Perón (a portrait of a far more complex first lady than the one Andrew Lloyd Webber had taken up).
Always politically active, Argentine film continues to treat hard subjects, like Spanish director Manane Rodríguez's look at abducted children, The Lost Steps (2001) and "Pino" Solanas' perhaps definitive film on the 2001 economic crisis, Memorias del saqueo ("Memories of the Riot", 2004). Tristán Bauer took audiences back to soldiers' dehumanizing Falklands War experience with Blessed by Fire (2005) and Adrián Caetano follows four football players through their 1977 escape from certain death in Chronicle of an Escape (2006).
Lucrecia Martel's 2001 debut feature film La ciénaga ("The Swamp"), about an indulgent bourgeois extended family spending the summertime in a decrepit vacation home in Salta, was internationally highly acclaimed upon release and introduced a new and vital voice to Argentine cinema.[25][26][27][28] For film scholar David Oubiña, it is "one of the highest achievements" of the New Argentine Cinema, coincidentally timed with Argentina's political and economic crisis that it "became a rare expression of an extremely troubled moment in the nation's recent history. It is a masterpiece of singular maturity".[29] Martel's succeeding films would also receive further international acclaim, such as the adolescent drama The Holy Girl (2004),[30] the psychological thriller The Headless Woman (2008),[31] and the period drama adaptation Zama (2017).[32]
Responding to its sentimental public, Argentine film at times returns to subjects of the heart. David Lipszyc's grainy portrait of depression-era Argentina, El astillero ("The Shipyard", 2000) was a hit with critics, Paula Hernandez's touching ode to immigrants, Inheritance (2001), has become something of a sleeper, Adolfo Aristarain's Common Places (2002) follows an elderly professor into retirement, Cleopatra (2003), Eduardo Mignona's tale of an unlikely friendship, received numerous awards, as did Carlos Sorín's touching El perro ("The Dog", 2004). Emotional negativity, a staple for filmmakers anywhere, was explored in Mario Sabato's India Pravile (2003), Francisco D'Intino's La esperanza (2005) and Ariel Rotter's El otro ("The Other", 2007) each deals with mid-life crises in very different ways. The pronounced sentimentality of the average Argentine was also the subject of Robert Duvall's 2002 Assassination Tango, a deceptively simple crime drama that shows that still waters do, indeed, run deep.
Buffeted by years of economic malaise and encroachment of the domestic film market by foreign (mainly, US) titles, the Argentine film industry has been supported by the 1987 creation of the National Institute of Cinema and Audioviual Arts (INCAA), a publicly subsidized film underwriter that, since 1987, has produced 130 full-length art house titles.
Libertad Lamarque Bouza was an Argentine actress and singer, one of the icons of the Golden Age of Argentine and Mexican cinema. She achieved fame throughout Latin America, and became known as "La Novia de América". By the time she died in 2000, she had appeared in 65 films and six telenovelas, had recorded over 800 songs and had made innumerable theatrical appearances.
Fernando Ezequiel "Pino" Solanas was an Argentine film director, screenwriter, score composer and politician. His films include; La hora de los hornos (1968), Tangos: el exilio de Gardel (1985), Sur (1988), El viaje (1992), La nube (1998) and Memoria del saqueo (2004), among many others. He was National Senator representing the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires for six years, from 2013 to 2019.
Amelia Bence was an Argentine film actress and one of the divas of the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema (1940–1960).
The Soul of the Accordion is a 1935 Argentine tango musical film directed by Mario Soffici and written by José A. Bugliot. It is considered one of the earliest classics of Argentine cinema.
José A(gustín) Ferreyra, popularly known as "Negro Ferreyra", was an early Argentine film director, screenwriter and film producer. He was also sometimes credited as production designer.
Laura Ana "Tita" Merello was an Argentine film actress, tango dancer and singer of the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema (1940–1960). In her six decades in Argentine entertainment, at the time of her death, she had filmed over thirty movies, premiered twenty plays, had nine television appearances, completed three radio series and had had countless appearances in print media. She was one of the singers who emerged in the 1920s along with Azucena Maizani, Libertad Lamarque, Ada Falcón, and Rosita Quiroga, who created the female voices of tango. She was primarily remembered for the songs "Se dice de mí" and "La milonga y yo".
Kilómetro 111 is a 1938 Argentine musical film drama directed by Mario Soffici. The film premiered in Buenos Aires.
Octavio Getino was an Argentine film director and writer who is best known for co-founding, along with Fernando Solanas, the Grupo Cine Liberación and the school of Third Cinema.
Zulema Esther González Borbón, better known as Zully Moreno, was an Argentine film actress of the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema (1940–1960). She appeared in more than 70 movies, earning best actress awards from the Argentine Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Spanish Cinema Writers Circle.
The Grupo Cine Liberación was an Argentine film movement that took place during the end of the 1960s. It was founded by Fernando Solanas, Octavio Getino and Gerardo Vallejo. The idea of the group was to give rise to historical, testimonial and film-act cinema, to contribute to the debate and offer an open space for dialogue and freedom of expression that was illegal at that time. With strong anti-imperialist ideas, he harshly criticized Peronism and neocolonialism. In the subsequent years other films directors revolved around the active core of the Cine Liberación group.
The Hour of the Furnaces is a 1968 Argentine film directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas. 'The paradigm of revolutionary activist cinema', it addresses the politics of the 'Third worldist' films and Latin-American manifesto of the late 1960s. It is a key part of the 'Third Cinema', a movement that emerged in Latin America around the same time as the film's release. The work is a four-hour trilogy, divided into chapters and united by the theme of dependency and liberation. The first part - "Neo-Colonialism and Violence" - is conceived for diffusion in all types of circuits, and is the one presented at Cannes Classics.
Francisco "Paco" Madrid was a Spanish (Catalan) journalist, writer and screenwriter.
Thunder Among the Leaves is a 1958 Argentine-Paraguayan drama film directed by Armando Bó, starring himself, Isabel Sarli, Ernesto Báez and Andrés Laszlo. The screenplay by Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos was based on his short story La hija del ministro. Set in Paraguay, the story is about a strike at a sawmill.
Tangos, the Exile of Gardel is an Argentine-French film released on 20 March 1986, directed by Fernando Solanas, starring Marie Laforêt, Miguel Ángel Solá and Philippe Leotard. The film was selected as the Argentine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 59th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Nilda Elvira Vattuone, better known by her stage name Nelly Omar, was an Argentine actress and singer during the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema. She was successful as a tango singer, performing on numerous radio shows and performed canción criolla. Her film career began in 1940. She was blacklisted after the ouster of Juan Perón for having sung his anthem, Soy La Descamisada and did not work again until the 1970s. From her comeback in 1972, she remained an active performer until her death.
The Argentine Academy of Cinematography Arts and Sciences was an industry association in Argentina founded in 1941. It was closed by the military junta in 1955.
Sabina Olmos (1913–1999) pseudonym of Rosa Herminia Gómez Ramos was an Argentine film actress of the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema (1940–1960).
María Elena Lucena Arcuri was an Argentine film actress of the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema (1940–60). She began her career in radio in the 1930s and reached her greatest success with the role of "Chimbela", which was later depicted in film, theater and television. Her extensive film career includes approximately 50 films, including notable performances in Chimbela (1939) and Una noche cualquiera (1951). During the 1940s, she participated in films with comedians like Pepe Arias, Pepe Iglesias "El Zorro", Niní Gambier, Mirtha Legrand and Carlos Estrada. Her most acclaimed film work occurred in Elvira Fernández, vendedora de tienda (1942) by Manuel Romero, Cinco besos by Luis Saslavsky and La Rubia Mireya for which she received the 1948 Best Comedy Actress Award from the Argentine Film Critics Association.
Contrakultura Films was an imprint of Iruña Films, SA a Buenos Aires film production effort dedicated to producing biographical documentaries on Latin American writers. Production offices were located in San Telmo. Soledad Liendo, Leonardo Hussen and Rodolfo Durán were among the producers. The initiative later expanded to include visual artists such as Andrés Waissman and Humberto Calzada, and [social scientists] such as León Rozitchner, Ismael Viñas, Juan Jose Sebreli and Jorge Lovisolo. Contrakultura existed as such between 2002 and 2006 producing approximately twenty-five documentaries with the support of INCAA, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, and the Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación. These films are presently owned by [Heritage Film Project], and currently being distributed by Alexander Street Press.
The 100 Greatest Films of Argentine Cinema, also known as the Survey of Argentine cinema, are a series of opinion polls carried out to establish a list of the greatest films of Argentine cinema of all time. The original survey was carried out by the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in the years 1977, 1984, 1991 and 2000. In 2022, a new edition was held, organized by the film magazines La vida útil, Taipei and La tierra quema, with support from INCAA, the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, the FestiFreak International Film Festival of La Plata, the Casa de la Cultura of General Roca and the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken.
↑ "La Ciénaga". The Criterion Collection. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 30 October 2017. The release of Lucrecia Martel's La Ciénaga heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema.
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