The New Latin American Cinema Research Papers

El recorrido histórico del Grupo Ukamau supera los sesenta años. Los registros orales reconocen que en sus diferentes etapas hubo mujeres llevando a cabo tareas cruciales delante y detrás de la cámara. Sin embargo, esta participación ha... more

L’historiographie du cinéma latino-américain met en relief, d’un façon particulier, un ensemble de la production réalisée pendant les années 1960/70, connue comme «Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano» (NCL). Notre but de recherche vise aux... more

The aim of this article is to recover and provide consistency to the scattered information available about four cinematic testimonios that starred the Peruvian indigenous peasant leader Saturnino Huillca, between 1973 and 1977: Runan... more

Este é um artigo de acesso aberto, licenciado por Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional (CC-BY 4.0), sendo permitidas reprodução, adaptação e distribuição desde que o autor e a fonte originais sejam creditados. Este artigo... more

Abstract: Some of the most important representatives of political cinema from around the world got together at the Rencontres Internationales pour un Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal, June, 1974). The list of participants included: filmmakers,... more

Abstract:
Some of the most important representatives of political cinema from around the world got together at the Rencontres Internationales pour un Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal, June, 1974). The list of participants
included: filmmakers, producers and ‘68 film groups from France and elsewhere; Latin American political filmmakers and representatives of a burgeoning African cinema; film critics, historians and producers; and members from film institutes and distributors from Europe and North America, including, of course, the Canadian organizers of the conference, André Pâquet and the Comité d'Action Cinématographique (CAC). Given the sheer number and diverse backgrounds of the participants, the Montreal conference holds a serious claim to being one of the most important worldwide events in political cinema of the period.
The most ambitious goal of the gathering in Montreal was to forge or strengthen ties among politically committed cinemas in the wake of the ruptures of 1968 in Europe as well as the emergence of Third Worldist filmmaking. The idea of an “Estates-General of Third Cinema”—an expression simultaneously referencing the events of May ’68 in France (Estates General of Cinema / Les États Généraux du Cinéma
Français), combined with the notion of Third Cinema—stemmed from this goal and was incorporated into several projects of the period.
In terms of the New Latin American Cinema, the documents and audiovisual records of the Rencontres… provide insight into this period of organization of filmmakers in the region. In the most common accounts of this historical moment, three key aspects revealed in the Montreal Documents are often ignored or attributed little importance: a) the fact that during the Rencontres, Latin American filmmakers had given shape to an initial group that is the immediate predecessor of the renowned Latin American Filmmakers’ Committee created in September that same year (1974); b) that the political relations among the most well-known Latin American figures (like Fernando Solanas, Edgardo Pallero, Walter Achugar, Miguel Littin, Julio García Espinosa) were wrought with tensions and conflict; c) that within the goal of organizing and forming a group of Latin American filmmakers, the Third Worldist
trends -seen in the gatherings in the Third World Cinema Committee meetings of Algiers (December 1973) and Buenos Aires (May 1974) and (in some way also) Montreal (June 1974)- were aimed at forming a Latin American Filmmakers Federation (FELACI) that would operate under or follow the example set by FEPACI (the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers). This article focuses on these questions.
Notes on the audiovisual documents: While many of the Montreal meeting’s documents where initially compiled in 1975, the audiovisual recordings of the event remained invisible until a few years ago. In total there were fifty one video recordings, although only forty eight have been preserved. I found these recordings in the Cinemathèque Québécoise archives in 2012. Thanks to the kindness and collaboration of André Pâquet and Jean Gagnon—director of collections at the Cinemathèque—a digital transfer of 32 of the 48 tapes was made, financed with funds from a Research Project of the CONICET, Argentina. They are now available in DVD for public consultation in Montreal and Buenos Aires. In the summer 2013/14, I published a research dedicated to the Montreal meeting, as well as some documents, and a DVD with three hours of audiovisual recordings. (M. Mestman, Estados Generales del Tercer
Cine. Los Documentos de Montreal, 1974; Rehime, Volume 3, Buenos Aires, Summer 2013/2014).
These materials were presented and discussed in April 2014 at a symposium organized by Luca Camianti and Masha Salazkina at Concordia University (Montreal). The idea for the 2015 dossier of the Canadian Journal for Film Studies (edited with Masha Salazkina) was assemble in depth research on the themes and problems debated during the meeting, emerged from that encounter.

Focusing on the cultural practices and policies of Cuba's ICAlC in the 1960 and 1970s, the essays explores the intellectual influences and negotiations that formed the New Latin American Cinema. Carefully unpacking the !ayers of... more

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- by Masha Salazkina
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- 6
  Film History, Cuban Cinema, Transnational Cinema, Political cinema

Abstract: Español: El artículo analiza Los traidores (1973), el principal film político del cineasta argentino desaparecido Raymundo Gleyzer y el grupo Cine de la Base, sobre un sindicalista peronista corrompido en su camino hacia el... more

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- by Mariano Mestman
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- 17
  New Left and the 1960s, 1960s, Peronismo, Mundo del Trabajo

Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la evolución del concepto de tercer cine – desarrollado por Octavio Getino y Fernando Solanas, miembros del grupo argentino Cine Liberación –, desde su origen a finales de los años sesenta hasta... more

The book "Teoria e prática de um cinema junto ao povo" of Jorge Sanjinés and Grupo Ukamau is published in Brazil, almost forty years after its original edition in Mexico. It is a collection of texts that aims to present the theoretical... more

Photo-Essay included in: Framework 62, No. 1, Spring 2021, pp. 107–133. Copyright © 2021 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan // https://www.frameworknow.com/news/journal62-1 Special Issue: DOCUMENTING THIRD CINEMA... more

Photo-Essay included in: Framework 62, No. 1, Spring 2021, pp. 107–133. Copyright © 2021 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan //
https://www.frameworknow.com/news/journal62-1

Special Issue:
DOCUMENTING THIRD CINEMA (1968–1979): OVERLOOKED AND
LITTLE-KNOWN DOCUMENTS AROUND THIRD CINEMA
GUEST EDITORS: Jonathan Buchsbaum and Mariano Mestman //

INTRODUCTION
Jonathan Buchsbaum and Mariano Mestman //

ESSAYS
Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino
“Cine militante: una categoría interna del Tercer Cine” (1971)
“Militant Cinema: An Internal Category of Third Cinema” //

Group CinémAction
“L’impact du ‘troisième cinéma’ dans le monde” (1979)
“The Impact of ‘Third Cinema’ in the World” //

Octavio Getino
“Algunas observaciones sobre el concepto del ‘Tercer Cine’”(1979)
“Some Observations on the Concept of ‘Third Cinema’” //

PHOTO-ESSAY
Jonathan Buchsbaum and Mariano Mestman
Images of the Itinerary of the Group Cine Liberación and “Third Cinema” //

This special issue is dedicated to the memory of Octavio Getino (1935–2012), Fernando Pino Solanas (1936–2020) and Guy Hennebelle (1941–2003), artisans of Third Cinema and militant cinema across the world. -----------------------------------

Abstract:
The proposal of Third Cinema from the group Cine Liberación has had a broad impact on world political cinema since the end of the 1960s. The articles translated in this issue are three little-known but seminal documents that demonstrate how their thinking about radical filmmaking changed during the tumultuous years from the production of the film The hour of the furnaces (1968), beginning in 1966, through the years of clandestine distribution of the film and the escalation of the repression, to the violent coup d’état in 1976 installing the military dictatorship that forced Solanas, Getino, and so many others into exile. Anglophone readers have known the film and the manifesto “Towards a Third Cinema” (1969) since their completion through subtitled prints and translations of the manifesto. The documents translated in this Special Issue show that Solanas and Getino in fact were constantly revising their earlier ideas, especially in response to a rapidly changing political ferment in Argentina.
First chronologically, the lengthy article by Getino and Solanas, “Cine militante: una categoría interna del Tercer Cine,” was completed in March 1971. This article shows the evolution of their thinking about political cinema that led them to this formulation of militant cinema, “the most advanced category” of Third Cinema. In 1979, Getino wrote the essay “Algunas observaciones sobre el concepto del ‘Tercer Cine,’” a meticulous retrospective analysis that explains the dialectic between the writings published by the group Cine Liberación and the process of clandestine distribution of the film in Argentina until the period following Perón’s return to Argentina in 1973. Also in 1979, a French collective devoted to political cinema, the newly founded French CinémAction group—created by Guy Hennebelle and Monique Martineau in 1978 in Paris— compiled a dossier of eleven responses to survey questions about the impact of the film and the manifesto in different countries during the decade since the explosive response to the first European screening of The Hour of the Furnaces at the Pesaro Film Festival (Italy) in 1968. That CinémAction dossier offers perhaps the most articulate and concentrated assessment of the significance of Third Cinema among committed film activists from all three continents.
As we have written previously about these documents, we propose here a brief presentation highlighting several questions that remain pertinent to understanding better the history of Third Cinema. At the same time, in our Photo-Essay, the many images include more specific references to the history of the film and the manifesto since they first appeared in 1968/1969 to 1979.

Beatriz Palacios’s instrumental role in the Ukamau group has been largely ignored by film historiography and criticism. The authorial persona of her comrade and husband, Jorge Sanjinés, has eclipsed Palacios’s work and ideas. Her erasure... more

The Documentary School oF Santa Fe and its founder, Fernando Birri, are inescapable references in the story of the New Latin American Cinema. The school grew out of a brief course offered by Birri in 1956. The young Argentine had... more

The Documentary School oF Santa Fe and its founder, Fernando Birri, are inescapable references in the story of the New Latin American Cinema. The school grew out of a brief course offered by Birri in 1956. The young Argentine had recently returned from studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, and he was asked to help organize a course on film with the Instituto Social at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL) in Santa Fe, Argentina. The course was deemed a great success and, soon thereafter, Birri and the UNL institutionalized their efforts by establishing the Instituto de Cinematografía, which began offering classes in April 1957. In the years that followed, the IC would further consolidate itself, becoming known across Argentina and throughout Latin American for its focus on social issues of the time.
This chapter returns to 1956 and the beginnings of that experience. There, the local converged with the transnational, and an internationally renowned film program was born out of a faith in amateurs—their knowl- edge, their perspective, and their capacity for self-expression. In Part I, we show how Birri’s initial effort—an introductory course on documentary,offered at the university’s margins (as part of its extension program, out of the social sciences division), and counting among its enrollees painters, schoolteachers, lawyers, even social workers—drew inspiration in equal parts from professional and amateur realms. In Part II, we analyze a key aspect to the filmmaker’s early approach: the use of fotodocumentales—photodocumentaries or photo essays—as a first step for those learning to make films. We reconsider this practice of using photography and social surveys as borrowing from the possibilities of the amateur. The act of taking a pic ture or asking a question made the filmmaking effort accessible to enrollees with little or no background in production, and it was an adequate first step given the limited initial resources of the IC. Most important, fotodocumentales helped focused students’ attention on the capturing of local realities and on the social possibilities of the cinema. As such, although clearly part of a certain (socially and politically conscious) professionalization project, these practices belong to the broader field of amateur cinematic cultures for providing an alternative vision of cinema’s social function and an alternative means of institutionalizing nonindustrial cinematic practices. In Part III, we focus on the well-known documentary Tire-dié (1958–1960). We look at the project’s evolution from a student-made fotodocumental to the IC’s first documentary film, finished in 1958. We pay special attention to the film’s deliberately noncommercial character, both in terms of how it was produced and how it was used socially, across informal networks of exhibition, through community screenings and postscreening audience surveys. Finally, in Part IV, in order to show their impact in later professional film production at school, we return to those unpublished surveys. We note that Birri and his team utilized commentaries from nonfilmgoing audiences to assess their successes in film and to develop the next set of films—a series that, as with the others, featured almost exclusively amateur actors.
Birri himself was no “amateur,” and his film school quickly became a point of cinematic reference the Latin America, but the initiative, at least in its origins, stemmed from a bottom-up approach, one that drew inspiration, where not direct investment, from local, amateur practices and bases of knowledge. In many ways, it was the IC’s incorporation of amateur participants, from its students and its film subjects to the neighborhood audiences with whom it shared its films, as well as their association with alternative film cultures, such as local “foto” or “cine-clubs,” that proved an ideal means for training future professionals, thus demonstrating the fluid and productive boundaries between the amateur and the professional. In so doing, the IC’s particular approach charted a new path for the institutionalization of innovative cinematic practices.

In: In: Masha Salazkina and Enrique Fibla (eds.), Global Perspectives on Amateur Film Histories and Cultures. Indiana University Press, 2021; 149-168.

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- by Mariano Mestman
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- 20
  Argentina, Documentary Film, Film Distribution, Latin American Cinema

DOSSIER "TESTIMONIO: DEBATES Y DESAFÍOS DESDE AMÉRICA LATINA" Clepsidra. Revista Interdisciplinaria de Estudios sobre Memoria, ISSN 2362-2075, Nº 1, marzo 2014, pp. 52-67 En 1968, los estudiantes mexicanos del Centro Universitario de... more

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- by Mariano Mestman
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- 20
  Latin American Studies, Testimony, Film Studies, Human Rights

Cet entretien porte sur les six films documentaires réalisés par le cinéaste chilien Pedro Chaskel Benko à Cuba, où il s'exila pendant dix ans. Au sein de l'Institut Cubain de l'Art et de l'Industrie Cinématographiques), où il travailla... more

Este artigo examina a relação entre natureza e afeto no filme Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012). Trata-se de compreender os efeitos da construção de paisagens fílmicas e afetivas a partir de uma análise das formas de enquadramento... more

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- by Mariana Cunha
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- 16
  Film Studies, Cinematic Space, Global Cinemas, Affect (Cultural Theory)

Presentación En el mes de mayo de 1958 se inauguraba en Montevideo (Uruguay) la III Edición del Festival Internacional de Cine Documental y Experimental del S.O.D.R.E. (Servicio Oficial de Radio Difusión Eléctrica), el primer festival en... more

Presentación
En el mes de mayo de 1958 se inauguraba en Montevideo (Uruguay) la III Edición del Festival Internacional de Cine Documental y Experimental del S.O.D.R.E. (Servicio Oficial de Radio Difusión Eléctrica), el primer festival en América Latina especializado en cine documental. Esa edición es considerada por la historiografía como un punto de inflexión inexcusable en el desarrollo cinematográfico de la región. Dos elementos –frecuentemente citados- dan cuenta de la relevancia del evento: la presencia de John Grierson, invitado ese año a detentar la Presidencia Honoraria del Festival, y la celebración en paralelo del Primer Congreso Latino-Americano de Cineístas [sic] Independientes, momento determinante para la toma de conciencia sobre los problemas comunes y las posibles vías de futuro para un cine que pudiera cumplir en América Latina “la ineludible tarea de velar por su educación, cultura, historia, tradición y elevación espiritual de su población”. Con estas palabras se expresaban, en las resoluciones adoptadas, los delegados en el congreso en representación de Argentina (Simón Feldman, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Rodolfo Kuhn y Fernando Birri, entre otros), Bolivia (Jorge Ruiz), Brasil (Nelson Pereira dos Santos), Chile (Patricio Kaulen), Perú (Manuel Chambi) y Uruguay (Danilo Trelles y Roberto Gardiol, entre otros); quienes además llevarían a cabo la constitución de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Cineístas Inpendientes (ALACI).
En esos años, distintas líneas de fuerza alimentan la educación de la mirada de los cineastas que se orientan hacia lo documental donde se configura una red de gestos miméticos y originales que van a permitir el peculiar encuentro que se produce entre John Grierson y los cineastas latinoamericanos en 1958 en Montevideo.
De hecho, el cine latinoamericano se hallaba en un periodo de búsquedas y de definición para orientar los aires de renovación que comenzaban a hacerse patentes y canalizar las voluntades de acción y creación de los cineastas. Y si bien la influencia del documentalista escocés puede encontrarse en obras previas, esa visita a América Latina se configuró en un punto de referencia. Los cineastas latinoamericanos no encontraron en John Grierson simplemente la gratificación de ver reconocido su trabajo por una figura de prestigio internacional; buscaron la guía y el consejo de un hombre que como ningún otro había demostrado extraordinarias dotes para promover y generar espacios e instituciones con el fin de convertir el cine en instrumento al servicio de la expresión de la identidad nacional, dirigiendo las cámaras y los talentos creadores hacia aquellas realidades sociales y culturales que el cine narrativo comercial no representaba. Porque si algo tenían en común los cineastas que se reunían por primera vez en este Congreso de 1958 habiendo desarrollado sus trayectorias de manera independiente y con pocos contactos entre ellos, era la voluntad de crear un verdadero cine nacional en oposición a los cines imitativos de los modelos de Hollywood, aquel que representara y pensara, por primera vez, la realidad social, histórica y cultural de América Latina. El documental era una de las vías a transitar para lograrlo.
Para el maestro Grierson el viaje a Uruguay posiblemente se programara como uno más entre sus muchos desplazamientos por la geografía planetaria en busca de materiales para su programa This Wonderful World, que había comenzado a emitirse en la televisión escocesa el 11 de octubre de 1957; una apretada agenda de viajes la de aquel tiempo que lo ubicaban en mayo de 1958 en París y Bruselas para el Festival de Cine Experimental y aterrizando el día 25 de ese mes en Montevideo. Pero su encuentro con los forjadores de lo que ya se perfilaba como el Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano no se limitó a los días del SODRE, porque de allí el escocés se trasladó a Argentina, Chile, Bolivia y Perú; visitas estas dos últimas que recordaría como “un gran viaje y, de algún modo, el más hermoso que jamás hubiese hecho”.
Los encuentros y las reflexiones que esta visita a Sudamérica propició permiten explorar un interesante cruce de miradas, hasta ahora no estudiado, que arroja nueva luz sobre un periodo de la cinematografía latinoamericana crucial para comprender la centralidad que el cine documental alcanzaría luego en la activación de nuevas vías estéticas y expresivas ligadas a la transformación social y política (…)

Para acceder al artículo completo:
http://revista.cinedocumental.com.ar/cruces-de-miradas-en-la-transicion-del-cine-documental-john-grierson-en-sudamerica/

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- by Mariano Mestman and +1
  María Luisa Ortega Gálvez
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- 11
  Documentary Film, Film Festival Studies, Cine Latinoamericano, Cine documental

Este artículo se propone descentrar la mirada sobre el cine político latinoamericano de 1968. Ese descentramiento se da en dos ejes: el espacial y el temporal. Se tratade apostar por una visión que busca conectar lo nacional con una... more

The New Latin American Cinema

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