Argentina
MAJOR FIGURES
The importance of La historia oficial , aside from its intrinsic qualities that merited the Oscar ® , lies in the fact that it is emblematic of the sort of Argentine film that could not be made during the dictatorship, while at the same time it represents the attempt to analyze the material and emotional violence of the neofascist period. Virtually a Who's Who of Argentine filmmaking and other realms of culture were involved in the making of Puenzo's film, including Aleandro and Alterio, for whom this film was a comeback to Argentine cinema. Moreover, La historia oficial represents the extensive array of films made in Argentine under the aegis of the Program for the Redemocratization of Argentine Culture during the latter half of the 1980s. These films, many of which attained international recognition (María Luisa Bemberg's Camila [1984], Héctor Olivera's No habrá más penas ni olvido [ Funny Dirty Little War , 1983], Eliseo Subiela's Hombre mirando al sudeste [ Man Facing Southeast ; 1986]), had to compete with the large inventory of American and European films that were finally able to be exhibited either for the first time or without cuts in Argentina after 1983. The intense competition for screen space and critical attention afforded a new vigor to film as a cultural product in Argentina that has lasted into the twenty-first century.
La historia oficial , however, remains the iconic film of the period, not only because of the Oscar ® , but also because of the story it tells: a prosperous businessman who has shady dealings with the military is rewarded for his loyalty with a baby born in prison to one of the so-called disappeared ones. His wife, a history teacher who until that moment has had little involvement with the recent events in her country, begins to suspect the truth and undertakes to establish how the child came to them, with violent consequences. The adoptive mother's quest symbolizes how, more than twenty years after the return to constitutional democracy, Argentina had yet to overcome the many social and political effects of the tyranny.
One of the most significant figures to be associated with the post-dictatorship period is María Luisa Bemberg. When Bemberg died of cancer in 1995, she had been directing for little more than a decade and had signed only a half-dozen films. It was not until she walked away from her upper-middle class marriage in her late fifties that she began making films on her own. All of Bemberg's films attracted rave reviews and significant critical attention, along with enthusiastic public reception, so that she was well known by the time of her last completed film, De eso no se habla ( I Don't Want to Talk about It , 1993), which recounts how a comfortable merchant-class young woman who is a dwarf runs off with the circus as an act of rebellion against her mother's attempt to deny the reality of her physical condition. Bemberg used international stars such as Marcello Mastroianni (1924–1996), Julie Christie (b. 1941), Assumpta Serna (b. 1957), and Dominique Sanda (b. 1948) in starring roles in her films.
Aside from the general feminist quality of Bemberg's films, in which she showed women rebelling against stifling social paradigms, they are important for their generally queer orientation. Argentina does not have a distinguished record in gay and lesbian or queer filmmaking, although some important work has been done. One could almost say that Bemberg naturalized queerness in her films, and her premature death deprived Latin American filmmaking of one of its truly unique voices. In Argentina there is a new generation of feminist directors such as Lucrecia Martel (b. 1966) ( La Ciénaga [ The Swamp , 2001] and La Niña santa [ The Holy Girl , 2004]), who has garnered considerable international
Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson (1924–1978) was one of the first Argentine directors to attract international recognition. He represented the transition in the 1960s from the heavily Hollywood-inspired work of the pre-Perón Golden Age of elegant drawing room and boudoir ("white telephone") films, and the hack work during Perón's two presidencies, to an art cinema that was strongly influenced by French intellectualism, Italian neorealism, and a general leftist social realism without ever imitating formulaic Soviet models. Moreover, Torre-Nilssen collaborated extensively with his wife, the novelist Beatriz Guido (1924–1988), to produce a body of films on the decaying oligarchy—including La casa del ángel ( The House of the Angel , 1957)—that refocused European social critique through a (proto)feminist lens that was unique in Latin America. Unlike other directors who abandoned Argentina for political reasons, Torre-Nilsson remained in Argentina, where he continued to make film versions of major works of Argentine literature until his death in 1978. Although his father, Leopoldo Torre Ríos (1899–1960), was one of the founders of Argentine filmmaking both of Torre-Nilsson's sons, Javier Torre (b. 1946) and Pablo Torre, are undistinguished directors.
While Torre-Nilsson remained a resolutely narrative filmmaker, other more experimental filmmakers brought added recognition to the Argentine industry. Octavio Getino (born in Spain in 1935) has received recognition for documentaries that combine stunning photography with highly charged political propaganda, such as the famous La hora de los hornos ( The Hour of the Furnaces , 1968), co-directed by Fernando Solanas (b. 1936). Adolfo Birri, who has played a major role in the Cuban industry and the Cuban national film institute, has been called the father of the so-called New Latin American film, which is characterized by its political commitment and its adoption of an aggressive anti-Hollywood style. Terms such as "Third Cinema" (i.e., neither Hollywood nor European art cinema) and "imperfect cinema" (because it cannot aspire to American and European technical perfection, nor should it attempt to) have been used for this mode of filmmaking. In addition to recent films about the Argentine leftist icon Che Guevara, Birri is most known for the short Tire dié ( Throw Me a Dime , 1960), which, apart from its social realism, provided the model for an extensive tradition of films about street children during the past half century in Argentine films, much as did the Mexican film Los olvidados ( The Young and the Damned , Luis Buñuel, 1950). Also from the same period is Breve cielo ( Brief Heaven , David José Kohon, 1969), a marvelous example of the gritty urban existence of young adults. In addition to exemplifying the large contribution of Jews to Argentine filmmaking, Breve cielo 's female lead, Ana María Picchio (b. 1946), won the Moscow Film Festival award that year for best actress.