Cinema of Argentina

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. 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. The Golden Age of Argentine cinema took place between the 1930s and 1950s.
Argentina has won eighteen Goya Awards for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film, which makes it the most awarded country. It is also the first Latin American country that has won Academy Awards, in recognition of the films The Official Story (1985) and The Secret in Their Eyes (2009).
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" 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), 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.
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.
Directors such as José A. Ferreyra began to work on producing films in Argentine cinema, releasing films such as Palomas rubias (1920), La Gaucha (1921) and Buenos Aires, ciudad de ensueño in 1922. Films that followed included La Maleva, Corazón de criolla, Melenita de oro, Leyenda del puente inca (1923), Odio serrano, Mientras Buenos Aires duerme, Arriero de Yacanto (1924) and El Organito de la tarde and Mi último tango (1925).
In 1926, Ferreyra released La Vuelta al Bulín, La Costurerita que dio aquel mal paso and Muchachita de Chiclana followed by Perdón, viejita (1927). Many of these Ferreyra films featured two of the decade's most popular stars, Alvaro Escobar and Elena Guido.
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.
The Golden Age of Argentine cinema (Spanish: Época de Oro or Edad de Oro del cine argentino), sometimes known interchangeably as the broader classical or classical-industrial period (Spanish: período clásico-industrial), is an era in the history of the cinema of Argentina that began in the 1930s and lasted until the 1940s or 1950s, depending on the definition, during which national film production underwent a process of industrialization and standardization that involved the emergence of mass production, the establishment of the studio, genre and star systems, and the adoption of the institutional mode of representation (MRI) that was mainly—though not exclusively—spread by Hollywood, quickly becoming one of the most popular film industries across Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world.
As in other countries, the arrival of sound films put in check the international dominance of American cinema due to the language barrier, leaving a market available. This situation was analogous to the one that occurred during World War I, when the European film crisis benefited Argentine producers. Hollywood tried to deal with these difficulties with attempts at dubbing that ended up failing and also with various forms of subtitling, although this still required technical development and also excluded illiterate audiences. Eventually, the U.S. industry reacted by making little acepted Spanish-language versions of its most important productions, although they found the greatest success once they began to make produce original Spanish-language films made to showcase Latin American stars. Among them, the 1931–1935 films made by Paramount Pictures starring Carlos Gardel stood out, and became a major influence on the emergence of an Argentine sound film industry. Before being hired by Paramount, Gardel—the most popular performer in the history of tango—had starred in a series of short films using optical sound between 1930 and 1931, which were directed by Eduardo Morera and produced by Federico Valle. The first of Gardel's feature films produced by Paramount was Luces de Buenos Aires, released in September 1931 to great success. By this time optical sound had demonstrated its advantage over disc systems, so the equipment was progressively replaced in a process that lasted throughout 1932.
Argentine industrial cinema arose in 1933 with the creation of its first and most prominent film studios, Argentina Sono Film and Lumiton, which released ¡Tango! and Los tres berretines, respectively, two foundational films that ushered in the sound-on-film era. Although they were not national productions, the 1931–1935 films made by Paramount Pictures with tango star Carlos Gardel were a decisive influence on the emergence and popularization of Argentine sound cinema. The nascent film industry grew steadily, accompanied by the appearance of other studios such as SIDE, Estudios Río de la Plata, EFA, Pampa Film and Estudios San Miguel, among others, which developed a continuous production and distribution chain. This momentum laid the foundation for what would later become a thriving industry for commercial video production in Argentina, maintaining a strong presence in Latin America.
The number of films shot in the country grew 25-fold between 1932 and 1939, more than any other Spanish-speaking country. By 1939, Argentina established itself as the world's leading producer of films in Spanish, a position that it maintained until 1942, the year in which film production reached its peak.
In classical Argentine cinema, film genres were almost always configured as hybrids, with melodrama emerging as the reigning mode of the period. Its early audience were the urban working classes, so its content was strongly rooted in their culture, most notably tango music and dance, radio dramas, and popular theatrical genres like sainete or revue. These forms of popular culture became the main roots of the film industry, from which many of its main performers, directors and screenwriters came. Much of the themes that defined the Argentine sound cinema in its beginnings were inherited from the silent period, including the opposition between the countryside and the city, and the interest in representing the world of tango. As the industry's prosperity increased in the late 1930s, bourgeois characters shifted from villains to protagonists, in an attempt to appeal to the middle classes and their aspirations. Starting in the mid-1940s, Argentine cinema adopted an "internationalist" style that minimized national references, including the disuse of local dialect and a greater interest in adapting works of world literature.
Beginning in 1943, as a response to Argentina's neutrality in the context of World War II, the United States imposed a boycott on sales of film stock to the country, causing Mexican cinema to displace Argentina as the market leader in Spanish. During the presidency of Juan Perón (1946–1955), protectionist measures were adopted, which managed to revitalize Argentine film production. However, financial fragility of the industry led to its paralysis once Perón was overthrown in 1955 and his stimulus measures ended. With the studio system entering its definitive crisis, the classical era came to an end as new criteria for producing and making films emerged, including the irruption of modernism and auteur films, and a greater prominence of independent cinema. The creation of the National Film Institute in 1957 and the innovative work of figures such as Leopoldo Torre Nilsson gave rise to a new wave of filmmakers in the 1960s, who opposed "commercial" cinema and experimented with new cinematic techniques.
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", 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). 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.
Directors such as Tulio Demicheli and Carlos Schlieper began to emerge who often both wrote and directed them. A second generation that achieved a cinematographic style were José A. Martínez Suárez, Manuel Antín and Leonardo Favio.
The trend towards Cinéma 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 Madmen (1973) and Heartbreak Tango (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." "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."
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.
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).
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.
The first group deals frankly with the repression, torture and the disappearances during the Dirty War in the 1970s and early 1980s. They include: Hector Olivera's Funny Little Dirty War (1983) and the true story Night of the Pencils (1986); Luis Puenzo's Academy Award-winning The Official Story (1985); "Pino" Solanas' Tangos, the Exile of Gardel (1986) and Sur ("South", 1987) and Alejandro Doria's harrowing Sofia (1987), among others.
Among films dealing with past abuses, one German-Argentine co-production that also deserves mention is Jeanine Meerapfel's The Girlfriend (1988), where Norwegian leading lady Liv Ullmann is cast beside locals Federico Luppi, Cipe Lincovski, Victor Laplace and Lito Cruz.
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.
This can also be said of treatments of controversial literature and painful 19th century history like Maria Luisa Bemberg's Camila (1984), Carlos Sorin's A King and His Movie (1985) and Eliseo Subiela's Man Facing Southeast (1986).
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.
Having an intense past and rich cultural heritage to draw on, directors continued to reach back with moody period pieces like Eduardo Mignogna's Flop (1990), Maria Luisa Bemberg's De eso no se habla ("You Don't Discuss Certain Things," 1993, her last and one of Italian leading man's Marcello Mastroianni's last roles, as well), Santiago Oves' rendition of Rodolfo Walsh's Agatha Christie-esque tale Asesinato a distancia ("Murder from a Distance," 1998), as well as bio-pics like Leonardo Favio's Raging Bull-esque Gatica, el mono (1993) and Javier Torre's Lola Mora (1996).
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).
Popular culture had its turn on the Argentine screen. Alejandro Doria's Cien veces no debo ("I Don't Owe You Forever," 1990) took an irreverent peek into a typical middle-class Argentine home, Jose Santiso's De mi barrio con amor ("From My Neighborhood, with Love," 1996) is a must-see for anyone planning to visit Buenos Aires' bohemian southside and Rodolfo Pagliere's El día que Maradona conoció a Gardel ("The Day Maradona Met Gardel," 1996) is an inventive ode to two standards of Argentine culture.
Films such as Fabian Bielinsky's twister Nine Queens (2000), his gothic El Aura (2005) and Juan José Campanella's teary Son of the Bride (2001) have received praise and awards around the world. Juan Carlos Desanzo cast Miguel Ángel Solá (best known for his role in Tango) as the immortal Jorge Luis Borges in El Amor y el Espanto ("Love and Foreboding", 2001), a look at the writer's struggles with Perón-era intimidation as well as with his own insecurities.
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. 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". Martel's succeeding films would also receive further international acclaim, such as the adolescent drama The Holy Girl (2004), the psychological thriller The Headless Woman (2008), and the period drama adaptation Zama (2017).
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.
The decade ended on a high with the 2009 film The Secret in Their Eyes receiving critical praise, winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards, three weeks after being awarded the Goya Award for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film of 2009.
In 2014, the anthology film Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes in Spanish) directed by Damián Szifron was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards and won the Goya Award for Best Iberoamerican Film.