Changing The Face Of Argentinean Cinema: The Vibrant Voices Of Four Women

Afterimage, May, 2001 by Viviana Rangil

In Argentina, as in most of Latin America, the film industry is not based on the studio structure of the United States, but rather it is underwritten by the government, with very little funding from the private sector. [1] The Instituto Nacional de Cinematograffia y Artes Audiovisuales (National Institute of Cinematography and Visual Arts, or INCAA) in Buenos Aires, a federal organization, has been one of the few funding agencies supporting innovative cinematic proposals. The 12-year presidency of Carlos Saul Menem devastated Argentina's economy. The present government of Fernando De la Rua faces the enormous task of rebuilding the economic structure of the country. One of the results of this has been the implementation of budget cuts in education and the arts. The $60 million budget that INCAA had in 1999 was cut in half for 2000, and most of the $30 million left is earmarked for outstanding projects. [2] In response to this, on May 2, 2000, film industry-related organizations published an open letter to the president informing him of the state of crisis the industry is now facing. They have requested a meeting with De la Rua and have asked for full compliance with the Film Law (La Ley de Cine), making INCAA an autonomous agency with the power to decide how to distribute funds it has been allocated. [3] So far there has been no response to their requests. Despite the limitations and impediments created by the current economic climate, interest among young filmmakers still runs high and several films are under production.

This article presents four young women filmmakers currently involved in significant projects. These cinematographers have not only studied at INCAA, but have also won prizes in various competitions organized by the agency and have been awarded funds for the production of their films.

An Introduction

As filmmaking in Argentina evolves, the roles of women in this field are also changing. There is an inherent paradox in the new environment--it requires women filmmakers to assert their space, while at the same time it fuels their creative talents. Lucrecia Martel, Paula Hernandez, Vanessa Ragone and Julia Solomonoff represent the clearest example of a new generation that is changing the face of cinema.

Martel was born in Salta, a northern province of Argentina. After finishing high school, and with no clear plans for her professional future, she moved to Buenos Aires. With a desire to straddle the boundaries between the sciences and the humanities, she began her education by studying social communications at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and then animation at the Escuela de Cine de Avellaneda Film School. In 1990 she finished her academic career in film studies at the Instituto Nacional de Cinematografia (National Institute of Cinematography). Since then she has directed works for television and film. In 1997 she won a competition organized by INCAA with her short Rey Muerto (Dead King), a story about domestic violence. In the meantime she directed a series of documentaries and a TV show for children, Magazine For Fai, for which she won several prizes. In 1999 she won the Sundance prize for best script for her first feature-length film, La Cienaga (The Swamp, 2001), a story about life in the Argenti nean provinces and the naturalization of gender roles. Even at the young age of 33, Martel is already a respected figure in filmmaking circles. La Cienaga won the Bauer award for best first feature at the Berlin Film Festival, and was the opening film at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival in March.

Hernandez was born in Buenos Aires and also started her university career studying social communications at UBA, eventually studying scriptwriting at the Fundacion Universidad del Cine (FUC--University of Film Foundation), a private institution headed by the prestigious film director Miguel Antin. In 1999 she won the first prize at INCAA for the category "Opera Prima," with her first feature-length film, La herencia (The Inheritance, 2001), a film about immigrants, Buenos Aires and the search for identity. She has also had two previous shorts that have been screened with great success at various film festivals. Rojo (Red, 1992), a story of mistaken identity and love, won the Best Director Prize at the 1993 Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata, and Km 22 (Kilometer 22, 1996), is also a story about identity and its unstable characteristics.

Ragone was born in Santo Tome, a small town in the central province of Santa Fe. She studied photography first in Santa Fe and then at INCAA. Ragone is a documentarist whose work is innovative, provocative and beautiful in its composition. [4] Her 1993 documentary Vertigos...o contemplacion de algo que cae (Vertigo...or contemplation of something that falls) is a hybrid of documentary and the fictional styles of Alejandra Pizarnik, a highly respected poet in academic and literary circles. Vertigos won the first INCAA National Competition for Shorts. Her subsequent work on indigenous populations gives her subjects agency by providing them with cameras to film themselves. She uses this technique in her documentary Ayvu-Pora, las bellas palabras (Ayvu-Pora, the beautiful words, 1998), sponsored by the United Nations Development Program in 1998, a film in which she presents an inter-creative experience with a Guarani community in Tamandua, Misiones (a province in the east). Her documentary has recently been screened at the New York Videoteca del Sur as part of the series "The Most Relevant of Latin America." Ragone is curren tly developing this technique further in a feature-length documentary called Una de indios (Another One About Indians).