Argentine Cinema

Abstract

The field of Argentine cinema studies can be said to have begun in earnest with the publication of film journalist Domingo Di Núbila’s landmark two-volume history of Argentina’s film history in 1959 and 1960, Historia del cine argentino (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Cruz de Malta). A work of tremendous range and scope, Di Núbila’s history not only provided a synopsis and critique of an abundance of individual films but also examined the influence of professional associations and industry, more broadly speaking. Perhaps due to the comprehensiveness of these volumes, minimal scholarly publishing on Argentine cinema followed until the 1970s, when interest in political cinema propelled Argentine cinema into the global spotlight. Scholarly writing about Argentine film in Europe, the United States, and, to a certain extent, Cuba during this period of heightened Cold War tensions tended to focus on questions of the political and the techniques of radical cinema. Writers from outside Argentina focused predominantly on films being made contemporaneously that engaged questions of colonialism, violence, social movements, and revolution. However, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, filmmakers themselves took on the task of building a new media studies that centered on Latin American cinema with interests in questions of industry, cultural imperialism, and consumption at the core of their inquiry. By the 1980s and early 1990s, growing interest in Argentine filmmaking among academic audiences both at home and abroad culminated in the emergence of a local film studies culture in Argentina that was finally dominated by scholars rather than biographers or filmmakers. This wave of scholarship converged around questions related to the 1976–1983 dictatorship and the subsequent democratic opening. Since 2001, a new wave of interest in Argentine film following the financial crisis has pushed scholarship beyond political questions to engage more seriously with aesthetic and conceptual aspects of national films. However, booming grassroots documentary production in the new digital era captured the interest of nontraditional film scholars interested in media politics, social movements, gender and sexuality, and film as a mode of communication more broadly.