Before Bemberg: Eva Landeck, Gente en Buenos Aires, and the Gendered Division of Labor in Argentine Cinema

Abstract

During most of the twentieth century, a gendered division of labor made it very difficult, and during several decades impossible, for women to direct films in Argentina. Women have only recently enjoyed greater opportunities, a shift often attributed to the pioneering work of María Luisa Bemberg, who made six features between 1980 and 1993. But several lesser-known women preceded her in direction, one of whom, Eva Landeck, is the subject of this essay. Although Landeck’s work is not as widely known as Bemberg’s, an account of her career reveals specific challenges faced by a politically committed woman filmmaker in the 1970s. Her first film, Gente en Buenos Aires (1973), is the only one she made without extensive state interference, so in the interest of including Landeck and her work in discussions of women’s filmmaking and Argentine cinema, this essay examines its engagement with uneven modernization, social conflict and state violence.