Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
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 (Mar´ıa Luisa Bemberg’s Camila
[1984], He´ctor Olivera’s No habra´ ma´s 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 socalled 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 Mar´ıa 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 Cie ´naga
[The Swamp, 2001] and La Nin˜a santa [The Holy
Girl, 2004]), who has garnered considerable international attention, but none has yet to attain the level of
Bemberg’s originality.
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 prePero´n Golden Age of elegant drawing room and boudoir
(‘‘white telephone’’) films, and the hack work during
Pero´n’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, TorreNilssen 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
a´ngel (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, TorreNilsson 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 R´ıos (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 die ´ (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 Bun˜uel, 1950). Also from the same
period is Breve cielo (Brief Heaven, David Jose´ 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 Mar´ıa Picchio (b. 1946), won
the Moscow Film Festival award that year for best actress.