MundoAndino Home : Andes Argentina Guide at MundoAndino
Grupo Cine Liberacion
The Grupo Cine Liberacion (The Liberation Film Group) was an Argentine film movement that took place during the end of the sixties. It was founded by Fernando Solanas, Octavio Getino and Gerardo Vallejo (1942-2007). The Grupo Cine Liberacion became linked to the Peronist Left, and in later years, other films directors revolved around this activist core Muere Gerardo Vallejo, fundador de Grupo Cine Liberacion, Noticias de Cine Social, 8 February 2007 Gerardo Vallejo, emblema del cine militante de los 60 y 70, Pagina 12, 7 February 2007 .
Along with Raymundo Gleyzer's Cine de la Base in Argentina, the Brazilian Cinema Novo, the Cuban revolutionary cinema and the Bolivian film director Jorge Sanjines, the Grupo Cine Liberacion was part of the Tercer Cine movement Oscar Ranzani, La revolucion es un sueno eterno, Pagina 12, 20 October 2004 . The name of Tercer Cine was explicitly opposed to "First World" cinema, that is, Hollywood, and was also contrasted with auteur film, deciding to engage itself more explicitly in the social and political movements .
From his exile in Francoist Spain, Juan Peron sent in 1971 two letters to Octavio Getino, one congratulating him for this work of liberation, and another concerning two documentaries that were to be done with him (La Revolucion Justicialista and Actualizacion politica y doctrinaria) .
The graphist Raimundo Ongaro, also founder of the CGT de los Argentinos (CGTA) trade-union, was also close to this movement.
Theory and practice
One of the principles of the Grupo Cine Liberacion was to produce anonymous films, in an endeavour to favorize collective creation processes, to create a collective discourse, and also to protect themselves from political repression. According to Lucio Mufud, the collective authorship movement of the 1960s and 1970s was "among other things, about erasing any authorial mark. It concerned itself, on the one hand, with protecting the militant creators from state repression. But it was also about having their voice coincide with the 'voice of the people.' Lucio Mufud, Un llamado a transformar la realidad, Pagina 12, 25 August 2007 " Another similar group included the Grupo Cine de la Base(The Base Film Group), which included the film director Raymundo Gleyzer, who produced Los Traidores, and was later "disappeared" during the dictatorship .
Both Grupo Cine Liberacionand Grupo Cine de la Basewere especially concerned with Latin American integration, neo-colonialism and advocated the use of violence as one of the alternative possible means against hegemonic power .
Hora de los hornos(1968)
In 1968, the Cuban film director Santiago Alvarez collaborated with Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas on the four-hour documentary Hora de los hornos, about foreign imperialism in South America. The title of the film itself comes from a writing by 19th Century Cuban poet and independence leader Jose Marti, who proclaimed, in an eponymous manifest, the need to start the independence war against Spain again.
Among the other subjects explored in this film were the musical and cultural scene in Latin America and the dictatorships which gripped the region — at the same time, several Latin American authors, including the Mexican Carlos Fuentes and the Argentine Julio Cortazar, initiated the Dictator Novel genre. The movie was diffused only in alternative circuits, both by choice and by censorship obligations Entrevista con Alfredo Marino, by Jairo Straccia, Segundo Enfoque, May 2003 .
Ya es tiempo de violencia(1969)
In 1969, the film director Enrique Juarez thus anonymously produced Ya es tiempo de violencia(Now is the Time for Violence), mainly concerned with the events of the May 1969 Cordobazoriots and the assassination of the trade-unionist Augusto Vandor on 30 June, 1969 Ana Bianco, La militancia en imagenes, Pagina 12'', 25 August 2007 . Other images included those of the massive funerals of Emilio Jauregui, another trade-unionist shelled three days before Vandor's death during a demonstration in protest of Nelson Rockefeller's (owner of Miramax there) arrival to Argentina .
The film, entirely made clandestinely, criticized Juan Carlos Ongania's dictatorship and the media's official discourse . Ya es tiempo de violencia was thought to have been destroyed in the turmoil of the 1976 coup d'etat and the "Dirty War," but a copy of it was in fact stored by the Cuban film institute Icaic . In 2007, the film was brought back to Buenos Aires by Fernando Krichmar, a member of the Grupo Cine Insurgente (Insurgent Cine Group), and Aprocinain (Asociacion para el Apoyo Patrimonial Audiovisual y la Cinemateca Nacional) made another copy of it to insure its preservation .
In this film documentary, Enrique Juarez used a multiplicity of voice-overs against censorship exerted by the hegemonic discourse — the voices are in fact those of Juarez himself, the actor Hector Alterio, etc.
The film itself was almost exclusively composed from media images, with the editing used to contradict the official discourse by using contradictory voices and images . Furthermore, the voice-over often address itself directly to the spectator, urging him to take action .
El Camino hacia la muerte del viejo Reales (1968)
El Camino hacia la muerte del viejo Reales was mainly produced by Gerardo Vallejo, and depicted the exploitation of sugarcane workers. Persecuted by Ongania's dictatorship, Vallejo fled to Rome and finished the film there . Although the movie won several awards abroad, it was censored in Argentina in 1972, and diffused in clandestine networks. It only re-appeared legally due to a decree passed by Juan Peron's after his return in 1973 to Argentina . Vallejo returned from exile after Peron's return, but he was again forced into exile after a bomb exploded in his home in December 1974 .
Films
Ya es tiempo de violencia
La desconocida (1962), also by Enrique Juarez
El Camino hacia la muerte del viejo Reales
See also
Grupo Cine de la Base (The Base Film Group), a similar contemporary group
Colectivo Situaciones, modern groups inspired by these collective creation principles
Lavaca
Grupo Alavio
''AgoraTV
Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships
The Dictator Novel
Underground film
External links
Interview with Fernando Solanas
Need more information for your travel research or homework?
Ask your questions at the forum about Cinema of Argentina or help others to find answers.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Grupo Cine Liberacion
