Mujeres pioneras en el cine experimental y el video arte argentino

Abstract

this essay will investigate the leading role of female directors, programmers and curators of Argentine Experimental Cinema and Video Art.

Their material will be analyzed both, in the filmmaking of audiovisual work and in their roles of programmers of theaters, museums and cultural centers where space for the dissemination of Argentine experimental audiovisual has been devoted.

Several cases will be mentioned, though only historical periods of creation and consolidation of the experimental cinema and video art will be specifically analyzed.

In spite of multiple political and cultural contexts, activism among these female directors is a common factor as regards women rights within audiovisual business.

The names of prominent women in both cases are as follow: Marie-Louise Alemann, one of the pioneers of experimental cinema. She organized ‘The Argentine Experimental Cinema Group’ on the premises of the Goethe Institute and was in charge of the programming of this film archive between 1979 and 1985. This hub showed films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz or Wim Wenders.

Alemann was born in Germany in 1927 and settled down in Argentina in 1949. She was a photographer, journalist, stage actress, and painter. In 1967, when the Di Tella Institute of Arts was being fenced by the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía, Alemann took part of a happening, together with Walter Mejia and Narcisa Hirsch, at the premiere of Blow Up, by Michelangelo Antonioni at the entrance of the theater hall. That art intervention in the thouroughfare was documented by filmmaker Raymundo Gleyzer. It was one of the few coincidences between aesthetic and political avant-gardes at that time. Narcisa Hirsch, pioneer of experimental cinema, was part of the same group. “Cinema is just projected light, sheer movement” she vehemently maintained. From an interview (Paparella, 1995:34) Narcisa Hirsch, revisiting one of the basic premises of the Pictorical Modernism, proposed to focus in the very field of materials and cinema significance as a medium at its core. Experimental cinema presented its own essence, it built its object without any narrative intention or diegetic.

As for Video Art, in another historic and cultural context strongly associated with technological advancements and with the massiveness of video camera recorders, we will analyze the case of Graciela Taquini. In what refers to the figure of Graciela Taquini, we can say she has been, and still is, a key figure in the broadcasting and exhibition of Argentine Video Art. She is an Argentine artist and curator who has developed most of her artistic production in the area of the Monochannel Experimental Video. Her works have received different awards, among them Premio de la Asociación de Críticos de Arte de la Argentina (Argentina Arts Critics Association Award best script), Primer Premio del Festival Videobrasil (Video-Brazil Festival, first prize), and in 2005 Premio a la Acción Multimedia (Multimedia Action Award).Taquini has been nicknamed “The Aunt of Argentine Video Art” because of her early involvement and interest in that discipline. In 2012 she was awarded the Platinum Konex in Video Art. She is a permanent member at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Accademy of Arts).

Finally, and in relation to the use of new media, a reflexion will take place about a group of female directors and cultural managers devoted to experimental cinema and video. The case of AREA (Experimental Audiovisual Filmmakers Association) will be mentioned. In spite of not being an exclusively female group, it counts with a Gender Commission where the women’s issue in the experimental cinema and audiovisual is approached at length in a contemporary context.