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Fernando Birri (March 13, 1925 – December 27, 2017) was an Argentinefilm maker and theorist. He was considered by many to be the father of the newLatin American cinema.
Birri was born inSanta Fe, Argentina. After being involved intheater andpoetry, he went toRome to study film-making at theCentro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, from 1950 to 1953, and appeared in the 1955 Italian filmGli Sbandati. In 1956 he returned to Santa Fe, to form the Film Institute at theUniversidad Nacional del Litoral university. A year later he started filming scenes of poverty and human misery in lower-class Santa Fe. The project, billed as a "survey film", spanned three years, and filming wrapped up in 1958. Before screening the resulting 33-minutedocumentary,Tire dié, Birri debuted with a short film calledLa primera fundación de Buenos Aires, which premiered in the1959 Cannes Film Festival, earning Birri critical acclaim and paving his way for further projects of similar nature, likeBuenos Días, Buenos Aires (1960) and more famouslyLos inundados (1961), which won theVenice Film Festival award for Best First Film.
After directing a short film about La Pampa Gringa (La pampa gringa) in 1963, Birri retired from directing and only returned 12 years later to make a movie aboutErnesto "Che" Guevara (Mi hijo el Che) in 1985. His next film, also about El Che, was filmed in 1997 (Che, ¿muerte de una utopía?), but remained commercially unreleased. Birri has since done two more movies -El siglo del viento (1999) andZA 05. Lo viejo y lo nuevo (2006).
In 1986 Birri co-foundedEscuela Internacional de Cine y Television (The International School of Film and Television), in San Antonio de Los Baños, Cuba. He was the school's first director.[1] In fall 2009, Birri was a visiting professor atTufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Birri may hold the record for the longest title of a motion picture ever, for his first film, the short (41 minutes) released at the 1959 Cannes film festival,Vera historia de la primera fundación de Buenos Aires como también de varias navegaciones de muchas partes desconocidas, islas de reinos, también de muchos peligros, peleas y escaramuzas, tanto por tierra como por mar, que nunca han sido descriptos en otras historias o crónicas, extraídos del libro 'Viajes al río de La Plata', original del soldado alemán Ulrico Schmidl, miembro de la expedición capitaneada por don Pedro de Mendoza, quien publicó por primera vez estas memorias, bien anotadas para utilidad pública en la ciudad de Francfort el año 1567. It is usually referred to asLa primera fundación de Buenos Aires.
As writer and director:
