TheGrupo Cine Liberación ("The Liberation Film Group") was anArgentine film movement that took place during the end of the 1960s. It was founded byFernando Solanas,Octavio Getino andGerardo Vallejo. The idea of the group was to give rise to historical, testimonial and film-act cinema, to contribute to the debate and offer an open space for dialogue and freedom of expression that was illegal at that time. With strong anti-imperialist ideas, he harshly criticized Peronism and neocolonialism.[1] In the subsequent years other films directors (grupo Realizadores de Mayo,Enrique andNemesio Juárez,Pablo Szir, etc.) revolved around the active core of theCine Liberación group.[2][3]
Along withRaymundo Gleyzer'sCine de la Base in Argentina, the BrazilianCinema Novo, theCuban revolutionary cinema and the Bolivian film directorJorge Sanjinés, theGrupo Cine Liberación was part of theTercer Cine movement.[4] The name ofTercer Cine (or Third Film, in an obvious allusion to theThird World) was explicitly opposed to "First World" cinema, that is, Hollywood, and was also contrasted withauteur film, deciding to engage itself more explicitly in the social and political movements.[4]
From his exile inFrancoist Spain,Juan Peron sent in 1971 two letters to Octavio Getino, one congratulating him for this work of Liberation Film Group, and another concerning twodocumentaries that were to be done with him (La Revolución Justicialista andActualización política y doctrinaria).[4]
ThegraphistRaimundo Ongaro, also founder of theCGT de los Argentinos (CGTA) trade-union, was also close to this movement.
One of the principles of theGrupo Cine Liberación was to produceanonymous films, in an endeavour to favoritecollective creation processes, to create a collective discourse, and also to protect themselves from political repression. According to Lucio Mufud, the collectiveauthorship 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.'"[5] Another similar group included theGrupo Cine de la Base (The Base Film Group), which included the film directorRaymundo Gleyzer, who producedLos Traidores (The Traitors, 1973), and was later "disappeared" during thedictatorship.[6]
BothGrupo Cine Liberación andGrupo Cine de la Base were especially concerned withLatin American integration,neo-colonialism and advocated the use ofviolence as one of the alternative possible means against hegemonic power.[6]
In 1968, the Cuban film directorSantiago Álvarez collaborated withOctavio Getino andFernando Solanas on the four-hourdocumentaryLa hora de los hornos ("The Hour of the furnaces"), aboutforeign imperialism in South America. The title of the film itself comes from a writing by 19th Century Cuban poet and independence leaderJosé Martí, 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 themusical and cultural scene in Latin America and the dictatorships which gripped the region – at the same time, several Latin American authors, including the MexicanCarlos Fuentes and the ArgentineJulio Cortázar, initiated theDictator Novel genre. The movie was diffused only in alternative circuits, both by choice and by censorship obligations.[6]
In 1969, the film directorEnrique Juárez thus anonymously producedYa es tiempo de violencia (Now is the Time for Violence), mainly concerned with the events of the May 1969Cordobazo riots and the assassination of the trade-unionistAugusto Vandor on 30 June 1969.[7] Other images included those of the massive funerals ofEmilio Jáuregui, another trade-unionist shelled three days before Vandor's death during a demonstration in protest ofNelson Rockefeller's (owner ofMiramax there) arrival to Argentina.[7]
The film, entirely made clandestinely, criticizedJuan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship and themedia's official discourse.[7]Ya es tiempo de violencia was thought to have been destroyed in the turmoil of the1976 coup d'état and the "Dirty War," but a copy of it was in fact stored by the Cuban film instituteIcaic.[7] In 2007, the film was brought back toBuenos Aires byFernando Krichmar, a member of theGrupo Cine Insurgente (Insurgent Cine Group), andAprocinain (Asociación para el Apoyo Patrimonial Audiovisual y la Cinemateca Nacional) made another copy of it to insure its preservation.[7]
In this film documentary, Enrique Juárez used a multiplicity ofvoice-overs (among which an anonymous narrator and an anonymousPeronist activist, among others) against censorship exerted by thehegemonic discourse[5] – the voices are in fact those of Juárez himself, the actorHéctor Alterio, etc.
The film itself was almost exclusively composed from media images, with theediting used to contradict the official discourse by using contradictory voices and images (i.e. a civil servant ofJuan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship states that everything is well, contradicted by images showing theCordobazo riots). Furthermore, the voice-over often address itself directly to the spectator, urging him to take action.[5]
El Camino hacia la muerte del viejo Reales was mainly produced byGerardo Vallejo, and depicted theexploitation ofsugarcane workers. Persecuted by Ongania's dictatorship, Vallejo fled to Rome and finished the film there.[3] 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 adecree passed byJuan Peron's after his return in 1973 to Argentina.[3] Vallejo returned from exile after Peron's return, but he was again forced into exile after a bomb planted by theArgentine Anticommunist Alliance exploded in his home in December 1974.[3]
