Preloran was born inBuenos Aires to an Argentine father and anIrish American mother. He made ashort film,Venganza, in 1954, and left Argentina to enroll atUCLA, graduating with afilm studies major in 1961. Holdingdual citizenship, he served with theU.S. military inWest Germany.[3] He began a career as a filmmaker in 1961, when theTinker Foundation offered him a grant to make several films on thegauchos of Argentina.[4] Preloran sought to redefine the genre of ethnographic films, moving away from depicting their subjects as exotic or primitive, striving to make films that, as he toldAmericas magazine, "do not use the people about whom they are made."[1]
From 1963-1969 Preloran produced educational films and films on Argentinefolklife at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán inTucuman, Argentina.[3] He also began to work in a style ofethnographic film known as ethnobiography, in which "the filmmaker gets closer to the subject to give a portrait of the subject as well as their culture and practices."[5]
His 1969 filmHermógenes Cayo (Imaginero) was recently listed as one of the ten best Argentine films of all times.[1] In making this film, he spent months with the subject (artist Hermógenes Cayo) prior to shooting, and followed many of the subject's suggestions in the actual film-making. This relationship between filmmaker and subject was to be repeated through his career. Preloran made over 50 films in his lifetime, working in Argentina, the United States, Ecuador, and elsewhere.[6][7][8]
^Rossi, compilación y comentarios, Juan José (1987).El Cine documental etnobiográfico de Jorge Prelorán (1a ed.). Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Búsqueda. pp. 191–193.ISBN9505600488.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Taquini, Graciela (1994).Jorge Prelorán, Volume 19 of Directores del cine argentino. Centro Editor de América Latina.
^Foley, Karma (June 2012)."Guide to the Jorge Prelorán films".sova.si.edu. Smithsonian: National Museum of National History. p. 22. Retrieved2021-04-27.
