Encuentro, la voz de la madre tierra

Images from Argentina by Julio Santucho

The Global Vision section of CinemAmbiente 2004 features screenings of the most important documentary films from the past few editions of Festival de Cine de Derechos Humanos. These documentaries focus on the tragedy of the brutal military dictatorship that not long ago devastated Argentinean society.

March 24, 1976 marks the start of the most criminal and inhuman dictatorial regime in Argentina's history. Through ruthless tactics of government-sponsored terrorism, this regime spread fear among families, silenced opposition and sent many citizens to their doom. The dictatorship tore apart the social fabric that had been painstakingly created during the previous decade's struggles for equality and justice. In isolation and silence, Argentina was forced to submit to brutal privatization of the economy and concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, which resulted in a crumbling of the country's level of industrialization, widespread unemployment and poverty.

Official statistics are clear. In 1975, of Argentina's 22 million people, 2 million lived in poverty – about 10% of the total population. By 2004, the population had grown to 38 million with nearly 20 million persons – more than 50% of the total population – living in poverty. Over the past 30 years the high concentration of wealth among the ruling class has spelled disaster for the majority of Argentineans. In reality the social isolation that has gripped the country is not the result of miscalculations in political income, nor is it due to corruption at every level of government. It is simply one of the tenets of privatization, which heralds quick earnings for the masters while systemic growth is stunted.

Beginning in 1976, Argentina embarked on a "modernization" process based on a perverse combination of government-sponsored terrorism and newly globalized production forces. A long period of economic and especially social decadence ensued. Argentina was ravaged by unbridled capitalism and growing inequality, in a scenario that saw the state as the dominion of gangsters who established direct alliances with capital interests to divvy up territories and business spoils.

The rebellion of December 19-20, 2001 marked the high point in the resistance against impunity and neo-liberalism. The movement began in 1996-97 with mass protests staged against state terrorism to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1976 military coup. Millions of unemployed, poor and angry persons filled the streets to demand justice.

This reawakening of the Argentinean people rendered disciplinary action ineffective, the mood and social climate of the country were changing. During the past few years Argentineans have been ever more active and organized in facing the challenge of creating new meanings. Though the pathway still remains uncertain, this injection of creativity has made for a more interesting and stimulating Argentina out of what was once a disciplined, model-country for the International Monetary Fund.

Argentinean cinema has been a witness to this transformation. New vitality and international recognition came in 1997, especially thanks to the way cinema has become a reflection for changes in society, in particular, growth in the documentary sector has been phenomenal, as it at once digs up the past and explores current changes, giving expression to the deep reaching movements in Argentina today. The Global Vision section of CinemAmbiente 2004 recognizes that achievement.

The presence of Fernando Solanas, and the presentation of his latest film, is surely a mark of prestige for the seventh edition of CinemAmbiente. Memoria del saqueo provides a platform of accusations against the winners of the dirty war that liquidated the '60s generation – winners who, since then, have perpetrated a systematic looting of Argentina, provoking the country's rapid decline.

Thus the development of Solarnas from La hora de los hornos (1966-68), a sprawling report on the new protagonists of the '60s protest movement, to the inevitable attack in the film Memoria del saqueo.

With La hora de los hornos, Solanas became one of the few Argentinean directors, if not the only one, who would leave a profound mark not only on world cinema, but also on the theoretical analysis thereof. In terms of the film's production and form of distribution used, its format, its political and esthetic force, as well as for its theoretical foundations – the manifesto "Toward a third cinema" –, La hora de los hornos has become an object of study in universities throughout the world.

About his latest film, Memoria del saqueo Solanas comments, "So much frustration and so much death are painful occurrences. I had two difficulties in making this film. The first was trying to maintain a balance between information education and space for a pause in emotional tension. The other regarded synthesis – after the first round of editing, the film was eight hours long. A formal unity also had to be created. I found that a formal cyclical constant helped the film's heterogeneous character, so I broke it up into ten chapters. I also wanted to pay homage to silent film, with its black backgrounds for captions and classic vision, with musical motifs and words that appear on-screen."

"The film opens with the events of December 19-20, then unfolds in ten big chapters: unending debt, the chronicles of betrayal, the decay of the republic, the economic model, privatization, the selling off of oil, the corporate state. Chapter eight deals with the mafiocracy that developed, the resulting depletion of the state's coffers and massive operations of thievery on an unheard of scale. Chapter nine delves into the social genocide that claims more than 30,000 lives a year, and also takes a look at the IMF's 1998 celebration in honor of Menem, considered one of their best pupils. Highlighting our government's responsibility, however, in no way removes responsibility from the IMF, the World Bank and the foreign governments that order these crimes against humanity in times of peace”.

Other remarkable Argentinean documentaries complete the Global Vision section.

Raymundo reconstructs the life of documentary maker Raymundo Gleyzer, a Marxist guerrilla militant who was kidnapped and murdered in 1976 by the military dictatorship. This biography of Gleyzer also includes a history of 1960s Latin American cinema and the compromises it was forced to make.

In the film Cartoneros, a group of unemployed persons starts up a paper recycling business, in the hopes of regaining their lost dignity and escaping bitter poverty.

In Toro es, Mujeres en paralelo and Encuentro, la voz de la madre tierra there is the search for a set of different values, which in the west have been conveniently put to sleep or out of reach. Here we see man's reacquaintance with nature, renewed interest in native culture and the attempt to preserve oneself from the toxic effects of cement and consumerism that are the hallmarks of civilization today.