THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT IN BUENOS AIRES

This course focuses on the last fifty years of argentine cinema. The end of World War II, the fall of Juan Domingo Perón, and the closing of movie studios imposed varied political, social, and cultural transformations reflected in the movies produced since then. During the years that followed, we witness the birth of independent cinema (on the margins of movie industry), the relationship with other cinemas within the region and the confrontation with new cinemas and with artistic avant-gardes throughout the world. Thus, experimentation, social testimony, and politization of cinema are features of on growing relevance. In this sense, cinema would be a privileged media to study not only aesthetic changes but also socio-political developments towards the end of the 20th-century.
The aim of the syllabus is to concéntrate on the above mentioned issues through the analysis of major films by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Leonardo Favio, Fernando Solanas, Adolfo Aristarain, Lucrecia Martel, and Pablo Trapero, among others. We would analyze the innovations brought about by the so called generation of the ´60s, the emergence of political cinema in the beginning of the 70´s, the complex relationship between society and cinema during the military dictatorship, the democratic period and the new cinema of the 1990´s. Special attention will be paid to certain topics such as the relationship between cinema and avant-gardes, high and pop culture, films as political tools and generally speaking, to movies as witnesses of historical processes.