On November 5, 2012, fuad jury step to immortality and, with it, to the memory of hundreds of thousands of people who knew him, with the artistic pseudonym of Leonardo Favio. The artist, born in the Mendoza town of La Catitas in 1938, came to fame, in his youth, at the hand of the filmmaker Leopoldo Torre Nilson.
Filmmaker, singer-songwriter, actor, producer, screenwriter and political activist were some of the prolific activities that I have carried out over 74 years. However, the cinema was his most faithful bond and lasted his whole life. A curiosity is that his time on the big screen earned him strong popular recognition, which is reflected in different tributes; from the audiovisual faculty of the National University of Arts to movie theaters and cultural auditoriums bear his name.
That is why Leonard Favio still generates interest in his life and dedication, beyond his work. The multiple facets of his career are remembered, to different degrees, according to the region. In various South American countries, such as Colombia, the predominant memory of him is found in his music and his voice. His political exile, in the mid-70s due to his Peronist militancy, was one of the reasons for his musical tours of different Latin American countries with enormous popularity. His extensive musical work reached 30 discs, including albums and compilations.
On the other hand, in Argentina, his work in the cinema marked a turning point that remains in youth and in future filmmakers. On the other hand, that furor was germinating in the filmmaker’s last years. Gabriel Patronyoung cultural manager and founder of the cycle The Ship of Dreamsjournalist Martin Wain and the movie programmer Jose Ludovico they contacted the renowned artist for a proposal.
“In his office on Pasteur Street, around 2005, we met with Leonardo. He wanted to make his scripts, with cross-outs and corrections, available for students to edit as fascicles. However, we couldn’t do it, but two other very interesting proposals came up. The first to make a book with the photos of his film shoots and the other to find his first short film that he directed and that he had lost, ”recalls Patrono.
“Chronicle of a lonely child” 1965 was the first feature film as director of the young actor Leonardo Favio. But it was not the first film that he filmed, five years before he had directed “Friend”, an independent short film made with colleagues from the national cinema scene. The experience of that shoot, set in an amusement park and with child actors, helped him develop his long-running debut feature.
“We started looking for the short. We have always been linked to collectors, historians, archivists and film club members, people with access to a lot of film material. I had seen the short film in the 90s, what I didn’t know was that Leonardo didn’t have it”, explains Patrono and adds: “We spent a year looking for it until we managed to get a single 16mm copy for a few hours, for film club intermission yellow door, that we didn’t even know if it was in good condition, and we recorded it in the best quality we could to take it with us. That same day, we went to the shooting of Aniceto and right there we handed over the short to Leonardo”.
The adventure of Patrono, Wain and Ludovico did not end there. After the profound gratitude from the director, the young people took the opportunity to propose a presentation of the film at the National Library. Patrono recalls: “We spoke with the director of that time, Horace Gonzalez. We asked him for a meeting and we told him that we had Favio and the short film. Horacio offered us the Borges Auditorium and accompanied us in everything. Later he helped us to publish the book. Finally, that presentation on Tuesday with Leonardo Favio was the first performance of the cycle of La Nave de los Sueños in the National Library and we stayed almost 20 years. We went for a Tuesday and we stayed a thousand Tuesdays”.
Leonardo Favio after the premiere of “Chronicles of a lonely boy” finished his cinephile trilogy in black and white with “This is the romance of Aniceto and Francisca, how it was cut short, sadness began and a few other things…” (1966) and “Dependent” (1969). Massive and commercial success followed with “Juan Moreira” (1973), Nazareno Cruz and the wolf (1975) and “Dream, Dream” (1976). “Gatica, the monkey”, “Perón, symphony of a feeling” Y “Aniceto”were his last works on the screen that positioned him in the legend of national cinema.
The legacy and passion that Leonardo Favio arouses endure in the Argentine public and in the filmmakers. After the success of the publication in 2008, only a few copies of the last reissue of the book are still available“The memory of the eyes: complete filmography of Leonardo Favio”. A book written by various critics and chroniclers, such as Paulo Pecora, Martin Wain and Jose Brindisiamong others, found in specialized stores such as Private Function.
A personal testimony from Gabriel Patrono, one of the rescuers of the filmmaker’s lost film, sums up the fervor for Favio: “We were close to the artist who influenced us and who made us dedicate ourselves to cultural management, music and cinema. He was one of those three artists that one has as a reference. Him always crossing paths with someone like that is very emotionally compromising and gave us a lot of strength to move forward with our future and our dedication in life.”
