Argentine silent cinema, unlike the first decades of talkies, had the particularity that some female directors were able to carry out their projects in the field of fiction. However, in the documentary cinema of the time very few women managed to assume the role of filmmakers. Renee Gold She was the most outstanding and prolific Argentine filmmaker of the silent period, in a context of a cinema filmed entirely by men.
In those times, the filmmaker built the image of a celebrity, appearing at certain times in national and international newspapers as a film actress, with her corresponding artistic photography, positioning herself as a woman of the great world who rubbed shoulders with presidents and diplomats. A style of promotion that many film artists, such as the German leni riefenstahl (“The Triumph of the Will”, “Olympia”), they used to advertise their work.
Little is known about his personal life. She was born in 1900, as a young woman she adopted the French variant of the name “René” as a kind of artistic pseudonym and, in the 1930s, she married the film producer Robert Arata. The filmmaker herself first gained notoriety in the press when in 1922 she traveled to Europe, along with her husband, to show a documentary entitled “Argentina” before the king of Spain Alfonso XIII.
In his films he appealed to a production style that sought to obtain maximum utility from each film, incorporating fragments of his previous documentaries into his new films. He was also in charge of managing the exhibition of his own work, in special functions, which allowed him to advertise his work in search of new clients. However, the photographic and film records of that time are scarce due to the lack of preservation and care of the visual archives.
The titles of some of his films directed in the country were “Evolution and progress of the province of Salta” (1928), “Entre Ríos, its industries and its progress” (1926), The Nations of America (1927) and Evolution and progress of the province of Santiago del Estero (1927). These works relate, from a propagandistic point of view, the idealized and celebratory perspective of the progress of the 1920s, prior to the financial debacle of 1929.
These tapes, like the Chilean film “The Pearl of the Pacific” (1924), accompanied the processes of consolidation of an idea of the “national” by modern states in Latin America, in the first decades of the 20th century. His institutional documentaries made for the State and the governments of neighboring countries sought to promote economic progress, urban development, natural beauty and native customs.
.“For the Nations of America: The silent documentary film of Renée Oro” is the book edited by Mar del Plata International Film Festival that proposes to study the work of an unknown director and producer of our cinema. The work is a joint effort between the INCAA National Cinematheque and the ENERC-INCAA Library that demonstrates the key role of the rescue, conservation and study of our cinematographic heritage.
“The project arose a couple of years ago at the request of the researcher at the INCAA Cinematheque, Georgina Tosi, that he had identified in the archive of that institution several reels of the films of Renee Gold. As at that time I was writing various articles on the directors and screenwriters of Argentine silent cinema, he suggested that I organize a book that would combine historical research with the technical analysis of those film materials that managed to be preserved,” he explains. Lucius Mafudone of the authors of the book.
Regarding the validity of her work, Mafud points out: “Without a doubt, she was a fundamental pioneer of our cinema, the first woman who managed to turn the production of documentary films into an economically profitable profession. The book, like the exhibition of her films, will allow her to visibility to his figure and his work that for almost a hundred years was inaccessible to the different generations of filmmakers and spectators”.
The presentation of the book will take place on Monday, November 7, at 5:30 p.m., in Mar del Plata International Film Festival. The authors will participate in the meeting: Lucio Mafud, Georgina Tosi, Mariana Avramo, Daniela Cuatrin, Jazmín Adrover and July Massaccesi. That same day, at 9:30 p.m., they will be screened at the Colon Theater of Mar del Platawith live musical accompaniment of “Tremor”, the documentaries of Renee Gold rescued by the INCAA Cinematheque
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