The Importance of Photography in the Emergence of Regional Film Production Hubs During the Silent Period: Chronicle of a Late but Fundamental Relationship

Abstract

The historiography of Argentine cinema has traditionally been biased by a centralist approach that has disdained all those cinematographic phenomena that took place outside the Capital. However, since the beginning of the medium, there have been small hubs of production scattered throughout the country, led by what Luciana Correa de Araujo has called "singular personalities", who, even in the most remote places and challenging conditions, achieved to make films thanks to their technical and creative abilities. Many of these pioneers had initially been photographers and replicated, somewhat out of time, an extremely common phenomenon in the beginnings of cinema: the transfer of professionals from the photographic to the cinematographic medium. With few technological resources, without teachers from whom to learn the trade, and with limited and late access to cinematographic novelties from the Capital and abroad, photography was for these filmmakers a reservoir of technical, aesthetic, and narrative knowledge that, undoubtedly, served as the basis for their precursory film production.