The Argentine historiography and the local modern short film. A new approach

Abstract

The short film was an essential factor for the impulse and development of Argentine modern cinema between the fifties and the seventies. However, the history of the national cinema has not deepened in the specific features of the short film and marginalized it to the position of mere initiatory rite in the director’s career. In this sense, the proposal of the article is to review, on the one hand, different canonical perspectives on the national short film that focus on its formative function and on the other, different investigations about modern cinema where the short is not incorporated as a decisive link. Then, these papers will be confronted with a new point of view that effectively certifies the role of the short film in the process of modernization of Argentine cinema. It is built by four premises: the plurality of functions around the film of short duration, the structural characteristics of the short, the survival of the phenomenon in the period and the methodology of textual analysis.