
Las naciones de América (The Nations of America). 1927. Argentina. Directed, written, produced, shot, edited, and titled by Renée Oro. Digital restoration courtesy the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales. Spanish intertitles; English subtitles. 28 min. North American premiere.
Las naciones de América (The Nations of America) [fragments]. 1927. Argentina. Directed, written, produced, shot, edited, and titled by Renée Oro. 7 min.
An educational cinematic tour around South America with Argentinian filmmaker Renée Oro at the helm, the documentary Las naciones de América was made to promote peace and mutual understanding within South America. Originally focused on various customs, industries, and rural and urban sights in such countries as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Peru, the film incorporated footage Oro had shot previously during other productions both locally and abroad. After the film premiered in Buenos Aires in September 1927, Oro would often return to it, adding more material and changing the content, continuing to screen versions of the film into the 1930s. In the surviving incomplete version and accompanying fragments, which were discovered in 2021 at the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales in Buenos Aires, we see, among other things, urban architecture and coffee farming in Brazil; art, festivities, and the natural beauty of Chile; and new railway production in Argentina as well as glimpses of noted dignitaries and Oro herself. With this discovery, INCAA archivists have begun to research Oro’s career as an independent filmmaker (and distributor of her own films), tracing her debut to the 1922 documentary La Argentina, which she brought to Europe and toured around Argentina. Oro also made political documentaries in Chile on behalf of the Chilean government from 1923 to 1925, returning to Argentina to work after Chilean President Arturo Alessandri’s resignation. She spent the rest of her career in her home country, making documentaries for the government and various provinces, including for the far-right dictator José Félix Uriburu. By 1939, she had set up a production company to make fiction films of national import, planning to start with a biopic of former Argentinian president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Her last known foray into cinema, the film was never completed.
Stato de Santiago del Estero (The State of Santiago del Estero). 1927. Argentina. Directed, written, produced, shot, edited, and titled by Renée Oro. Digital restoration courtesy the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales. Italian intertitles; English subtitles. 12 min. North American premiere.
Many of the films that Renée Oro made in Argentina not only screened nationally but also internationally at various world’s fairs. For example, Stato de Santiago del Estero, which was discovered alongside Las naciones de América at INCAA in 2021, was a promotional documentary for the province of Santiago del Estero in Argentina. It was sent to the International Trade Fair in Milan in 1927, which explains the Italian intertitles. After a delightful opening title sequence, the film, also incomplete, offers a more serious and didactic overview of the region and its forestry industry.
Kaitaku no Hanayome (Brides of the Frontier). 1943. Japan. Written and directed by Tazuko Sakane. New 35mm print courtesy the National Film Archive of Japan. In Japanese; English subtitles. 21 min.
Considered to be Japan’s first female director, Tazuko Sakane began working in film in 1929 as Kenji Mizoguchi’s assistant. While several films she made with Mizoguchi remain extant—e.g., Taki no shiraito (The Water Magician), for which she served as editor and assistant director—only one film credited to her as director and writer (and likely editor) is known to survive today. Produced by the Manchuria Film Association, Kaitaku no Hanayome is a propaganda sound film made to combat a labor shortage in the then Japanese-occupied region of Manchuria (a colonial name for what is now Northeast China) by enticing Japanese women to move there and become farmers’ wives. It was one of several films that Sakane made focusing on female viewers as part of the educational branch of the company, which she joined in 1942 in an attempt to advance her career—a reminder of the complex and difficult ways that imperialism and colonialism can intersect with female concerns and women’s film history. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, Sakane, avowedly apolitical, stayed in the region at what became the Communist-run Northeast Film Studio, training young Chinese filmmakers. She returned to Japan in 1946 but was unable to find work as a director due to the national industry requirement that she have a college degree. She continued working, however, as Mizoguchi’s assistant (again), and then as a freelance screenwriter until her death in 1971. Kaitaku no Hanayome, which shows some signs of wear, has remained largely inaccessible to audiences outside of Japan and is screening theatrically in the US for what is likely the first time.
Program 68 min