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November 1993

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From:
Currie Thompson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 1 Nov 1993 09:09:37 EST
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     When we talk of early black cinema, presumably we have in mind what
took place in our own country--in which context I'd like to share a footnote
from Argentina.
     Jose Agustin Ferreyra, also known as "el negro Ferreyra" or "black
Ferreyra," was one of the most important directors--perhaps the most
important director--in Argentine silent film.  He made his first film
UNA NOCHE DE GARUFA (PARTY NIGHT), also known as LAS AVENTURAS DE TITO
(TITO's ADVENTURES) in 1915, which is the same year, I believe, that
Noble Johnson  (??) made the first black American film.  But there all
similarity ends.
     Johnson and the early black US film makers were outsiders who were
trying to make their voice heard--largely or at least partly in response to
the blatant racism in US films such as BIRTH OF A NATION.  Ferreyra was
very much in the inner circle of early Argentine film.  He continued to
make films through 1941, made a number of important films, worked for
Argentina Sono Film, the nation's most important film production company,
on several occasions, and virtually every person who became important in
later Argentine cinema worked in one or more of Ferreyra's films.
     But there is a second difference.  In the two feature films I have
seen by Ferreyra and in the fragments I have seen from some of his other
films, there are no blacks.
     I don't know what to make of this.  In part, I think, it reflects a
different attitude toward race in Argentina and Hispanic countries in
general.  Ferreyra himself was a mulatto.  His father was a Spanish
immigrant, and his mother was the descendant of Africans.  Ferreyra married
a white woman and, apparently, never ran into any problems for this except
when he visited the US (New York).  Perhaps what we are dealing with is that
there were never a lot of people of African ancestry in Argentina--there
were a limited number of slaves in Buenos Aires, which is where the super-
wealthy lived--and after slavery ended the Argentines of African descent
intermaried with the rest of the population and became absorbed.  Perhaps
in the context in which Ferreyra lived and worked, one's being of part
(or all) African ancestry was simply not important.  Perhaps the reason
no blacks appear in Ferreyra's films (the limited number I have been able
to see) is simply a coincidence.  Perhaps there is no exclusion.
     But I'm not certain.  I've tried to see the rest of Ferreyra's films
and have not been successful in getting access to them.  (The company that
once owned them seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.  The
films must be in someone's hands now, but I can't find whose.)
     So, as I said, a footnote.  And one that, if nothing else, points to
the difference between our own and another culture and how that difference
is reflected in their films.
Currie Thompson

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