Hi there,

The media can be the greatest force for peace on Earth. Instead, all too often, it’s wielded as a weapon of war. That's why we have to take the media back. Thanks to a group of generous donors, all donations made today will be DOUBLED, which means your $15 gift is worth $30. With your contribution, we can continue to go to where the silence is, to bring you the voices of the silenced majority – those calling for peace in a time of war, demanding action on the climate catastrophe and advocating for racial and economic justice. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much!

Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

Pioneering Argentinian Filmmaker Fernando Birri Dies at 92

HeadlineDec 28, 2017

And pioneering Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Birri has died. He’s considered the father of the New Latin American Cinema, which challenged Hollywood and focused on the lives of the oppressed in Latin America. Along with Gabriel García Márquez and others, Birri founded the International School of Film and Television in Cuba and served as the school’s first director. This is the Argentinian filmmaker, reading a poem in a short film by Michael Chanan entitled “Portrait of Fernando Birri.”

Fernando Birri: “'Poem in the Form of a Film Poster.' I see, I see a green parrot in the zoo in Berlin. And I think: the New Latin American Cinema is today a reality. But, but, but 25 years ago it was a Utopia. Which is the new Utopia? And the parrot, the green, green, green parrot, whose name in Latin is very difficult, but who is surely called Juancito or Nemesio, is a parrot from the Alto Paraná. That’s to say my brother or my cousin. I saw him, I saw him. And I think: National identity. Did the parrot need its national (and critical) identity? But us, we do. We needed it. For a national cinema, realist and critical. Later we added: popular.”

Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Birri has died at the age of 92 in Rome.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top