Filmmaker, Author Octavio Getino Dies at 77

RIO DE JANEIRO – Political cinema’s Argentine icon Octavio Getino died of cancer today in Buenos Aires, reported news agency Telam.

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Born in Spain, Getino became an icon of Latin American political cinema in the '60s, when he co-founded the Cine Liberacion Group, together with Fernando Solanas and Gerardo Vallejo. Getino and Solanas directed The Hour of the Furnaces a famous clandestine documentary about the history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America.

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Getino also directed Argentina, Mayo de 1969: Los Caminos de la Liberacion, and teamed again with Solanas in 1971 to make Actualización Política y Doctrinaria Para la Toma del Poder, in which they interviewed the exiled president Juan Domingo Peron in Madrid. He later directed Peron: La Revolucion Justicialista (1971), and El Familiar (1975), his only fiction piece.

Getino was forced into exile himself during the last military dictatorship in Argentina. With the return of democracy, he moved back to Argentina and was head of the National Film Institute between 1989 and 1990.

A college professor and author, in recent years he had devoted his time to reflect on the Latin American film industry, publishing several research books on Latin American audiovisual culture, and heading institutions like the Mercosur Audiovisual Observatory. He also sat as Regional Coordinator for the Latin American Film and Audiovisual Observatory of the New Latin American Cinema Foundation.