Director: Fernando Birri
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Biography: Fernando Birri (* March 13 1925, Santa Fé, Argentinia; † December 27th 2017, Rom, Italy) graduated in Film Direction at the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia in Rome ion 1952. He then had roles as an actor and wrote screenplays. In 1956, Birri returned to Argentina and founded Latin America’s first film school, the Instituto de Cinematografía de la Universidad del Litoral, in the city of his birth. From 1956 to 1958, he and his students shot the socially critical documentary film 'Tire dié', which was also the foundation of the collective film production method that Birri called for in various manifestos. By the time his feature film 'Los Inundados' (1961) was released, Birri was considered one of the founders of the New Latin American Cinema. Political upheavals and the military coup of 1966 forced him to leave Argentina. His films were subsequently banned and the film school was closed. After sojourns in Central and South America, he settled again in Italy, where he worked as a screenwriter and actor. In 1967, Birri began working on the film ORG. Birri appeared again as the teacher and proponent of a ‚different cinema‘ when he founded the Laboratorio ambulante de Poéticas Cinematográficas – Cátedra Glauber Rocha at the Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida in Venezuela. The high point of Fernando Birri’s pedagogical work was the opening in 1986 of the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de Tres Mundos (EICT) in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba; its founders included Birri, Gabriel García Márquez and Julio García Espinosa. Birri headed this ‚School of Three Worlds‘ for several years, which became a training site for filmmakers from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. In 1985, Birri accepted an invitation from the Instituto Nacional de Cinematografía (today INCAA) to return to Argentina, where he founded a new film school again.
Films (selection): 1951: Selinunte, Alfabeto Notturno/Night School in Toretta. 1953: Immagini popolari siciliane sacre e profane (co-directed by Mario Verdone). 1959: La verdadera historia de la primera fundacion de Buenos Aires. 1960: Tire dié, Buenos días, Buenos Aires. 1961: Los inundados/Flooded Out. 1963: La pampa gringa. 1967: Castagnino, diario romano. 1979: ORG. 1983: Rafael Alberti, un retrato de poeta. 1984: Remitente: Nicaragua/Carta al mundo. 1985:Mi hijo el Che. 1988: Un señor muy viejo con alas enormes. 1997: Che: Muerte de la utopía?. 1999: El siglo del viento. 2006: ZA 05. Lo viejo y lo nuevo. 2007: Elegia Friulana. 2011: El Fausto Criollo
Country: Italy
Year: 1967 - 1978
Synopsis: Fernando Birri's ORG is a monstrous, nearly three-hour long film that’s only rarely been screened since it premiered at the 1979 Venice Film Festival. Ever since his debut Tire Dié, this 91-year-old director, who is also a poet, painter, teacher and film school founder, has been a key figure in Latin American cinema. For Birri, ORG was the result of his experience of exile in Italy: “The film is a nightmare with closed eyes because it counts among the most terrible moments of my life, my second exile, which lasted a very long time.” The story of ORG is based on the same ancient Indian legend that Thomas Mann also drew on for his story “The Transposed Heads”. But above all, ORG is an experiment in perception that features over 26,000 cuts and some 700 audio tracks. ORG was partly funded by leading actor Mario Girotti, better known as Terence Hill. Viewing the film today provides a kaleidoscopic insight into the experimental, aesthetic and political trends of the 1970s.
Birri bequeathed Arsenal a 35-mm print of his film in 1991. It was digitised as part of the “Living Archive” project.
Language: Italian, Spanish, French, English
Forum participation year: 2017
