![Sample our Law journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5942/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Law.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
By exploring the work of the sexploitation couple Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli this article gives a history of different periods of film censorship in Argentina beginning in 1955, after the coup that ousted the democratically elected Juan Domingo Perón. The article works through different stages to show that while there was official censorship from 1963 to 1984, instituted through Argentina's Film Classification Board, censorship was a growing practice that legally increased in the post-Perón period. The only exception occurred during a fleeting moment of 90 days in 1973 when filmmaker Octavio Getino was comptroller of the Classification Board and Peronism was returning. Working with the remnants of the Intimidades de una cualquiera [Intimacies of a Prostitute] file, the only remaining but incomplete Bó file in existence, and with other archival materials (press clippings, surviving film versions, official laws), this article helps to reveal possible reasons behind Bó's censorship.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Latin America's other two big film industries, Brazil and Mexico, offer good points of comparisons. While Mexican censorship was less systemic and more based on tacit agreements with filmmakers (MacLaird Citation2013, 73), Brazil's systematization preceded Argentina's and would follow a similar course especially once the military dictatorship took over after 1964 (Nazario Citation2012).
2 Film scholarship on the work of Bó and Sarli is scarce; however, in 2014 two articles were published in the online journal Imagofagia. Both Zangrandi (Citation2014) and Drajner Barredo (Citation2014) embark on distinct readings of two of Bó's films: El trueno entre las hojas (1957) and Carne (1968).
3 The album Pequeñas anécdotas sobre las instituciones [Short Anecdotes on Institutions] was released in 1974 and was also a victim of censorship. Its title was changed, two songs were eliminated, and many others modified including the cutting of the final stanza from ‘Las increíbles aventuras’.
4 Recent sociological studies on the role of the body, particularly the youthful body in the 1960s and 1970s, are useful. Of relevance is the work of Isabella Cosse (Citation2010) and Valeria Manzano (Citation2014). They both historicize and challenge any simple notions of the youthful body, sexuality, and sex in Argentina at the time.
5 While my study focuses on censorship post 1955, there existed uneven and unlegislated censorship before 1955, particularly during Perón's two terms in power. As Clara Kriger (Citation2009) has noted, censorship was informal and inconsistent. It was guided by personal relationships such as the cases of Fanny Navarro and Hugo del Carril confirm. Both were ardent Peronists but were victims of censorship because of other relationships (Citation2009, 104). Yet censorship has a longer history; as early as 1910 one can find instances, albeit only at the municipal level and on a film-by-film basis (see Roldán Citation2012). The present article argues that the post-1955 period witnesses the institutionalization of censorship nationally.
6 It is very clear in Article 4 of this law that freedom of expression as declared in the Argentine constitution shall be maintained unless this freedom compromises minors, in which case they have to be protected (‘Boletín oficial’ Citation1957, 1).
7 The Classification Board kept files for each of the films that were classified from 1968 to 1983 and those files were transferred to the INC once the Classification Board was dissolved. Researchers accessed those files in the early 1990s. Between 1995 and 1999 the director of the new INC (Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales [INCAA]), Julio Maharbiz, wanted to microfilm everything that was in this room and then destroy it. The microfilming process was not working and even though Maharbiz was aware of its failure he continued with the project. The documents and the microfilm all disappeared. The only files remaining today are those that Getino photocopied for his own work, even though none of these are complete. He donated these to the Escuela Nacional de Experimentación y Realización Cinematográfica (ENERC) and the Museo del Cine libraries. Intimidades is the only Bó-Sarli official file that exists.
8 Once Perón returned to Argentina, Hugo del Carril was asked to head the INC. He accepted this offer and named Mario Soffici sub-director of the INC to serve as interim director until del Carril's return from Mexico. In this early announcement, del Carril explained that the INC would take on a new direction – working towards abolishing law 18019 and addressing other problems in the moribund Argentine industry. Del Carril never managed to take over the helm of the INC, a decision he attributed to work obligations, but Soffici's mission, who had become official director on 4 January 1973, was clear from the start before Getino was named head of the Classification Board.
9 Director Armando Bó made 27 films with starlet Isabel Sarli from 1956 to 1979. These featured the first nude scene in Argentine cinema in Thunder Among the Leaves in 1956. His films were popular throughout Latin America and entered the sexploitation market in the United States and Europe. Their most popular film, Fuego (1968), had a long following in New York and was released by Something Weird Video in an English-language version. They travelled to the United States and other parts of the world to showcase their films.
10 Similar to the files, these filmic fragments deposited with the Classification Board were kept. In the case of Bó, he kept some of the cuts he made to his own films and these were donated to Diego Curubeto, which he used to make a documentary about censorship in the films of the duo called Carne sobre carne: Intimidades de Isabel Sarli (Meat on Meat: Intimacies of Isabel Sarli) (2008). The cuts kept by the Classification Board in deposit have not been accessible to researchers.
11 Octavio Getino had had his own struggles with the censorship apparatus. The film he directed with Fernando Solanas, La hora de los hornos [The Hour of the Furnaces] (1966–1968), which would influence filmmakers worldwide with its praxis of the duo's third cinema manifesto, would not be officially released in Argentina until he became comptroller in 1973.
12 After a failed kidnapping attempt, Getino left Buenos Aires for Lima, Peru. The military government filed an extradition order in 1978 charging him for the release of Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci Citation1973) during his time as comptroller. The order called for his return to Argentina to answer to crimes committed with the release of the film; but the Peruvian government denied his extradition (Mazzeo Citation2013).
13 Before censorship became legal, any citizen could denounce a film for obscenity under penal code 128, which would immediately halt the exhibition of the film. All of Bó's early Sarli vehicles suffered this fate, as there were certain interests who persecuted the duo's risqué pictures.