FERNANDO BIRRI TO BE HONORED AT THE 45th SAN FRANCISCO
INTERNTIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Latin American Filmmaker to Receive Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award

Pioneering documentary and experimental filmmaker Fernando Birri will be the recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award at the 45th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 18 – May 2).

“We are honored to award the ground-breaking filmmaker, Fernando Birri,” says Associate Director of Programming, Linda Blackaby. “His achievements in filmmaking and film education place Birri among the important figures of Latin American cinema and this award recognizes his lasting contribution to world cinema. The Persistence of Vision Award perfectly complements the strong showing of Latin America films in this year’s Festival.”

Widely regarded as the father of the New Latin American Cinema movement, Fernando Birri has had a prolific career as a socially conscious poet, artist, actor and filmmaker whose controversial work has documented and exposed the harsh realities of the rural and urban poor in Argentina. In the 1950s Birri founded the Film Institute of the National University of the Litoral in Santa Fe, Argentina, the first film school in Latin America. With his film students he embarked on a two-year project to make the documentary, TIRE DIE (1960), which showed the lives of impoverished residents of barrios on the edge of modern Buenos Aires.

Birri’s next film, LOS INUNDADOS (1961) is a neorealist comedy about several families who are forced from their lowland shacks in the barrio of Centenario on the Saladao River. In late 1963, after the democratic government of President Frondizi was ousted by a military regime, Birri was forced to leave the country because of his political activism opposing the class system of Argentina. While in political exile he traveled throughout Latin America teaching young filmmakers his craft. In 1964 he went to Cuba where he met many talented filmmakers and learned that they were faced with a grave lack of technical and educational resources for filmmaking. The lack of resources throughout Latin America forced Birri to return to Rome where he had been trained and had practiced as a filmmaker. In 1978 he completed the epic experimental art film ORG. The producer of ORG was so outraged by the film that he ordered it be destroyed.

Birri’s approach to education is not particularly formal or academic, yet he has dedicated much of his life to inspiring and educating young filmmakers through a deliberate balance of theory and practice. In 1982 he founded the Laboratorio Ambulante de Poeticas, a mobile film school, which he took to Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua and throughout Argentina.

In 1986 he cofounded, with novelist Gabriel García Márquez, the Escuela de Cine y Televisión (School of Film and Television) in San Antonio de los Baños, near Havana, Cuba. In the same year he directed MY SON CHE (SFIFF 1986), a film portrait based on an interview with Che Guevara’s father Don Ernest Guevara Lynch. In 1999 he founded the Birri Foundation dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of film, video and media education to emerging young artists. Birri is currently a Tinker Visiting Professor at Stanford University where he is teaching a course on New Latin American Cinema.
There will be a screening of TIRE DIE and LOS INUNDADOS on April 28 at 3:00 pm at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres. Fernando Birri will be present to introduce the screening and to receive the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award.

Established in 1997, the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award recognizes the lifetime achievement of filmmakers who work outside of feature films (documentaries, short, experimental or animated films). Previous winners have been avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger (2001), animator Faith Hubley (2000), documentarians Johan van der Keuken (1999) and Robert Frank (1998), and animator Jan Svankmajer (1997).

The 45th San Francisco International Film Festival is presented by the San Francisco Film Society, a nonprofit arts organization whose goal is to lead in expanding the knowledge and appreciation of international film art and its artists by showcasing the most compelling, thought-provoking international films, special tributes and major restorations and today’s brightest stars.

The 45th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 18–May 2, 2002 at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, the Castro Theatre, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and Landmark’s Park Theatre in Menlo Park. Advance ticket packages and Festival passes go on sale beginning March 6. Individual tickets for San Francisco Film Society members will be available beginning March 27, with individual tickets for the general public available starting April 2. To purchase tickets and for ticket information call 925.275.9490 or log on to www.sffs.org. The Main Box Office, located in the atrium of the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres at 1881 Post Street will open for Film Society members on March 27 and for the general public on April 2. There will also be a Satellite Box Office at Crocker Galleria, 50 Post Street, second floor, opening on April 2. For up-to-date Festival information, call 415-931-FILM.