Raymundo Gleyzer

Raymundo Gleyzer (September 25, 1941 - missing since May 27, 1976) was an Argentine screenwriter and filmmaker. He specialized in documentaries and politically charged fiction films. Gleyzer was part of the left-wing faction of the Peronist political movement, and a staunch opponent of Argentina's last military dictatorship (1976-1983). In 1976 he was kidnapped, likely murdered and disappeared as part of the dictatorship's campaign of State-sponsored terrorism.

Biography

Born into an Argentine Jewish family in Buenos Aires, Gleyzer became interested in politics and film early on in his life. From the start of his career he designed all of his films to be centered on the fight against social injustice and for political revolution in Latin America's countries.

He made his first film in the backward northeast of Brazil, where he barely escaped imminent death at the hands of the military dictatorship ruling there. In the early 1970s he made a film in Mexico about the so-called "institutionalized revolution" of the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The film was banned in Argentina at first, but found a lively echo in Mexico among the students. In 1973 he co-founded the Cine de la Base group, which organized demonstrations and discussions with workers (i.e. outside the cinema industry).

His last major film, Los traidores (The Traitors, 1973), presents a strong critique of the right-wing faction which prevailed in the Peronist political movement at the time and which also played a pivotal role in Juan Domingo Peron's third and last presidential term, in 1973. The film depicts how several union leaders had secretly and slowly aligned themselves —many years before Perón's comeback and inauguration for his third presidency— with the economical establishment, the military and United States's interests with the only goal of maintaining their personal power and enrich themselves.

On May 27, 1976, Gleyzer was abducted and tortured by a death squad of the Argentina's last military dictatorship that had come to power two months earlier, and never seen again. He is thus one of thousands of desaparecidos (disappeared) of the dictatorship, most of which were secretly murdered. Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff created a cartoon dedicated to Gleyzer and the violently "disappeared" people of Latin America.

Films

• 1964: La tierra quema (The Land Burns) Short documentary
• 1965: Ceramiqueros de tras la sierra (Ceramic workers behind the saw)
• 1966: Occurido en hualfin (It Happened in Hualfin) (Gleyzer as the screenwriter) Documentary
• 1966: Nuestras islas Malvinas (Our Malvinas Islands) Short documentary
• 1969: Elinda del Valle (Elinda of the Valley) Short documentary
• 1971: Swift 1971 Documentary
• 1971: México, la revolución congelada (Mexico: The Frozen Revolution) Documentary
• 1972: Ni olvido ni perdón: 1972, la masacre de Trelew (Neither Forgotten nor Pardoned: 1972 the Trelew Massacre) Short documentary
• 1973: Los traidores (The Traitors). 16 mm, color. First presented on July 1, 1973, International Forum of Youth Films, Berlin.
• 1975: Me matan si no trabajo y si trabajo me matan: La huelga obrera en la fábrica INSUD (They kill me if I don't work, and if I work they kill me: the workers strike of the INSUD factory)

Literature

• Fernando Peña, Carlos Vallina: El Cine quema – Raymundo Gleyzer. Ediciones de la Flo, Buenos Aires 2000. ISBN 9505152477
• Adela, Pineda Franco: “El latinoamericanismo de Raymundo Gleyzer en México, la revolución congelada.” Vivomatografías: Revista de estudios sobre precine y cine silente en Latinoamérica, no. 2, pp. 99–123, 2016.
• Adela Pineda Franco: Chapter 4. The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage: Intellectuals and Film in the Twentieth Century. SUNY Press, 2019.
• Verleihkataloge der "Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek e.V." 1970: Occurido en Hualfin. 1972/73: (neu) Mexico – La revolucion congelada. 1973/74: (neu) Los Traidores (Die Verräter).
• Informationsblatt des Nummer 32, "Internationales Forum des Jungen Films", Berlin, 24. Juni – 1. Juli 1973; Redaktion: Peter B. Schumann

External links

• Official Site. Archived at Wayback Machine.
• Raymundo Gleyzer at IMDb
• Raymundo Gleyzer Cineismo (in Spanish)
• Documentary about Raymundo Gleyzer. Archived at Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
• About Gleyzer's disappearance Desaparecidos.org (in Spanish)
• Raymundo. Archived at Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
• Raymundo: the documentary Egrupos.net
• Our Islas Malvinas (1966) YouTube

This page was last edited on 25 October 2023, at 19:21