Renée Oro
Argentine pioneering documentarist of the silent era / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Renée Oro (1900 — date of death unknown) was an Argentine director and producer who specialized in documentary filmmaking and was mainly active during the silent era of the 1920s. Oro was in charge of the direction, financing, distribution and promotion of her films, which focused on propaganda, geography and local customs. She began her career through the company Arata y Pardo, co-founded by fellow filmmaker Roberto R. Arata, whom she married in the 1930s. Through the promotion of her personal image in the press, Oro soon managed to outshine the company and make a name for herself as a filmmaker. In 1922, she released La Argentina, focused on her country, and after showing it successfully in Chile, she developed a series of films there for President Arturo Alessandri.
Renée Oro | |
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Born | René Oro 1900 |
Died | Unknown |
Nationality | Argentine |
Other names | Renée Oro de Arata |
Occupations |
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Years active | c.1922–1940 |
Known for | Pioneer of women's documentary filmmaking |
Spouse | Roberto R. Arata |
After returning to Argentina in 1926, she made a series of documentaries focused on different provinces of the country, which were commissioned by their respective governments. In addition to being screened in the country, these films were made to be sent to different world's fairs and exhibited in the Argentine pavilion; Oro herself was sent as the country's delegate on a few occasions. In 1927, she released a documentary focused on different South American countries titled Las Naciones de América, a film she continued to modify and screen well into the 1930s. In 1931, she also returned to propaganda filmmaking in a documentary commissioned by de facto President José Félix Uriburu.
Oro's career stalled in the 1930s and the last known of her was a failed attempt to produce a biopic on Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in 1939. As of 2022, only three of her films are known to have survived: Tacna y Arica (1924), Las Naciones de América (1927) and Evolución y progresos de la provincia de Santiago del Estero (1927). The latter two were rediscovered in the INCAA's cinematheque archive in 2021, which prompted the first extensive research about her life and career. Since then, Oro has been revalued as a pioneer of Argentine cinema. Her role as a woman filmmaker and as a businesswoman has been celebrated since the documentary genre was almost entirely dominated by men. She is arguably the most prolific woman filmmaker of the silent period in Argentina and possibly Latin America as a whole.