Lola Álvarez Bravo and Victoria Ocampo, Mediators in Latin American Networks of Film Culture

It is a little-known fact that two women, Victoria Ocampo and Lola Álvarez Bravo, brought the celebrated avant-garde film Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, 1929) to Argentina and Mexico for the first time. Acting as cultural mediators, they successfully organized the film’s premieres in 1929 and 1938, respectively, at the Cine Club de Buenos Aires, where Ocampo was a key player, and the 16mm Cinema film society, which Álvarez Bravo ran.

Álvarez Bravo and Ocampo’s intervention remains unacknowledged, perhaps because the role of women in the first wave of film societies has long been under-researched. When women are mentioned, it is typically to emphasize their peripheral participation.[1] Yet Álvarez Bravo and Ocampo played highly relevant roles in the circulation of films in the 1920s and 1930s. It has often been assumed that, in the first few decades of film history, women were only present as part of the audience—an active audience at times, but an audience nonetheless—although initiatives such as the Women Film Pioneers have challenged this view in recent decades.[2]

For their part, film societies remain a little-studied phenomenon despite their pivotal role in building networks of film culture in the interwar period and beyond. As Malte Hagener writes, “Film clubs, film societies and ciné-clubs have not been high on the agenda of film historians. While, generally speaking, production has always generated more research than distribution and exhibition, circulation has largely been left on the margins.”[3] Tracing the forms of circulation Álvarez Bravo and Ocampo facilitated, I propose that the Actor- network Theory’s tenet “follow the actor” may help us recuperate women’s role in the creation of film societies as key nodes in networks of film culture.[4]

The figures of Ocampo (1890–1979) and Álvarez Bravo (1903–1993) stand in contrast to each other. Ocampo was an aristocrat with deep ties to Buenos Aires’s intellectual and cultural worlds, while Álvarez Bravo was a subversive, upper-middle class artist with political preoccupations. Despite their disparate sociocultural profiles, both Ocampo and Álvarez Bravo had ties to feminist organizations. Through her close friendship with Frida Kahlo, Álvarez Bravo participated indirectly in the Frente Único Pro Derecho de la Mujer (United Front for Women’s Rights), which was supported by the Mexican Communist Party. Bravo was at her most subversive when she denounced the disadvantages women faced in the public space through her photography.[5] She not only photographed Indigenous women in their daily labors, but also denounced the inequality they experienced, at a moment when this was uncommon in Mexico, and even more so for a woman. For instance, her photographs of women include images of Indigenous sex workers and explicit nudes.[6] For her part, Ocampo founded the Unión Argentina de Mujeres (Argentine Women’s Union) alongside María Rosa Oliver and several others with the goal of defending women’s civil rights.[7]

Modernization processes and access to spaces of public and mass entertainment, as noted by Hansen, allowed women to participate in the development of artistic modernity, as seen in the photographic and literary works of Lola Álvarez Bravo and Victoria Ocampo (Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 117–125). In this sense, the pioneering participation and leadership of these two women in the cineclubs I analyze represented a model for other women in the cultural milieu of the period. Their public visibility and contributions to debates surrounding the seventh art made them forgers of audiences.

Like Álvarez Bravo and Ocampo themselves, the audiences that they helped create belonged, in the majority of cases, to an urban intellectual elite that were already enmeshed in the social networks that gave rise to these organizations. This does not change the fact, however, that there existed, particularly in the Mexican case, an effort to educate audiences and to encourage the participation of other social classes, particularly workers. Historical documentation suggests that this was accomplished successfully only in a limited number of cases. Otherwise, available evidence indicates the presence of largely middle-class and upper-class audiences belonging to the intellectual and artistic circles of the era.

Lola Álvarez Bravo, the Cine Club Mexicano/Cine Club de México (1931–1938) and 16mm Cinema (1938–?)

Though she was one of Mexico’s first female professional photographers and created celebrated portraits of Frida Kahlo, her work has been overshadowed not only because she was a woman, but also because she shared a last name with Manuel Álvarez Bravo, whose photographic work has historically received much wider acclaim. Married in 1925, they separated in 1934 and divorced in 1949.

Álvarez Bravo co-founded the Cine Club Mexicano (1931–1934) and directed the Cine Club de México or Cine Club Mexicano (1934–1938) of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists; LEAR) and 16 mm Cinema (1938–?).[8] Under the auspices of the latter organization, Álvarez Bravo organized the screening of Un chien andalou in Palacio de Bellas Artes, where she later worked between 1941 and 1971. Lola Álvarez Bravo not only arranged the screening of Un chien andalou, but also purchased, out of pocket, a few of Chaplin’s comedies, French comedies starring Max Linder, and Italian films featuring Pina Menichelli.[9] The latter were shown at Cine Club de México at an event she presented in 1936, while Chaplin’s films may have been screened both at the Cine Club Mexicano in 1933 or 1934 and the Cine Club de México in 1935 or 1936. Likewise, as a very active member of the aforementioned film clubs, Álvarez Bravo likely contributed to securing the Soviet films screened at all three clubs, along with scientific documentaries and other French and Italian films of the time.

Both Álvarez Bravo’s network of personal relationships as a photographer and the institutions to which she was linked throughout her life facilitated her work as a cultural mediator. Álvarez Bravo was highly active in LEAR (1933–1938), where she worked as a socially committed photographer alongside the most distinguished artists of Mexico’s post-revolutionary art period and met other international, intellectual, and artistic personalities of the time.[10] Álvarez Bravo not only crossed cultural boundaries due to her activity as a photojournalist in several indigenous Mexican communities, but also disciplinary boundaries.

In addition to her work as a photographer, she organized exhibitions at her galleries, including Kahlo’s only solo show in Mexico during her lifetime. In addition to her penchant for film, Álvarez Bravo published her photography and collages in several magazines, including Mexican Folkways, Rotofoto, and Futuro y Espacios.[11] The transnational relationships she established via LEAR (with María Teresa León and Rafael Alberti, for instance) and her participation in Mexican Folkways, where she worked alongside Frances Toor, situate her as a key mediator in the construction of a transnational women’s film culture.

Victoria Ocampo and the Cine Club de Buenos Aires

Victoria Ocampo (1890–1979) was an Argentine writer, essayist, translator, editor, and patron of the arts. She was also a key figure in the Asociación Amigos del Arte (1924–1942), alongside Elena Sansinena de Elizalde, and a founder of the magazine Sur (1931–1992). Internationally, she had ties to La Gaceta Literaria, José Ortega y Gasset, Alfonso Reyes, and the Lyceum Club Español.[12] This latter cultural and educational institution bolstered the creation of a network of women with close ties to Spain’s cultural field, eventually acquiring an international scope. In contrast to Álvarez Bravo, Ocampo has been recognized for her work on the national and international levels.[13] Nevertheless, it is important to highlight the expansive and international character of the social network she wielded, which fundamentally shaped both Amigos del Arte and its associated film society, the Cine Club de Buenos Aires (1929–1931).

Ocampo’s connections enabled several of the most recognized avant-garde films of the 1920s to reach Argentina. Thanks to Victoria Ocampo’s friendship with Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944)—a friendship forged during her trip to Paris in 1929—Fondane disembarked in Buenos Aires in July of that year with copies of Un chien andalou, L’étoile de mer (Man Ray, 1928), Entr’acte (René Clair, 1924), and (at the very least) some fragments of La Coquille et le Clergyman (Germaine Dulac, 1928), Le Cabaret épileptique (Henri Gad, 1928), and La perle (Henri d’Ursel 1929) (Aguilar, “Tararira,” 12). These films arrived so quickly that Un chien andalou actually premiered in Buenos Aires months earlier than in the filmmakers’ native Spain. Un chien andalou screened at the Cine Club de Buenos Aires on August 6 and August 16, 1929, whereas the film would not be shown in Spain until October 24, 1929 as part of the Sessions Mirador screening series. Much like the Cine Club de Buenos Aires, the Sessions Mirador was a film society organized by intellectuals, in this case grouped around the Catalan cultural magazine Mirador (1927–1937).[14]

Victoria Ocampo’s efforts contributed to the Cine Club de Buenos Aires’s reputation as a pioneering film society on the international level, thanks to its screenings of European and Soviet avant-garde films. The club’s renown extended to coverage in influential magazines like Close-Up and La Gaceta Literaria.[15] But although the Cine Club of Buenos Aires has received significant scholarly attention, Ocampo’s socio-cultural function remains largely under-addressed.[16]

Visualizing Networks of Film Culture

In the endeavor of uncovering the historical role played by women in the formation of film cultures across the globe, digital tools can fulfill a key function. Tracking down data from secondary and primary sources (especially periodicals) and incorporating them into effectively indexed databases can be an essential strategy for rewriting histories from which women have long been excluded, including film history. Combining Actor-network theory with digital humanities allows us to trace the figures of these women, keeping in mind all the actors, human and non-human, that participate in their networks to create a more expansive and inclusive map of transnational history. The digital makes these figures present in virtual space and allows for the reproduction and dissemination of the data that attest to their existence. An ethical and political commitment of recuperating the histories of these women must be matched by a will to the collective construction of knowledge and a policy of open data, both of which are facilitated by digital tools.

Approaches that utilize big data, such as social network analysis and network visualizations, make it possible to analyze both international networks of exchange between women and the role of cultural mediators within a specific cultural field, such as cinema. This becomes evident in the interactive visualization I created in collaboration with Ventsislav Ikoff. Points representing women appear in light green, while those representing men appear in light yellow, highlighting not only women’s participation, but also their relationships. In a kindred project, Nora Benedict has performed a gendered analysis of Ocampo’s social networks to highlight women’s often overlooked participation in her literary and artistic activities.[17] Álvarez Bravo and Ocampo acted as linchpins between clusters of different actors, including cultural institutions, magazines, and cultural figures. For instance, at the base of the visualization, the large circle represents the Asociación Amigos del Arte. Specific individuals and institutions can be located in the visualization via a keyword search.

Beyond these strategic positions, one can see that Álvarez Bravo and Victoria Ocampo’s networks overlap at various points. To take one of many examples, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, a friend of Álvarez Bravo, participated in various exhibitions organized by Amigos del Arte, as did David Alfaro Siqueiros, whose work Álvarez Bravo also showed in her galleries. More interesting for our purposes are the (sometimes indirect) transnational relationships between female cultural mediators facilitated by the Congreso Internacional de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (International Congress of Revolutionary Writers and Artists) organized by LEAR in Mexico in 1937. Álvarez Bravo was in attendance as founding member of LEAR, while Ocampo would be named part of the presiding council at the Congress’s opening session, although there is no evidence she traveled to Mexico for the event. Nonetheless, both were invested in women’s rights and formed part of an international network of exchange and mutual aid between women. As we can observe in the correspondence between Ocampo and Gabriela Mistral, supportive relationships between female intellectuals in early twentieth-century Latin America and Spain would facilitate the exchange of ideas and cultural goods.[18] Film was no exception. Ideas about and enthusiasm for the seventh art circulated through this network of women, directly and indirectly facilitating the transnational flow of films. The recuperation of this network, the unfinished product of collaborative efforts, offers an empirical foundation for acknowledging the contributions of women in the institutionalization of film cultures and even, perhaps, allowing us to speak of a women’s film culture.[19]