Who is protecting Argentina's film history?

As I have argued in previous articles, Argentina’s audiovisual heritage is at serious risk of disappearing. My aim here is to explain why. The answer is simple: because there is no functioning institution dedicated to preserving it. What seems obvious and straightforward, unfortunately, requires several paragraphs to fully unpack.

This piece is inspired by the teachings of the great crusader for the Argentine film archive: Fernando Martín Peña. He is kind, generous, and difficult; he has his own documentary and very firm opinions. He knows perfectly well that the work he does is invaluable, and I respect and admire him deeply. I chose not to interview him because Peña speaks so often about this issue that he jokes himself about how the absence of a national cinemateca has become one of his trademark phrases. I find it hard to ask someone for their time to repeat things they have already said countless times, especially when I cannot offer any real compensation in return.

It is striking that only a few decades after cinema emerged as an art form, institutions began to appear that understood its importance and set out to preserve it. The first film archives were founded in Europe and the United States in the 1930s. The very first was established in Stockholm in 1933. Other notable examples include the Museum of Modern Art Film Library in New York, also in 1933; the National Film Archive in the UK in 1935; and the Cinémathèque Française in 1936. The latter would become crucial to film history and help us understand why these institutions matter. There would have been no Nouvelle Vague without the Cinémathèque Française. New filmmakers need to engage with their predecessors to know their work and to create their own.

These institutions are now approaching their centenary. Argentina, by contrast, is at the opposite extreme. In September 1999, Law 25,119 was passed, creating the National Cinematheque and Image Archive, known by its Spanish acronym, CINAIN. Article 4 of the law declares the national audiovisual heritage to be in a state of emergency. Yet it took eleven years for the law to be regulated, in 2010, under President Cristina Fernández. Only in 2017 was a provisional delegate appointed and initial steps taken to form an advisory board and begin operations.

None of this ever truly materialized, and to this day CINAIN does not function. For a few years, some of its budget was used to restore a handful of films, and that was it. Many of those restorations were carried out by Peña himself, and the National Film Institute (INCAA) never credited him.

Argentina’s situation is not mirrored elsewhere in South America. Looking at its neighboring countries, Uruguay has had a cinemateca since 1952; Bolivia founded one in 1976; Paraguay, in 1990; and Chile, in 2006. Many of these institutions operate under mixed models, combining private initiatives—often born from personal collections—with state support, allowing both preservation and public access.

Brazil deserves special mention. Not only does it have a national cinemateca that was established in 1940, which was roughly in parallel with developments in Europe and the United States, but it also serves as the cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. Mexico offers another telling example: it has a National Cinematheque, opened in 1976, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico maintains its own archive as well.

Universities are natural allies of film archives. Yet the University of Buenos Aires—so proud of its international rankings and of having survived the Milei era—has done nothing in this regard, despite covering nearly every field of knowledge required for film preservation. There are isolated efforts, such as the Audiovisual Archive at the Gino Germani Research Institute within the Faculty of Social Sciences, but no comprehensive institutional policy.

During the long years between the passage of the law and its useless regulation, film club organizers, collectors, and preservation professionals formed APROCINAIN, a pro-cinematheque association. Among its driving forces were Fernando Martín Peña, Fabio Manes, and Octavio Fabiano, founders of Filmoteca Buenos Aires, an organization that has rescued more than 300 Argentine films. Today, the collection they assembled is in Peña’s possession because Manes and Fabiano tragically died young. The collection now holds over 8,000 films, stored in Peña’s own home. Let that sink in: an indispensable portion of Argentina’s audiovisual heritage—much of it in unique copies—is safely kept in a private house, painstakingly adapted for film conservation.

Who is to blame for the circumstances we find ourselves in? Primarily the state, of course, which has known for at least thirty years that this heritage is at risk. But the audiovisual community is not blameless either. During the years of Kirchnerism, a great many films were produced, which is a positive development. Yet did directors ever stop to think about who would preserve their films? Do they really believe it is acceptable for them to be single-use assets? The same applies to actors and to everyone involved in the making of a film.

Argentina also lost its only laboratory capable of producing film prints in 2016, when Cinecolor Lab shut down. Digitization does not solve the problem. It may help a bit with circulation—for instance, by putting together material suitable for streaming platforms—but digital formats are always changing and are not an appropriate medium for preservation. To cite an example: the chief of staff under Milei claimed he found bitcoins on a forgotten flash drive and that this explained his otherwise implausible increase in wealth. Something similar may well happen to Argentine films from the 2010s.

Today, there is no trace of CINAIN on the national government’s websites. Most citizens assume that some state agency must be “taking care” of audiovisual heritage somewhere. But that is not happening. It is wishful thinking. Individuals like Fernando Martín Peña, or institutions such as the Buenos Aires Museum of Cinema, are the ones filling the gap with whatever resources they can muster. It is a vicious circle: no one can care about what they do not know, and if films are not accessible, no one will ever know them—so the cycle starts all over again.

It is worth noting that Argentina does have a private organization called the Argentine Cinematheque Foundation. At least in its current form, it is characterized by opacity and restricted access, operating more as a private collection than a true cinemateca. It actively opposed the creation of a state-run national cinemateca, claiming that it already fulfilled that role—a claim that is simply false.

In 2025, several films from its collection were loaned and restored for the Mar del Plata Film Festival. The most scandalous case involves two films by Vlasta Lah, the first woman to direct a sound film in Argentina. Two researchers spent years searching for these prints, only to discover they had been sitting in this institution all along. One cannot help but wonder why they never surfaced earlier if the foundation truly functions as a cinemateca.

As I finish writing this article, Paula Félix Didier has announced that she will step down as director of the Buenos Aires Museum of Cinema at the end of June 2026, after weeks of speculation that the city government intended to dismiss her. Félix Didier is a historian and a professional with outstanding training and experience in film preservation. Having her in charge of a cinema museum is like appointing a Nobel Prize winner as a university president. There is no higher distinction in her field. A cinema museum is not the same as a cinemateca—they serve different purposes—but her tenure was clearly driven by the desire to compensate, as much as possible, for that absence. What will happen now is uncertain.

In 1956, Hugo del Carril released Beyond Oblivion. Two years later, Hitchcock released Vertigo and denied any connection, claiming it was mere coincidence because he had never seen del Carril’s film. How many countries can say that one of their filmmakers “anticipated” Hitchcock? In Argentina, no one can actually see del Carril’s film today—because there is no institution capable of preserving it and screening it according to international standards. That is the true scale of the damage.