The L cinemas and the Cine & Medios magazine

Cinephiles of Buenos Aires between 1960 and 1970

Abstract

With the aim of adding new elements for reconstructing the map of cinematographic culture in a particularly dense historical period, which simultaneously houses urban cultural effervescence, modern manifestations of auteur cinema, political radicalization and countercultural initiatives, we analyze the creation of a series of art cinema theaters in the center of the city of Buenos Aires in the 1960s, together with the magazine Cine & Medios, directly linked to said circuit. Cinemas, films, bookstores, publishing houses, printing presses and specialized publications make up a network that must be addressed at its multiple intersections. Methodologically, we point out the importance of the study of magazines as cultural artifacts that allow us to take the pulse of an era and from that perspective we analyze some of the new graphic media of the period - current affairs weeklies, political-cultural and literary magazines - that gave centrality and relevance to culture, arts and cinema in particular, with the hypothesis that specialized magazines played a role as intellectual guide in the conversation about the aesthetic relevance of new modern cinemas. The analysis of Cine & Medios and the trajectories of its promoters, identified with countercultural journalism, explains the how the views on cinema diverge in the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s, at the same time as the emergence of new cultural and political options.