CINE CLUB NUCLEO HISTORY

  It was declared of cultural interest by the Buenos Aires City Government, the Cine Club Nucleo plays its shows every Tuesday at 18 and 20.30, and the second and fourth Sundays of every month at 11.00 am at the Gaumont Theatre-Rivadavia Ave. 1635, Congress area, playing the most expected pictures that have not been released commercially yet.

  This entity started operating in 1952 as an association.

 The activities were not limited to screen pictures to their members, but it also developed work for the community by making shows in Universities, quarter clubs, sponsorship at cinema weeks, support to cinema clubs in other areas of the country and also shows in squares and slums.

 The founders were Salvador Sammaritano, Jorge Farenga, Luis Isaac Soriano and Ventura Pereyro.

 The Cine Club Nucleo is member of:

Federación Argentina de Cine Clubes.

Argentine Federation of Cinema clubs.

International Federation of Cinema clubs.

The Cine Club was specially invited to Mexico City in July 1996 by the UNAM, where took place a debate and discussion on the present and future of Cinema Clubs.

Other remarkable activities :

 Ordinary and extraordinary shows, popular and disclosure shows in universities.  Publication of magazines TIEMPO DE CINE and CINE ENSAYO. Organization of Special Weeks (latinamerican performers, Truffaut, Belgian cinema, sponsorships, etc.).

 Many of the most important Argentine directors formed up in its lines. 

Books, works published and prizes:

American sound movies and the Hollywood Oscars 1927-1985, by Homero Alsina Thevenet.

"Reflexine" by Roland (Andres Rolando Fustiñana).

"Time of Movies Magazine", an issue regarded as one of the best in Spanish language.

"Revista Cine Ensayo" "Movies Essay Magazine".

Monographic collections.

Programs of the shows, which are carefully collected by the assistants and are required by many other clubs of movies and film libraries of the world.

Collection of films.

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson Prize granted by the Argentine Film Library.

Prize "No Cuts Magazine".

Prize granted to Salvador Sammaritano due to his development.

A short part of its history...

  In 1952 the Cine Club Nucleo was born, the founders were a group of friends that inhabited the Colegiales quarter in Buenos Aires, who were interested in cinema and music. Sammaritano attended continuously the midnight shows of the cinema club namely, People of Cinema, at the Biarritz theatre.

  The shows started in theatres as Los Independientes (Payro at present time), the Bank Association, Lorraine Theatre, The Dilecto, the Cultura Religiosa Institute, the Lara theatre, the IFT, and the Alfil, the Maxi theatre, the Premier theatre, the Tita Merello complex, up to now at the Gaumont theatre. It was set the Tuesdays as the "pre-release" day or the day when pictures that did not enter the commercial circuit are played; and the "revision" shows at the Cosmos Theatre.

  Sammaritano remembers that "the first picture played was "The Covered Wagon" by James Cruze (1923) with an old 16mm Kodascope mute projector that had double punch, which did not let us play sonorous films."    

  "There was once a Secretary of Culture at the Buenos Aires Municipality, I do not remember the year, whose name was Guillermo Linares and who was an architect. And he told us that he wanted to play pictures of 35mm that the Municipality had available, at the Rivadavia park among the trees, with those projectors in wagons, and put 5000 seats in the park.

  The idea pleased to me and I started to think about what to schedule, with the theory that the public always wish the best. And we decided to make a program of seven nights and each show with a different release!  With a primitive distributor who had pictures from Pathè, we played a documental on an artistic subject, a cartoon with a modern style, of the canadian film or from the UFA, that Columbia had and later a feature film from different subjects, epics as Alex Nevsky or comics as "Limelight" etc. And the most remarkable is that 5000 persons attended and not even a fly flied, the presenter was Victor Iturralde.

  It was a marvellous show when Alex Nevsky was played at a summer night among the trees and it occured to me to walk among people. And some children between eleven and thirteen years very much enthusiastic with the lake scene cried out "¡Look, it seems a picture! " and certaily it was Eisenstein, a master of Renacentist culture." "Other time the same Linares told us that an inspector of the Municipality had told him that they had met a slum quarter at the north, whose people had never watched cinema nor TV.  Then he asked us if it was possible to make some special show and there we went. "By other hand we had learnt that some USA anthropologists took to play to the African forest natives, Norman MacLaren films with great success.        

  Then we screened works from that director and among them there was one with numbers in colors with a white background and the colors changed and intercalated on an exercise book, and became all a disaster and they falled down to be able to settle down again. And that caused a lot of laughter, and a huge Bolivian man who looked at the screen with much attention, in the middle of the picture turns towards public and cries: ¡Shit, don´t you realise that the accounts are OK!

  The point is that we, intellectual people, never had paid attention to that and we started to see to the results, and certainly the accounts were well solved.  Some months later when mathematics classes started at schools, a professor came from USA to instruct a group of Argentine teachers on that subject and he took as an example the Mac Laren picture.  The anecdote related to the man from the Puna was of the most pleasant ones."

  The Cine Club Nucleo has the privilege of being one of the first cinematographic entities to spread the pictures of the great master Ingmar Bergman through the Rio de la Plata.

  Last year the Cine Club Nucleo has played shows with the support of the French Embassy, of the Czech Republic, of the Popular Chinese Republic and the Catalonia Casal at the Buenos Aires City.

  On November 16, 1984 the Cine Club Nucleo organizes as a Non-profit Association.

  At present time the Cine Club Nucleo is managed by Alejandro Sammaritano; the Directors Committee is integrated by Norma Raggi, and Ricardo Rois, with the contribution of Fernando Martin Peña, Eduardo Freire, Fredy Friedlander and Gabriel Medina Ernst, among others.  

  We count with the support of the main distributors and film producers of this country, because without them it would not be possible to develop our activities. 

  Also, we would like to thank the National Institute of Cinema and Audio-visual Arts, due to the valuable support and continuos stimulous, mainly by the President, who always encouraged us so that after many years the Cine Club Nucleo is a reality. 

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