Raymundo

This is a documentary film about the life and work of Raymundo Gleyzer,  Argentine filmmaker, kidnapped and murdered by that country's military dictatorship in 1976.

Convinced that the cinema is a weapon of counter-information, an instrument for the working class, Raymundo documented the political and sociological situation in Latin America since 1963.

His first films were ethnographic, but always pointing at the social issues. Journalist, photographer, cameraman,  his cinema became a strong political and social denounce.  Raymundo was a revolutionary, so most of these films were produced in the underground.

In 1973 he creates the group "Cine de la Base" to bring the cinema to the people, protagonists of his films: the workers, the indigenous people, the peasants, all the dispossess in the world.

The movie shows the chronological development of his filmography. The personal and contextual circumstances during the creation of the films.  The obstacles and difficulties in the process.  The impact each one of the films had, and the distribution under the most adverse political conditions.

Intertwined  with Raymundo's life, the film narrates the beginning, the development and the persecution of the Latin American revolutionary cinema.

Through Raymundo's films and his ideas, the documentary describes the political liberation movements in Latin America during the 60' and 70', and the ruling power continuous violations of human rights.

The films and ideology Raymundo expresses will help us to understand through historical revisionism, the roots of our present problems.

Raymundo's personality, his compromise, his honesty, all elements that forged his film technique: a camera that doesn't "steal image",  but gets inside the conflict itself, becoming another protagonist.

Finally, the movie relates his "disappearance", the beginning of the end for a generation of independent filmmakers trying to develop a cinema with a Latin American identity. These Argentine filmmakers, like so many others, became exiles and live all over the world.

To save Raymundo's films from destruction,  his friends took some out of the country.  His widow, Juana Sapire, kept many negatives, prints, letters, pictures and written materials in New York.  

Today, after almost thirty years, we could finally reunite all the material, restored it and show it to new generations.

This documentary will bring back what the CIA and the Latin American dictatorships couldn't destroy: the memory, the ideals and the courage to tell the truth.

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