Ever since it was founded, the CAYC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), helmed by the cultural promoter, artist, and businessman Jorge Glusberg, was intended as an interdisciplinary space where an experimental art movement could flourish. The establishment of collaborative networks connecting local and international artists and critics played a key role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists introduced the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.
Film screenings were included in the CAYC’s exhibition program as part of its plans for the center to become a facility for the production of experimental works. Glusberg’s goal was to create a place where artists and specialists in various scientific fields could work together and where the CAYC could fulfill its commitment to making contributions to society.
The UNCIPAR (Unión de Cineístas de Paso Reducido)—the word “Cineístas” was later changed to “Cineastas”—was started in 1972, at the Teatro Florencio Sánchez, in the Boedo neighborhood in Buenos Aires. The term “Paso Reducido,” meaning “small gauge,” refers to a technical downsizing that nonetheless enjoyed widespread appeal among the general public (films shot in Single 8, Super 8, and 16 mm), used mainly by amateur filmmakers as opposed to 35 mm (commercial) film. Such films were then shown on Saturdays, and the directors would attend the screenings to encourage conversation with viewers. This custom was a follow-up to the “cinema clubs” of the 1960s. UNCIPAR started the first independent exhibition circuit in Argentina and is still active to this day. In 1979 the Unión started organizing an international short film festival at Villa Gesell, a summer resort on the Atlantic coast in the Province of Buenos Aires that was extremely popular with young Argentineans.
The magazine Diafragma (mentioned as one of the host institutions) publicized the latest news in the fields of photography as well as Argentinean and Latin American cinema, a goal the publication shared with the CAYC. Only one issue of the magazine was ever published, under the direction of Miguel Ángel Otero, who also headed up Fotografía Universal, another magazine in the same field. [See GT-194 (doc. no. 1476366)].] (Daniel Merle, “Procesos forzados. Experimentación técnica y fotografía documental en Argentina entre 1967 y 1972,” unpublished.)
