Lita Stantic

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Lita Stantic (2008)

Élida Stantic (* 1942 in Buenos Aires ), better known as Lita Stantic , is an Argentine film producer , screenwriter and film director . Stantic has produced some of the most important films in the “ New Argentine Cinema ”, directed by Lucrecia Martel , Pablo Trapero and Adrián Caetano , for example .

life and work

Stantic is the daughter of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia . She decided early on to work in the film industry, which back then - in the 1950s and 1960s - was a male domain. From the beginning of her career, she observed the enormous imbalance between the sexes in the film industry and, from the 1970s at the latest, actively campaigned for the increased presence and visibility of women.

Originally, Stantic wanted to become a film critic, but then took screenwriting and film courses with Simón Feldman. Then she enrolled at the newly founded Asociación de Cine Experimental (ACE) in Buenos Aires and learned from Manuel Antín and Rodolfo Kuhn, among others. It was there that she met the filmmaker Octavio Getino for the first time.

In 1965 she took over as assistant director for Diario de campamento from Pablo Szir . Stantic and Szir became a couple and worked together until the time of his abduction. The two have a daughter together.

In the mid-1960s, Stantic began making short documentary films with Szir. Impressed by Fernando Solanas ' film La Hora de los Hornos , she joined the underground organization “Grupo Cine Liberacion”, which produced, distributed and secretly showed films that were banned under the military rule. The group was led by Solanas, Octavio Getino and Gerardo Vallejo. Stantic helped secretly circulate films.

She also produced Pablo Szir's film Los Velazquez , which is based on a novel by the sociologist Roberto Carri - an author who, like Szir, would later belong to the Desaparecidos . After the military coup in 1976, Szir was kidnapped and with him the negative of Los Velazquez disappeared . The editor involved in the film also destroyed the positive out of fear, so that the film about the legendary bandit Isidro Velázquez has since been considered lost.

In 1973, Stantic began to distance himself from militant political actions, as in her opinion violence led to more and more violence. She now mainly produced advertising films, which she saw as a pure livelihood. Towards the end of the decade, however, she appeared as the producer of three feature films, some of which were award-winning: La parte del léon by Adolfo Aristarain (1978), a gloomy account of the corruption rampant in the country, and Contragolpe and La isla (both 1979) by Alejandro Doria . La isla , a film about inmates of an insane asylum, which indirectly alludes to the dictatorship, became the first Argentinian box office hit during the military dictatorship.

In the early 1980s, Stantic produced María Luisa Bemberg's first film directorial work, Momentos, and Señora de nadie immediately afterwards . The censors were not very enthusiastic about the work, in which a divorced woman and a gay man play the main roles. However, it became the Argentine actress' first commercial directorial success. Then Stantic Bemberg came up with the idea for the film Camila - The Girl and the Priest , which from 1984 had an audience of millions, was nominated for an Oscar and made the director internationally known. It was the first project by Stantics and Bemberg's joint film production company "GEA Cinematográfica SA". In ten years of collaboration, five films were made that are considered to be the most important coherent work by a Latin American filmmaker to date. Stantic and Bemberg shared many film production tasks, such as script development and casting . After the premiere, they accompanied their films, be it in suburban cinemas or at well-known film festivals. During this time, Stantic laid the foundations for their knowledge in the development of co-productions, financing and sales.

With the success of Camila , Stantic and Bemberg were able to sign international stars. So in the next production, The Passion of Miss Mary , Julie Christie took the lead role. In the last joint film by Stantic and Bemberg, I, the Most Unworthy of All , Assumpta Serna and Dominique Sanda played . Both films could be produced with foreign partners, which was helpful because of the shrinking Argentine domestic market.

While Bemberg was shooting the last film before her death in 1995, Stantic directed her only full-length film: In Un muro de silencio she tells the autobiographical story of a British filmmaker, played by Vanessa Redgrave , and an Argentinian who disappeared during the military dictatorship Man can not forget. With this film, which came out in 1993, Stantic gained the attention of film reviews. The film was ignored by the Argentine audience. Stantic, who together with Luisa Bemberg had already improved the work opportunities for women in film, also employed numerous women behind the camera at Un muro de silencio .

From the mid-1990s, Stantic produced several documentaries, including Lucrecia Martel's TV film Las dependencias from 1999. With her film production Lita Stantic Producciones , which was founded in the same year, she was responsible for early works in New Argentine cinema such as Pablo Traperos Mundo grúa - The World of Cranes or Martel's La Ciénaga - Morass . Stantic supported the young filmmakers, took care of the fine-tuning of the scripts and the international financing as well as the worldwide distribution of the works. She produced award-winning debut works and experimental films.

She never decides on a project based on commercial criteria, but rather on whether she herself regards the film as “necessary”, ie whether it is needed in her opinion.

Filmography (selection)

Film productions

  • 1972: Los Velazquez (Production)
  • 1978: La parte del léon (production)
  • 1979: La isla (production)
  • 1979: Contragolpe (production)
  • 1981: Momentos (production)
  • 1982: I don't belong to anyone (Señora de nadie) (Production)
  • 1984: Camila - The Girl and the Priest (Camila) (Production)
  • 1986: The Passion of Miss Mary (Miss Mary) (Production)
  • 1990: Me, the most unworthy of them all (Yo, la peor de todas) (Production)
  • 1991: Secrets of a Summer (El Verano del Potro) (Production)
  • 1993: Un muro de silencio (director, screenplay)
  • 1998: Dársena sur (production)
  • 1999: Mundo grúa - The World of Cranes (Mundo Grúa) (Production)
  • 1999: Bolivia (co-production)
  • 2001: La Ciénaga - Morast (production)
  • 2002: The Red Bear (Un Oso Rojo) (Production)
  • 2002: Out of the blue (Tan de repente) (Production)
  • 2004: La niña santa - The holy girl (La niña santa) (production)
  • 2006: Hamaca Paraguaya - A Hammock in Paraguay (Hamaca paraguaya) (co-production)
  • 2008: Sacrificial Lamb (Cordero de Dios) (Production)
  • 2015: La patota (production)

Television productions

  • 1996: Sol de otoño
  • 1998: Historias de vidas, Encarnación Ezcurra
  • 1998: Historias de vidas, Silvina Ocampo
  • 1999: Las dependencias

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lita Stantic. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved May 21, 2020 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Constanza Burucúa: Beyond the Bottom Line: The Producer in Film and Television Studies . Ed .: Andrew Spicer, Anthony McKenna, Christopher Meir. Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4411-7236-5 , pp. 216-228 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Peter H. Rist: Historical Dictionary of South American Cinema . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014, ISBN 978-0-8108-6082-7 , pp. 541 f .
  4. ↑ Diario de campamento (1965). In: IMDb. Retrieved June 3, 2020 .
  5. ^ Haden Guest: An Interview with Lita Stantic. In: Revista - Harvard Review of Latin America. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2009, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  6. ^ Sebastián Fonseca: Roberto Carri: El oficio desociólogo. In: Memoria Académica. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, accessed on June 11, 2020 (Spanish).
  7. ↑ a b c John King: Breaching the Walls of Silence: Lita Stantic's Un muro de silencio . In: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos . tape 20 , 1: Undoscontemporáneos en el cine español e hispanoamericano, 1995, p. 43-53 , JSTOR : 7763264 .
  8. ↑ Lita Stantic. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved June 11, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Catherine Grant: An Argentine Passion: María Luisa Bemberg and Her Films . In: John King, Sheila Whitaker, Rosa Bosch (Eds.): Critical Studies in Latin American Culture . 2001, ISBN 978-1-85984-308-6 , pp. 99 f .
  10. ↑ Emanuel Levy: Un Muro de Silencio a Wall of Silence. In: Variety. October 18, 1993, accessed June 14, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Leslie Bethell: A cultural history of Latin America: literature, music, and the visual arts in the 19th and 20th centuries . In: Cambridge History of Latin America . Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-62327-8 , pp. 515 f .
  12. ↑ Lita Stantic receives the Rezzonico Prize in Locarno. In: The Standard. August 3, 2007, accessed June 14, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Stantic, Lita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stantic, Élida (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentinian film producer, screenwriter and director
DATE OF BIRTH 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires