Artkino Pictures Argentina: a Window to the Communist Europe in Buenos Aires Screens (1954-1970)

MICHAL ZOUREK; VALERIA GALVAN

Politicke vedy

Belianum, Matej Bel University Press

Lugar: Banska Bystrica; Año: 2016 vol. 19 p. 36 - 50

1335-2741

The aim of thispaper is to study a specific aspect of the Communist foreign propaganda policyin Latin America: its cultural influence through the export of films. Renewedafter Stalin´s death. Soviet cultural propaРanda concentrated on gaining thefavour of foreign public. Particularly in Argentina, several propagandatechniques were implemented. Although the export of films was just one of them,it soon became very successful thanks to the collaboration of a local culturalmediator, the film distribution company Artkino Pictures, as well as its ownerand founder, Argentino Vainikoff. His expertise in the field actually gainedhim a new business deal with Czechoslovak filmography, which somewhat contestedUSSR imagery. In all, here ?with the aid of oral history as well ascontemporary press analysis? we argue that Artkino´s role in the import of anidealised imaginary of Communism was crucial and had a particularly strongimpact on middle-class citizens of the cultural and artistic regional centrethat Buenos Aires was in the 1950s and 1960s, and from where all Latin America,as the Soviets soon acknowledged, could be reached.