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

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study a specific aspect of the Communist foreign propaganda policy in Latin America: its cThe aim of this paper is to study a specific aspect of the Communist foreign propaganda policy in Latin America: its cultural influence through the export of films. Renewed after Stalin´s death, Soviet cultural propaganda concentrated on gaining the favour of foreign public. Particularly in Argentina, several propaganda techniques were implemented. Although the export of films was just one of them, it soon became very successful thanks to the collaboration of a local cultural mediator, the film distribution company Artkino Pictures, as well as its owner and founder, Argentino Vainikoff. His expertise in the field actually gained him a new business deal with Czechoslovak filmography, which somewhat contested USSR imagery. In all, here –with the aid of oral history as well as contemporary press analysis– we argue that Artkino´s role in the import of an idealised imaginary of Communism was crucial and had a particularly strong impact on middle-class citizens of the cultural and artistic regional centre that Buenos Aires was in the 1950s and 1960s, and from where all Latin America, as the Soviets soon acknowledged, could be reached.ultural influence through the export of films. Renewed after Stalin´s death, Soviet cultural propaganda concentrated on gaining the favour of foreign public. Particularly in Argentina, several propaganda techniques were implemented. Although the export of films was just one of them, it soon became very successful thanks to the collaboration of a local cultural mediator, the film distribution company Artkino Pictures, as well as its owner and founder, Argentino Vainikoff. His expertise in the field actually gained him a new business deal with Czechoslovak filmography, which somewhat contested USSR imagery. In all, here –with the aid of oral history as well as contemporary press analysis– we argue that Artkino´s role in the import of an idealised imaginary of Communism was crucial and had a particularly strong impact on middle-class citizens of the cultural and artistic regional centre that Buenos Aires was in the 1950s and 1960s, and from where all Latin America, as the Soviets soon acknowledged, could be reached.