Colectivo Cine de la Base

Its members were affiliated with the PRT-ERP and other revolutionary organizations such as the FAS. The collective brought together filmmakers, activists, and students committed to political denunciation, directed against Onganía’s dictatorship, traditional Peronism, and imperialism. The group's work focused on producing documentaries about social issues: exploitation, peasantry, workers, and power structures. But they also developed alternative distribution circuits, screening their films in unions, neighborhoods, universities, and in opposition to traditional exhibition venues. By 1973, the network had expanded to several provinces. The collective lost momentum with the rise of state terror in the mid-1970s, as Gleyzer was disappeared on May 27, 1976, along with part of the collective’s materials, organization, and continuity. Perhaps the most emblematic and widely recognized film of the Cine de la Base collective is Los traidores (1973), directed by Raymundo Gleyzer with a collective script by Víctor Proncet and Álvaro Melián. Another key work is Ni olvido ni perdón (1972), also directed by Gleyzer, about the Trelew massacre—one of the most decisive political events foreshadowing the military dictatorship that would take hold in Argentina a few years later.

The collective adopted a collaborative and political approach; production was collective, with scripts, cameras, sound, and editing carried out by its members under a militant vision. The processes were open, with pre-shooting debates on content, the role of cinema as a tool for raising awareness, and strategies for reaching popular audiences. Thematically, they prioritized the working class, peasants, and other subaltern communities, aiming for the films to have political impact at the grassroots and popular levels. Technically, they employed documentary filmmaking tools such as re-enactment, testimony, archival materials, handheld camera use, and direct narration. In terms of distribution, they operated outside commercial circuits, organizing screenings in unions, schools, informal settlements, and rural areas, replicating and adapting basic projection equipment. Their working dynamic sought immediate social impact, linking cinema and politics within the framework of a “third” or liberation cinema that acknowledged the legacy of Latin American filmmakers like Birri, Solanas, and Getino, as well as others from Brazil and Cuba.