BY EMIL TIEDEMANN
Prolific Argentine film legend Jorge Preloran died late last month (March 28) in Los Angeles, after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer.Preloran, who was exactly two months away from his 76th birthday when he passed, was born in Buenos Aires, where he began his journey into pioneering ethnobiographic film, which are documentaries about scientifically-explained human culture.
He left his homeland to study film at UCLA, graudating in 1961, and later became a prominent professor at the university's School of Theater, Film & Television, where he taught for nearly 20 years (1976-94).
Perhaps Preloran's greatest contribution to the art was 1969's Hermogenes Cayo (Imaginero), which he directed and co-wrote, and which was recently voted as one of the top 10 Argentine movies of all-time. Over the next decades Preloran directed more than a dozen other films, including Painted Hands (1971), The Pump (1978), and his final feature My Aunt Nora (1983), as well as the 7-part TV series Patagonia-In Search of Its Remote Past (1992).
Once invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan, Preloran served as a Fulbright scholar during 1987, and again in '94, and was also honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at Argentina's 2005 Mar del Plata Film Festival. Preloran, who retired by 1994, also recieved the first International Cinema Artist Award, just last year.
A feature documentary of Preloran's life and career is slated for a release later this year, titled Huellas y Memoria (Footsteps and Memory). He leaves behind a wife, Mabel.
No comments:
Post a Comment