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Uruguay / All works

Short film

Como el Uruguay no hay

Ugo Ulive · 1960

Synopsis

A short film made of a collage of drawings, photographs, archive footage and newsreels, over a voice-over that is often parodic. It attacks the political class and the concentration of wealth with sarcasm; Eduardo Víctor Haedo, Martín Echegoyen, Luis Batlle Berres and Benito Nardone pass across the screen. The map of the country turns into a maté gourd, the flag into the rudder of North American imperialism, and an epilogue repeats the same images to a popular tune sung in the manner of a murga.

Context

The film is entered in the tourist cinema category of the fourth documentary and experimental film festival of the public broadcasting office: parody becomes a gesture of opposition. The festival management censors it, despite requests from critics and film enthusiasts. On 19 July 1960, in El País, Homero Alsina Thevenet hails a filmmaker who “se juega en lo que dice” as no one before him had in Uruguayan amateur cinema, and notes his bitter humour.

Who it is for

A short film in Spanish, made of collages and animation, satirical in tone, about Uruguayan politics in 1960.

Prizes and reception

Censored by the festival for which it was intended, it is thought to be a precedent for the political censorship that struck Uruguayan cinema in the late sixties.

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