Margot Benacerraf (Caracas, 1926), Venezuelan filmmaker, documentary filmmaker, photographer and prominent cultural promoter, considered one of the pioneers of national and Latin American cinema, died this Wednesday at the age of 97. Benacerraf will be remembered, above all, for her acclaimed documentary Arayaa film released in 1959 in black and white that portrays the hard work and vicissitudes of the workers of a salt mine located in a remote coastal town in eastern Venezuela of the same name.
Araya won Benacerraf the Critics’ Prize at the Cannes Festival that year, along with the famous Hiroshima Mon Ammour, by the Frenchman Alain Resnais. Araya has been reviewed and selected several times as one of the best Latin American documentaries of the 20th century by various publications and film monitors, especially French, but also from Italy and the United States.
Daughter of immigrants of Jewish origin, Benacerraf obtained a degree in Philosophy and Letters from the Central University of Venezuela in 1947. She later received a scholarship from the Drama Department of Columbia University, in New York, after winning the dramaturgical award created by the institution, Benacerraf later went to Paris, the city in which he would definitively discover his passion for audiovisual production, upon graduating from the Institute of Higher Cinematographic Studies in Paris.
Returning to the country, in 1952, Benacerraf premiered Reveron, her first work as a director. This is a documentary that delves into the creative and mental labyrinth of Armando Reverón, Venezuelan artist, one of the most outstanding names in Latin American painting of the 20th century, famous for his eccentricities and his self-managed and completely rock lifestyle. Reverón obtained great critical success, being awarded best film at the Caracas International Art Film Festival, held that year. It was screened to acclaim at the Berlin, Cannes and Edinburgh festivals and at the Cinematheques of France and Belgium. Her work would open the doors of criticism to other deliveries.
The definitive dissemination of Araya, which took place seven years after Reverón, came with an incident that became a kind of mole for the fate of the project, with some subsequent consequences for her career as a director. Benacerraf was not satisfied with the final cut that the distributors proposed to the author, which cut the product from her original three hours to just over one hour. Amid the disagreements, the original film was lost and ended up being exhibited in Venezuela 18 years later, in 1977.
Very reluctant to media exposure, systematically refusing to grant interviews or make public appearances, despite being a highly respected celebrity in the world of national culture, Benacerraf dedicated the rest of his life to the promotion of high-quality cinema for the public of his country. In 1966, Ella Benacerraf founded the National Cinematheque, a space specialized in the universal dissemination of auteur cinema, an institution of which she was the first director. She would later create Fundavisual Latina, to promote and publicize Latin American cinema in the country.
Throughout his life, Benacerraf received, among other awards, the National Order of Merit of the French Republic and the Order of Merit of the Government of Italy; the Bernardo O’Higgings Order, in Chile; the Venezuelan National Film Award; the Andrés Bello Order of the Government of Venezuela, the Order of the Central University of Venezuela in its only class and the Francisco de Miranda Order in its first class awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Venezuela, the latter in 2018. The Art and Rehearsal of the old headquarters building of the Ateneo de Caracas -Today, the Experimental University of the Arts-, bears his name.
His death has been mourned by the entire cultural country and by some international film personalities, such as the Mexican Guillermo Arriaga, who referred to it as “cardinal point of Latin American cinema.” Benacerraf leaves, but her work remains forever.
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