Press and cinema: Memory in motion

The image as testimony. The eye of the journalist and that of the filmmaker share a common impulse: to observe what happens, to capture a moment, to construct meaning. Although they come from different universes—one driven by immediacy, the other by narrative elaboration—both languages ​​converge in the need to record, to leave a mark. The press and cinema are, ultimately, two ways of looking at the present with the eyes of the future.

A territory that saw things before others. Mendoza was a pioneer of cinema in the country, even before the major audiovisual centers were consolidated. Films were produced in this territory before the notion of a "cultural industry" even existed. Processions, floods, grape harvests, fires, and public works were filmed. Daily life was captured by rudimentary cameras that, unwittingly, were creating the first visual archive of a region. These recordings were shown in movie theaters and acted as the visual newsreels of their time: the community saw itself in motion.

Rescuing Memory. The Interactive Audiovisual Museum (MIA) was born as a response to a historical debt: preserving this valuable film heritage. These include home movies, journalistic records, institutional materials, advertisements, and documentaries that were dispersed or on the verge of being lost. Digitizing these pieces, restoring them, and re-screening them is not just a technical task: it's an act of memory. Each recovered image is a scene of our identity. Each rescued sound is a voice from the past that continues to speak.

The press as the first script. For decades, the print media was the seed of many audiovisual productions. Chronicles, reports, and opinion columns were the springboards for documentaries and fiction based on real events. In turn, newspapers illustrated their pages with stills, screenshots, and sequences from the cinematic universe. This relationship grew into a natural alliance. Cinema began to benefit from the precision of journalism , and the press adopted the tools of visual language to narrate in a different way.

From film to smartphone. Technological evolution changed the devices, but not the desire to record. The first portable cameras gave way to heavy film equipment; then came VHS, digital, and later mobile devices. Today, every one of us has a camera capable of recording in high definition in our pocket. But it's not the tool that defines the power of the message, but the intention behind the lens. What began as an act of artisanal observation has become a collective and democratized practice.

Images that persist. There are scenes that remain etched in the collective memory: the arrival of an unexpected storm, the first time a downtown street was filled with protesters, a grape harvest filmed from above, a school event captured by a family camera. These images make up an unofficial but profoundly true history. They are the visual fragments that are repeated in anniversaries, documentaries, and special programs. They are the faces of the past that continue to speak volumes.

Enriching convergences . Film and communication have converged beyond their traditional formats. Newsrooms have transformed into audiovisual studios, digital media incorporate documentary pieces, and audiovisual producers work side by side with journalists to construct in-depth stories. This complementarity enhances the best of each language: the depth of cinema and the agility of journalism, the emotion of editing and the precision of data, the voice of witnesses and the perspective of the narrator.

Educate to narrate. At FilmAndes, we believe that training new generations in the critical and creative use of audiovisual media is an urgent task. Media education, archival knowledge, and the production of content with a historical and territorial perspective are challenges that must be addressed from the present. Recovering our cinematic past also involves generating new narratives. Telling what we were, recording what we are, with the tools of the present.

A culture that tells its own story . There is no identity building without stories. And the stories that endure the most are those with substance: image, sound, context. Cinema and the press have been the great devices for a community to see itself, listen to itself, and interpret itself. Not as a nostalgic act, but as a political and cultural decision. In a time marked by an excess of empty images and a surplus of fragmented information, the challenge is to look deeply again.

Freedom and diversity of voices . This connection between cinema and the press can only fully develop within a framework of freedom. Freedom of the press and the freedom to create are fundamental pillars of any democracy. Only in societies where all voices can be expressed without fear, where dissent is not silenced, and where diversity is celebrated, is it possible to build an honest and transformative collective narrative.

Caring for this ecosystem is everyone's job . Defending spaces for creation, criticism, archives, and memory also means defending the fundamental rights of a society. Because telling stories is also resisting. And in this creative resistance, film and journalism will continue to be essential allies.