Photo by Chiro Castellanos, Doc Buenos Aires
Producer and director Marcelo Céspedes, a leading figure in Argentine documentary cinema and founder of the Doc Buenos Aires film festival, has died today in Buenos Aires of a lung condition at age 65. He had a solid career as a director, and also worked as a producer working with filmmakers such as Federico Birri, Andrés di Tella, Albertina Carri, and Ciro Guerra.
Born in Rosario, Argentina in 1955, he studied filmmaking at the Panamerican School of Arts in Buenos Aires. In 1986 he co-founded the production company Cine Ojo with Carmen Guarini. He directed numerous documentary films including Hospital Borda… un llamado a la razón (1986), Buenos Aires, crónicas villeras (1986), La noche eterna (1991), Jaime de Nevares: Último viaje (1995), Red Ink (1998), Ilusiones perdidas (2001), H.I.J.O.S.: El alma en dos (2002), and more recently La Ballena va llena (2014).
He also produced numerous films including Fernando Birri’s Che: ¿muerte de la utopía (1997) and Century of the Wind / El siglo del viento (1999), Andrés di Tella’s Television and Myself / La televisión y yo (2002), Federico León’s Everything Together / Todo juntos (2002), Albertina Carri’s The Blonds / Los rubios (2003), Lorena Muñoz and Sergio Wolf’s I Don’t Know What your Eyes Have Done to Me / Yo no sé qué me han hecho tus ojos (2003), Edgardo Cozarinsky’s Night Watch / Ronda nocturna (2005), and more recently Carmen Guarini’s Tie Your Plow To A Star / Ata tu arado a una estrella (2017).
Céspedes was also a co-producer of Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent / El abrazo de la serpiente (2015), which became the first Colombian film to nab an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. He taught at the Cuban Film School in San Antonio de los Baños and the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain. His worked was featured in numerous film festivals including San Sebastian, Locarno, IDFA, Havana, Leipzig, Edinburgh, and FID Marseille.
In 2001 he co-founded the Doc Buenos Aires International Film Festival with Guarini, which became an important platform for the showcasing of non-fiction cinema in South America.
