Los inundados
(Los inundados)

Fernando Birri remarked that not all of the characters in Los inundados appear in Tire Dié but that all the characters in Tire Dié are to be found in Los inundados. Both films are indeed closely linked by their subject and their purpose, which Birri explained in the conclusion to his “Santa Fe Manifesto” (1964): “to stand face to face with reality with a camera and document it, document this underdevelopment”. Tire Dié, introduced as an “investigation film”, portrays the human geography of a marginalised area in Santa Fe Province. The train is often used as a metaphor in cinema, but here Birri reveals its most popular flipside – filming children running after the moving carriages and risking their lives to beg for a few dié (ten cents). Written as a fiction though inspired by documentary, Los inundados relies on a cast including a troupe of travelling performers and the local inhabitants. The feature film gives a picaresque account of the fate reserved for the families that fall victim to flooding, mixing an intense social critique with festive moments. In both of his films, Birri pays particular attention to the gestures of survival and the organisation of disadvantaged communities, using his camera as a tool to restore the inhabitants’ dignity. This positioned him as a path to be followed by Latin American cinema in The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. CA