Narcisa Hirsch is a pioneer film-maker in the context of the Argentine avant-garde, an art scene dedicated in the mid 1960s to radical aesthetic ventures. Over several decades, the native German (*1928 in Berlin) has built up a body of work that covers a conceptual and aesthetic spectrum achieved by few other film-makers in Latin America. Having actively participated in numerous happenings and artistic experiments, Hirsch, who originally worked as a painter, positioned herself as a cross-genre film-maker in the 1970s.
In her pioneering work for structural film, she adopted a political perspective on gender issues, paving the way for a new generation of experimental women film-makers through the poetic impulse that characterizes her images. Under the Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983), the Goethe Institute in Buenos Aires offered her the artistic freedom that she may not have found without this institution.
Sven Pötting (kinolatino.de) and Sonja Hofmann