Popular and transnational sex. A reappraisal of the cinema of Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli (Introduction)

Abstract

When Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli began to make films in 1956, they put into a set of ruptures. They presented the nude body of the nascent actress, among other provocative elements. Over time, their cinema began to impose different aspects that challenged the norms of the time in the harsh contexts of Argentina’s dictatorial periods. Nevertheless, the duo’s films have been largely ignored by specialized critics. It was not until the eighties that they began to receive more attention. In the nineties, it made its entrance into the history of national cinema. Afterwards, it continues to be investigated from the popular point of view, and finally, it becomes part of the academic study. This monograph focuses on a new phase in Sarli-Bó’s film criticism, marked by the publication of the book Violated Frames. Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli's Sexploits (2022), by Victoria Ruétalo.

We have entitled “Popular and transnational sex. A re-evaluation of the cinema of Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli,” and it will allow us to analyze the foundations of a type of cinema with gender, queer, and decolonial approaches, which also privileges the study of music. Director Armando Bó and his star Isabel Sarli were pioneers of a phenomenon that would later be copied and imitated by others. They produced their works with relatively small production companies, which then spread throughout Latin America and the United States, generating a trail of replicas, tributes, and intertextualities. Although censorship, at a local level, did not stop persecuting them, the duo continued to spread and triumph throughout the Americas.