El ojo del ombligo [The Eye of the Navel]

Leipzig, November 21, 1996.
Marker on paper.

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Minimalist line drawing on a white background. A thick, continuous black line forms an elliptical spiral or coil that contains a single dark black dot at its center, resembling a stylized eye.

El ojo del ombligo [The Eye of the Navel]

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Introduction

[Before the 1960s] I kept creating things, but only sporadically. Then, in the late 1960s, this kind of pictorial monster, this pictorial dragon that lives inside me, is reborn, and that dragon starts to paint again. That’s the decade of the “matérica” series […] it’s above all a rediscovery of color, a rediscovery of the painter. I paint using every technique imaginable. ¹

Widely recognized as the father of New Latin American Cinema, Argentine filmmaker, theorist, and poet Fernando Birri (1925–2017) also produced an extensive body of visual art that has remained largely unknown to the public. Created during some of his most prolific years for two-dimensional work—spanning the 1960s to his final years in Cuba and Italy—his archive contains hundreds of paintings, drawings and collages in addition to films and written materials. These works appear both as independent pieces and as sketches on documents, napkins or travel notebooks. They reveal an artist driven by a persistent impulse to create images—what he called a dragón pictórico ² (pictorial dragon)—a practice that reached beyond what language or cinema could express.

Photo of Fernando Birri working on material to be included in the experiental film ORG. Rome, 1970s.

His visual art practice, which developed in parallel to his filmmaking, offers insight into a broader conceptual vision: one that encompassed not only critical consciousness but also inner exploration, self-understanding, and the processing of personal and historical turmoil. Together, these works offer a more expansive understanding of Birri’s artistic and intellectual contributions, extending beyond the boundaries of the cinematic form.

When Birri spoke about his visual work, he described it not only as a source of sensual pleasure—a direct engagement with the materiality of drawing and painting—but also as a means of accessing transcendental knowledge, evoking primordial times or even the origin of the universe. ³ His iconography includes creation myths, mandalas, symbols and religious references, all infused with eroticism, spirituality and utopian imagination. Yet his inquiry extended beyond subject matter; he was fully invested in the processes of image-making. He experimented with light and projection, improvisational techniques and even computer-generated imagery.

Left: Studios para gran falototem: “Totem fálico propiciatorio del solsticio del 24-Jun-1976” [Studies for Large Phallic Totem: “Phallic Totem for the Solstice of June 24, 1976”]. Rome, June 24, 1976. Marker, pencil and tape on paper. Right: Totem Fálico Propiciatorio del Solsticio del 24-VI-76. Serie Faloglifos [Propitiatory Phallic Totem of the Solstice of June 24, 1976. Phaloglyphs Series]. Grottarossa, Rome, 1976. Acrylic paint or board.

Although Birri considered himself self-taught, his visual work was far from insular. He explicitly referenced a range of influences—from Expressionism to artists like Paul Klee, Joán Miró, Roberto Matta or Wassily Kandinsky. He also acknowledged more vernacular sources, including his uncle, a caricaturist to whom he credited his sense of humor, and Argentine artists such as Leónidas Gambartes, with his mythical mitoformas, and Xul Solar, who Birri met during his early years in Italy.

A ponte clandestina. Experiment Braunschweig [The Clandestine Bridge. Experiment Braunschweig]. Braunschweig, Germany, 1993. Mixed media.

Birri was also immersed in an intellectual environment that connected him both personally and professionally with many visual artists throughout his life. For example, César López Claro was the subject of one of the photo-documentaries from the Escuela Documental de Santa Fe. Together with León Ferrari and the cartoonist Oski, Birri developed a film about the founding of the city of Buenos Aires. He also made a film about Juan Carlos Castagnino’s Roman period, with a script co-written with the art historian Giulio Carlo Argan. His collaboration with the Spanish artist and writer Rafael Alberti would also span several years, including both the poster for ORG (1968-1979) and a film by Birri specifically dedicated to him.

Interrogación de las Esporas, pintado por el viento [Questioning of the Spores – Painted by the Wind]. Serie Esporas Voladoras [Flying Spores Series]. Grottarossa, Rome, July 1975. Enamel on board.

This selection is drawn from the “Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts 1925–2010” Birri donated to Brown University in 2008, and features pieces that he occasionally exhibited during his lifetime in Cuba, Italy and Germany. It is organized around four key themes that reflect different facets of his pictorial practice. The first explores the intersection of the archive, exile, trauma and image-making. The second highlights his production during the 1970s, notably in Grottarossa outside Rome, his Studiolo in the Roman neighborhood of Trastevere and during his travels to India. The third examines the relationship between painting and cinema, in particular in relation to his experimental film ORG, developed by Birri from 1968 to 1978 and released in 1979. The final section showcases his Caribbean work and two of his most significant series: the fotoglifos, paintings intended to be photographed and projected, and the glifotronics ⁴ developed using computer-based processes. Together, these sections offer insight into Birri’s visual language and the ways in which his art extended his ongoing engagement with experimentation, pedagogy and political imagination.

Agustín Díez-Fischer, Co-Curator.
Patricia Figueroa, Co-Curator.
Irene Rihuete-Varea, Researcher and Editor.

Left image: Pinturas Fernando Birri [Paintings Fernando Birri]. Havana, Cuba, 1985. Colored posterboard, cutouts. Contents note: “For the exhibit ‘Casa de las Américas.’ Designed by ‘Casa,’ on the occasion of my painting exhibition in 1985, presented by Roberto Fernández Retamar.”

Birri, Fernando. Stanford Classes [cassette]. Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts 1925–2010. Box 40, cassette brd837985_01, minute 25:50. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Ibid., minute 05:05. See also: Birri, Fernando, Espejismos del Karibe. 1992. Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts 1925–2010, Box 9, Folder 18 “Exposición de fotoglifos en Fribourg.” ↩
Fernando Birri used multiple spellings for the Spanish terms fotoglifos and glifotronics [photoglyphs and glyphotronics], which he coined to describe his own experimental visual practices. ↩

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Biography

Fernando Birri

Argentine film director, artist, theorist, educator and poet Fernando Birri (March 13, 1925–December 27, 2017), who Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez called the Gran papá del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, was a foundational figure in the New Latin American Film movement. This politically engaged cinema, advocating left-wing ideology and a renewal of aesthetic form, shaped the principles of Third Cinema, a revolutionary cinematic movement committed to social critique through the portrayal of the disadvantaged.

Photo of Birri with puppets. Santa Fe, Argentina. Undated, c. 1940s.

Before entering the world of cinema, Birri was a poet and worked in theater and puppetry. In the 1940s, he joined the poetry group Espadalirio and published his first books Horizonte de la mano (Horizon of the Hand) (1945), La húmeda orilla (The Wet Shore) (1946) and Los llamados (The Summons) (1947). In the 1950s, Birri shifted his focus to cinema as a means to articulate his commitment to left-wing political ideals. However, he felt that the government of General Juan Perón, despite supporting film production through protectionist policies, also imposed ideological limits and controlled cinematic content. Believing this undermined the industry, ¹ he left Argentina and moved to Italy, his parents’ homeland. In Rome, he studied filmmaking at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, where he was influenced by the Italian Neorealist style. During his early years in Rome, he shot his first experimental short, U-bu, and his first documentary film, Selinunte (1951), which took place in Sicily. He was trained by Vittorio de Sica and worked for him and Cesare Zavattini in their film Il tetto (The Roof) (1956).

Upon returning to Argentina in 1956, Birri was determined to create a national cinematic style based on a more realistic portrayal of the fringes of Argentine society. In his hometown of Santa Fe, Birri began his career as an educator, initially offering a four-day seminar in filmmaking. This effort soon led to the establishment of a formal cinema school—the Instituto de Cinematografía de la Universidad del Litoral, later known as the Escuela Documental de Santa Fe. The school trained students to produce socially conscious documentaries, focusing on marginalized communities and pressing social issues. As Birri stated, his goal throughout his career was “to reach the broadest audience within the popular sector.” ² There, Birri filmed the groundbreaking documentary Tire dié (Toss Me a Dime) (1959-1960), and the neorealist feature film Los inundados (Flooded Out) (1961). Both films portrayed the Argentinian underprivileged classes and denounced their precarious living conditions.

Fernando Birri with his spouse Carmen Papio Birri in the Roman Forum. Undated, c. 1960s.

A military coup in 1962 forced Birri into exile again, residing briefly in Brazil, México and Cuba in 1963, and later settling in Italy until the late 1970s. During this period, he produced ORG (1968-1979), a three-hour avant-garde film. In this imagined poetic and sensual utopia, Birri expressed his political ideology and sexuality through a blend of psychedelia and collage. While the filming of ORG took only two months, its intricate montage took ten years, eight months and fourteen days to get completed. ³

Photograph of Fernando Birri beside a foo dog sculpture. Hangzhou, China, 1964.

The 1970s marked a period of personal turmoil and self-discovery for Birri, as he wrestled with complex emotions tied to exile, identity and spiritual awakening. Amid these challenges, questions of sexuality and desire added another dimension to his search for self-understanding. He often retreated into solitude, where he compulsively wrote, drew and painted, using art as a means to explore and confront his traumas. This creative practice became a sanctuary—a space for him to process the intense emotions of alienation and transformation, allowing him to delve into questions of acceptance, selfhood and spirituality.

Upon returning to Latin America, he resumed his cinematic and educational projects, founding in 1982 the mobile poetic film school Laboratorio Ambulante de Poéticas Cinematográficas at the Universidad de los Andes in Venezuela. As part of this initiative, he filmed a documentary about the Spanish exiled poet Rafael Alberti, who also lived in Rome at the time. In 1985, together with the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, he founded the Escuela de Cine y Televisión de Tres Mundos (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. The same year he directed Mi hijo el Che (My Son Che) (1985) a film portrait based on an interview with Che Guevara’s father, Don Ernesto Guevara Lynch. Two years later, in collaboration with García Márquez, he filmed Un señor muy viejo con unas alas muy grandes (A Very Old Man with Very Large Wings), which premiered in the United States at the Sundance Film Festival. Throughout these years, Birri also wrote a book of poems, La linterna mágica (The Magic Lantern) released in 1982, in which he reflected about the relationship between cinema and poetry.

In 1995, Birri produced a documentary film for German television entitled Süden, Süden, Süden (South, South, South), followed in 1998 by El siglo del viento: un noticiero latinoamericano (The Century of the Wind: A Newscast from Latin America’), a film based on Eduardo Galeanos’s trilogy Memoria del fuego. In 1999, he published the book El alquimista democrático (The Democratic Alchemist), a compilation of multiple theoretical and poetic texts about cinema, culture and politics. During these years, his paintings and visual compositions were exhibited in multiple international exhibitions.

Series of portraits of Fernando Birri. Rome, August 25, 1999.

Birri continued his cinematic and artistic career into the twenty-first century. In 2000, he published the book of poetry Una vez la poesía (Once, Poetry) with fellow Argentinian poet Gastón Gori. He later filmed the documentary Elegía Friulana (Friulian Elegy) in 2007, an homage to his grandfather Giambatista, an anarchist bricklayer, peasant, and miller who left Italy in search of a better life in South America. His final feature film, El Fausto criollo (The Creole Fausto)—an adaptation of the nineteenth-century poem of the same name—was shot on location in the Pampa coastal region of Argentina and released in 2011.

Fernando Birri was a founder of the Fundación del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano and a Member of Honor of its Executive Board. He was a Visiting Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998, a Tinker Visiting Professor at Stanford University in 2001–2002, and a visiting professor at Tufts University in 2009. His Stanford lectures were collected in the 2005 book Soñar con los ojos abiertos (To Dream with Open Eyes). Birri has been honored at numerous film festivals around the world.

Fernando Birri passed away on December 27, 2017, in Rome, Italy, at the age of ninety-two, leaving behind a legacy that continues to influence Latin American and global cinema.

Left image: Photo of Fernando Birri in the set of the film Selinunte, Sicily, 1951.

“Fernando Birri (Argentina): The Roots of Documentary Realism.” Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers, edited by Julianne Burton, University of Texas Press, 1986, p. 3. ↩
Ibid., p. 2. ↩
Sendros, Paraná. Fernando Birri. Centro Editor de América Latina, 1994, p. 26. ↩

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Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts

Archive Overview

The Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts at Brown University Library documents the life and work of Argentine filmmaker, artist, educator and theorist Fernando Birri. Donated in 2008 and made accessible to the public in 2015, the archive comprises personal papers, manuscripts, photographs, film reels, research materials, correspondence and visual art, all organized according to a classification system devised by Birri himself. This collection reflects his dedication to documenting both his creative practice and personal history.

Acquisition History

The history behind Brown University’s acquisition of the archive dates back to the 1990s and the founding of the Providence Latin American Film Festival (PLAFF), where Birri served for several years as honorary president. In recognition of his contributions, the festival created the Fernando Birri Award, presented annually to an emerging filmmaker for their debut work. Over time, this initiative grew into an important platform in the United States for showcasing emerging Latin American filmmakers and promoting the region’s cultures through cinema.

From its inception, PLAFF maintained close ties with the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a renowned art and design institution located adjacent to Brown University. The two institutions enjoy a longstanding relationship through dual degree programs and shared resources. Birri served as a visiting professor at RISD in 1998 and maintained lifelong connections with various faculty and artists associated with RISD and other local institutions. In 2007–2008, through these connections, Fernando Birri and his wife, Carmen Papio, offered their archive as a donation to the RISD Library. Owing to space limitations, RISD coordinated with Brown University Library to house the collection, arranging the transfer of the materials from Rome to Providence, with both institutions sharing the transportation costs. Through this collaboration, the archive was processed and preserved and was ultimately incorporated into the special collections of Brown’s John Hay Library, where it is now available to the public for research and pedagogical use.

Processing and Conservation

Birri transferred the archive to Brown already ordered and classified, accompanied by an ambitious and detailed guide of his own making. Nevertheless, processing the materials proved lengthy and complex due to the breadth of formats, sizes, and conservation requirements involved. The archive includes 35mm and 16mm film reels; videotapes in various formats; sound cassettes; thousands of photographs; objects; awards and festival programmes; as well as a substantial body of documents, newspaper clippings, posters, and artworks.

The materials were rehoused in acid-free archival boxes of various dimensions following professional conservation standards. These materials are now maintained in a controlled storage environment that meets archival preservation standards for temperature, humidity, and light exposure.

Organizational Structure

Birri organized his materials into broad categories based on themes, periods and the major projects that defined his career. His manuscripts, photographs, printed documents, cassettes, newsclips, films and artworks are grouped according to what he considered their most significant connections. The arrangement of the Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts follows the classification system he created. While this system provides insight into his creative process, Birri did not always apply categories consistently. Many materials could logically belong in multiple groups, but he selected the classification he deemed most appropriate for each item.

The archive measure 129 linear feet and is divided into four major subgroups:

Escritos – Writings and manuscripts (66 linear feet)
Fotos – Photographs (17 linear feet)
Audiovisual and Objects – Film materials and personal items (24 linear feet)
Pinturas – Two-dimensional artwork (22 linear feet)

The subgroup Pinturas comprises Birri’s artwork across multiple media, including paintings, sketches, collages, photomontages, and mixed media works. His paintings and drawings are executed in a wide range of materials—from markers, pens, and pencils to watercolors, tempera, charcoal, and pastels—and vary greatly in tone and complexity, ranging from spare line drawings to bold, richly colored compositions. Across these works, Birri engages with recurring themes such as political and social critique, imagery drawn from his films, phallic symbolism, and cosmological motifs, as well as Caribbean spiritual traditions that reflect a diverse and syncretic blend of African religions, Catholicism, and Indigenous practices.

This subgroup is divided into four series, following Birri’s own classification:

Series P1: Serie Matérica – Paintings, drawings, collages and mixed media works.
Series P2: Fotoglifos – A term coined by Birri to describe visual compositions executed as drawings, paintings and collages.
Series P3: Glifotronics – Abstract digital artworks created using computer software.
Series P4: Prensa y difusión – Promotional materials for Birri’s exhibitions and artwork including posters for his own films, other filmmakers and various film festivals.

The materials at Brown University represent one of two major archival collections documenting Fernando Birri’s work. In Argentina, the Archivo Fernando Birri, established in 2021 as a cultural initiative of the Ministry of Culture of the Province of Santa Fe, preserves an extensive collection of over 400 boxes of materials at El Molino, Fábrica Cultural in Santa Fe. This archive combines two significant collections: the Sapukay Archive, originally housed in Birri’s home in San José del Rincón, and the Container Archive, transferred from Rome to Santa Fe in 1998. Beyond preservation, the Argentine archive serves as a platform for public engagement and cultural initiatives, ensuring Birri’s continued influence on cinema and artistic thought throughout Latin America.

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Bibliography

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Archivo Fernando Birri. Historia del Archivo Fernando Birri. YouTube, uploaded by Archivo Fernando Birri, 18 Apr. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4rf6a8bDwg.

———. Archivo Fernando Birri Trabajo Inventariado. YouTube, uploaded by Archivo Fernando Birri, 16 Apr. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevOznKzGxQ.

Birri, Fernando. Diario de India y Nepal 1/2: “Tras las huellas de Buda” (1979). Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts - Escritos. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:419566/

———. Viaggio in India e Nepal 2/2: “Mandalas y Poemas” (1979). Fernando Birri Archive of Multimedia Arts - Escritos. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:419570/

———. Fernando Birri: el alquimista democrático: por un nuevo nuevo nuevo cine latinoamericano. 35 años de escritos teóricos y poéticos, 1956-1991. Santa Fe, Argentina: Ediciones Sudamérica Santa Fe, 1999.

———. Fernando Birri: el alquimista poético-político: por un nuevo nuevo nuevo cine latinoamericano, 1956–1991. Madrid: Cátedra; Filmoteca Española, 1996.

———. Memoria del andarín: diario de un viaje de ida y vuelta. Spain: Mono Azul Editora, 2005.

———. “Poema en forma de ficha filmográfica.” Ic-Contornos del NO – Revista de Industrias Culturales, Año II, no. 2, Sept. 2018, pp. 103–108. Open Access. https://www.unpaz.edu.ar/sites/default/files/inline-files/9.Poema%20en%20forma%20de%20ficha%20filmogra%CC%81fica.pdf

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Redacción Clarín. “Birri: ‘Mi patria son mis zapatos, pero las suelas son de Santa Fe.’” Clarín, May 30, 2004. Updated December 27, 2017. https://www.clarin.com/ediciones-anteriores/birri-patria-zapatos-suelas-santa-fe_0_rJoMvphkRtl.html.

Ruffinelli, Jorge. El Mismo, El Otro: Glifostanfordtroniks de Fernando Birri. Stanford University: Bolívar House, Center for Latin American Studies, Spring 2004.

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Sendros, Paraná. Fernando Birri. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1994.

Vieites, María del Carmen, and David Blaustein. Fernando Birri: la primavera del patriarca. Buenos Aires: Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducrós Hicken; Altamira, 2004.

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