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In this investigation I have studied six feature films that centre on the Jewish- Argentine experience. This has allowed me to explore a variety of on-screen Jewish portrayals and shed light on the flux of identity in an array of sociohistorical contexts that go from the time of Jewish immigration to Argentina at the turn of the twentieth century to present-day issues related to family life. This first book-length approach to the representation of Jews in contemporary Argentine films has demonstrated that both Jewish and non-Jewish film-makers claim a place for Jews in the imagined community of Argentina and, in doing so, they rethink the discourse of argentinidad.
The first chapter provided a historical account of argentinidad vis-à-vis Jewishness and revealed that the ever-changing discourse of argentinidad, which officially surfaced in 1910, has had a profound bearing on Jewish Argentines. In a society that has constantly searched for its true self, Jewish belonging to the nation has been violently contested on several occasions, the pogrom of the 1919 Semana Trágica and the Dirty War being the most notorious instances of the challenges Jews have faced in Argentina. The chapter also mapped argentinidad in, and Jewish contributions to, the cinema of Argentina from its inception in 1896 to the advent of the New Argentine Cinema in the 1990s. It showed that whereas the marginal portrayal of cinematic Jews prior to the return to democratic rule was symptomatic of an excluding discourse of argentinidad, the increasing number of films featuring Jews since the 1990s has stemmed from a transformed argentinidad, marked by a pluralistic conception of Argentine society.
After providing this historical contextualisation, the study turned to the analysis of the films. In comparing two period films on Jewish immigration to rural Argentina, Chapter 2 focused on the mythical figure of the Jewish gaucho. The chapter questioned the foundational dichotomy between civilisation and barbarism posited by Sarmiento in 1845 and demonstrated that both films feature Jews and gauchos as civilising agents. This suggests that despite their asymmetrical power relations, both groups have contributed to the nationbuilding project. Concerning the figure of the Jewish gaucho and his masculinity, the chapter concluded that there is a clear discrepancy between the two films.
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