Cardini 50mm film(1896–1896)

The technical history of early Argentine cinema has traditionally been thought of as a chronology of imported devices – an assortment of foreign apparatus that arrived in the country at the turn of the twentieth century, which were used to produce the first national cinematographic recordings. However, as in other Latin American countries, there were, indeed, locally produced pioneering inventions that have unfortunately been lost in the mists of time, after being rapidly superseded by more market-dominant technologies. Among the local cinema pioneers, who challenged this foreign technical dependence, was Eugenio Cardini who stands out as one of the earliest to emerge.

The son of a leading iron furniture industrialist, Cardini showed an early interest in photography and cinematography while still a student at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, and began visiting a photography store, the Casa Lepage, just across the street from the college. Casa Lepage was one of the very first retail businesses to sell cameras and film supplies in Argentina – it became the birthplace of an Argentine national cinema, producing some of the first domestic images and newsreels from around 1897. Through this meeting place, Cardini established, and maintained, close relations with other pioneering Argentine filmmakers, such as Max Glücksmann, Eugenio Py and, indeed, the Casa’s owner Enrique Lepage himself. 

In the winter of 1896, after seeing Edison's “prodigious” Kinetoscope in a parlor on Florida Street, Buenos Aires, Cardini set about designing his own motion picture film camera that, although rudimentary, was one of the very first built in South America. His camera used unperforated 50mm film – unlike the perforated 35mm film used in Edison’s Kinetoscope machines – and was functional enough to shoot some brief test footage, although there is scant evidence to suggest that Cardini was able to print, or project, this footage. Sadly, Cardini’s groundbreaking device has been almost completely overlooked by Argentine film historiography, and today he is largely remembered for his other accomplishments, having shot some of the country’s earliest films with a Lumière camera which he purchased in Paris in October 1897. Currently, six of his short films, filmed in 1902, are partially or fully preserved, including documentary footage, in addition to the first two fiction films shot in the country: Escenas Callejeras and En casa del fotógrafo, in which he experimented with innovative narrative devices.

But Cardini's camera may not have been the only one built in the country at such an early date. In his unpublished memoirs, the itinerant businessman Federico Figner claims that during a stay in Buenos Aires, in January 1896, taking advantage of a batch of raw film he had bought to shoot for his Kinetoscope show, he decided to build his own film camera along with a film perforator and a device to develop and print the negatives. According to Figner, he finally succeeded after two months of hard work. He started by filming some scenes of cars and passers-by moving through the city streets. Shortly after, Figner accepted a request from the famous clown Frank Brown, who invited him to the city of Rosario to show films in his circus. According to research by Brazilian historian Paulo Roberto Ferreira (1986) – who had access to Figner's memoirs in Brazil – and information gathered by various sources since then, the films were shot and screened between March and April 1896, that is, at least three or four months before those of Cardini. However, the first press reports of these screenings date to November 1896. On November 15, the newspaper El Orden advertised a show by Frank Brown's company in the city of Rosario, in which “the exhibition of the ‘Cinematógrafo Argentino’, directed by Professor Mr. Figner" was scheduled (El Orden, November 15, 1896). On the November 24, El Diario de Buenos Aires announced that “new views taken from various social events in Buenos Aires, a variety of moving pictures of the Plaza de Mayo and different groups of carriages will begin to be exhibited at Figner's cinematograph on Florida Street between Piedad and Cangallo” (El Diario, November 24, 1896). Towards the end, the ad mentions that “the new views must be of interest, since they have been taken with the only device that has arrived in the Capital”, raising the question of whether it was in fact the same device allegedly created by Figner.

Regardless of which camera was built first, the mere existence of either of them would rewrite the established chronology of early filming and projection in South America. However, the loss of both devices and the absence of any other primary sources relating to these early local inventions, prevent us from reaching definitive conclusions.