Jorge Preloran 1933 - 2009

Professor Emeritus Jorge Prelorán ’61, an alumnus and long-time faculty member of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, died in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 28, after a ten year battle with prostate cancer. A pioneer in the field of ethnographic documentary film who was a cinematic icon of his native Argentina, Prelorán was 75.

Prelorán taught at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television from 1976 until his retirement in 1994. Celebrated for developing a cinematic genre known as ethnobiography, Prelorán was the recipient of the School’s first International Cinema Artist Award, conferred at the 2008 commencement ceremony.

Born in Buenos Aires, Prelorán began making films on rituals and celebrations in rural communities in Argentina after his graduation from UCLA. In his later films, he focused on individual craftsmen who were representative figures of their far-flung indigenous cultures.

“Prelorán would begin by making long journeys into remote parts of Argentina,” wrote filmmakers David MacDougall and Lucien Taylor in the book “Transcultural Cinema” (Princeton, 1998), “gathering sound recordings of his subject's reminiscences and reflections on their lives. He would return later to shoot the film ... finally drawing upon the sound recording he had made to construct the film's voice-over soundtrack. He refined the technique in such films as "Imaginero" (1970), “Cochengo Miranda” (1974) and “Zerda's Children” (1978).

"Imaginero" was recently named one of the ten best Argentinean films of all time by a panel of the nation’s film critics.

Prelorán also directed the feature fiction film “My Aunt Nora” (1983), an Academy Award-nominated short film “Luther Metke at 94” (1979) and the seven part television series “Patagonia-In Search of its Remote Past” (1992). A departure was “Zulay, Facing the 21st Century” (1989), which was both reflective and reflexive, filmed as a dialog between Prelorán, his anthropologist wife Mabel and Zulay Saravino, a woman from Ecuador who traveled to Los Angeles to help them edit a film about her community.

Jorge and Mabel enjoyed what close friend and colleague Professor María Elena de las Carreras calls a “fecund intellectual and creative relationship.”

“He was an inspiring, generous teacher,” de las Carreras adds, “who taught hundreds of students to look at their subject matter – whether a fiction film or a documentary – with a human, compassionate eye. In his documentary work in Argentina, he gave voice to those that were rarely seen or heard on the screen, embodying the values of the Sermon on the Mount – as he modestly noted in the course on an interview with me.”

Among his many honors, Prelorán received the Golden Astor award for life achievement at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina (2005) and has also been declared a Distinguished Citizen by the City of Buenos Aires (2005). He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1971 and 1975 and a Fulbright Fellow in 1987 and 1994, and during the 1980s he was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan.

The National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives, located in the Smithsonian Institution, just decided this year to archive all Prelorán's films because of their importance to the field of anthropology. A feature length documentary film on Prelorán's life's philosophy, “Huellas y Memoria” (“Footsteps and Memory"), will be released in 2009.

Prelorán spent the years since his retirement from UCLA writing 40 profusely-illustrated in-depth biographies of colleagues and artists, many of whom were also the subjects of his films. The series, “Masters Among Us,” had not managed to find a publisher at the time of his death, but it was his hope that this landmark series of books would live after him

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made in Jorge Prelorán’s memory to the Fund for Excellence in Film, Television and Digital Media, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Development Office, 214 East Melnitz, Box 951622, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1622 or by calling 310.206.1349. Checks may be made payable to “The UCLA Foundation” with the memo reflecting: In Memory – Prelorán (Account # 3976).

Photo by Juan Tallo: Jorge Prelorán recieving the School’s first International Cinema Artist Award during commencement ceremonies 2008.

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