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The cultural history of the country is enriched. Since March 1, in a decision that was made official this afternoon, the Mariano Moreno National Library (BNMM) protects part of the audiovisual archive of the writer, doctor and historian Pacho O’Donnell (Buenos Aires, 1941), who donated the raw record of the filming of the programs he had on television – on América 24, Canal (á), Canal Encuentro and Canal 26, among others – during the 2000s, and which later They were broadcast edited, with interviews with cultural personalities. “It seemed to me that it was the most accessible way for people to consult,” O’Donnell tells LA NACION. Furthermore, the response to my query was positive and convincing.” To deliver the material, the author first met with Ana Guerra, head of the institution’s Archives Department. The signing for the donation, in which the director of the BNMM participated, Susana Sotowas made today in digital form.
“There are nineteen large boxes that are already at the BNMM, in the process of classification,” says O’Donnell. There are approximately four hundred videos; There are 99 of a television show, encounters, which later became O’Donnell Archiveswhere I did interviews with a peculiarity: I told the interviewees that I was not interested in what they were going to do in the immediate future, premieres, book releases, passage of laws, sports competitions, but that I wanted to talk to them about their lives and ideas. . They are timeless interviews”. O’Donnell was Secretary of Culture of the Nation between 1994 and 1997.
Many of those interviewed have died and the interviews have testimonial value. “Among others, there are Astor Piazzolla, Osvaldo Soriano, Mercedes Sosa, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luz, Ernesto Sabato, René Favaloro, Enrique Cadícamo, and from abroad, Paul Auster, Alain Touraine, the Nobel Prize in Literature Camilo José Cela, Roberto Gómez Bolaños, ‘Chavo’, and Carlos Saura -he points out-. I highlight the interview with Mario Benedetti that gave rise to a show, To the left of the oakwhich I presented as a tribute to the great Uruguayan poet.”
Another relevant part of the donation is all the unpublished audiovisual material that O’Donnell made to write his book about Che Guevara, Che. Fight for a better world. “I traveled through Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, France, Cuba, interviewing people who had to do with his life, from the nanny who took care of him in Alta Gracia when he was three, four years old, to Sergeant Mario Terán who murdered him in La Higuera, in Bolivia -he remembers-. In general, Che’s biographers have dealt almost exclusively with the seven years he spent in Cuba. I interviewed Mario Vargas Salinas, who is the one who ambushes Che’s column and eliminates the entire rearguard; to Gary Prado, who is the captain who captures him in the Quebrada del Churo and takes him to kill La Higuera. And there are particular pearls, such as the testimonies of Jorge Serguera, one of the guerrillas who accompanied him after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and who dealt with Che’s relationship with Perón, with very interesting revelations, such as that Che sent him, being Minister of Government, money to Perón to facilitate his first return to Argentina and which is cut short in Brazil.”
“There is also another series of interviews from the program Childhoodsthen called dand girls and boyswhere the order was for the interviewees to talk about their childhoods – says the author of The distant homelands-. We reached adolescence and I asked them what her sexual initiation had been like, a topic she didn’t talk about on television. I especially remember the ones we did with China Zorilla, Clorindo Testa, Guillermo Vilas. In that cycle, O’Donnell also interviewed Roberto “Tito” Cossa (who died in the last few hours at the age of 89), Tomás Abraham, Juan José Sebreli, Lito Cruz, Julieta Díaz, Hebe de Bonafini, Marcos Aguinis and Oscar Martínez .
Finally, the legacy includes the filming of the program SICreferring to different topics such as education, the phenomenon of the bailanta, the new Argentine cinema, the role of journalism and the world of art.
“And I donated a lot of loose material. At the National Library they have treated me very well and Ana Guerra has been very careful and has worked with great professionalism. Later I will take care of donating books, writings and articles; many of them are already on my website,” anticipates O’Donnell.
“Except for a small part of the material, which was on DVD, the rest was in a Betacam format, from television cameras of that time, and another part on VHS,” Ana Guerra tells LA NACION. The first thing to do is digitize it; It is a long process before putting it up for consultation”. The archives area and the audiovisual media area of the BNMM will work together. The institution has a collaboration agreement signed with the General Archive of the Nation, which allows the digitization of documents in audiovisual formats (such as those donated by O’Donnell).
“We are going to make a general description of the archive, with Pacho’s biography, and the different sets of documents,” Guerra concludes. After digitizing them, the BNMM Audio Library will describe all the documents on the BNMM page. Our intention is that a good part of the material can be viewed remotely, in the digital catalog, and not only in the consultation rooms.”
