Jorge Prelorán

Jorge Ricardo Preloran (May 28, 1933 – March 28, 2009) was an Argentine filmmaker and a pioneer in ethnobiographic film making.

Life and career Preloran was born in Buenos Aires to an Argentine father and an Irish American mother. He made a short film, Venganza, in 1954, and left Argentina to enroll at UCLA, graduating with a film studies major in 1961. Holding dual citizenship, he served with the U.S. military in West Germany. He began a career as a filmmaker in 1961, when the Tinker Foundation offered him a grant to make several films on the gauchos of Argentina. Preloran sought to redefine the genre of ethnographic films, moving away from depicting their subjects as exotic or primitive, striving to make films that, as he told Americas magazine, "do not use the people about whom they are made."

His 1969 film Hermógenes Cayo (Imaginero) was recently listed as one of the ten best Argentine films of all times.

His 1980 film Luther Metke at 94 was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Preloran taught at the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA from 1976 to 1994. In 2007 he donated his life's work to the Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution, where his films are being preserved and made available for research. The Red-Tailed Comet (1971) (Edited by Preloran; Photography by Francisco Contino) Remate en Estancia (1971) Claudia (1972) Valle Fertil (1972) The Ona: Life and Death in Tierra del Fuego (1973) (Photography and Editing by Preloran; Directed by Ann Chapman and Ana Montes de González) Cochengo Miranda (1974/1979) Los Hijos de Zerda (Zerda's Children) (1974/1978) The Warao People (Los Guarao) (1974) La Iglesia de Yavi (1977) La Maquina (The Pump) (1978) Luther Metke at 94 (1979) (Co-directed by Steve Raymen) Castelao (1980) Héctor di Mauro, Titeritero (Héctor di Mauro, Puppeteer) (1980) Mi Tia Nora (My Aunt Nora) (1983) (Screenplay by Mabel Preloran) Zulay Frente al Siglo XXI (Zulay Facing the 21st Century) (1989) Patagonia, en Busca de su Remoto Pasado (seven-part series) (1993) Obsesivo (Obsessive) (1994)