The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving animated feature, however, animated cinema has existed for an entire decade before. In 1917, Argentine animator Quirino Cristiani put together El Apóstol, or The Apostle, released in Buenos Aires on November 9th, the film was a political satire that featured the Argentine President of the time Hipólito Yrigoyen, and it was well received by critics at the time. It had some controversy, and the film was made with cutout animation. The movie is also completely lost, as most of Cristiani's work was destroyed in two separate fires, with El Apóstol being destroyed in a 1926 fire at the studio of the film's producer, Federico Valle. Lost media is truly fascinating, because you have to use your imagination to really figure out what it could be like, so I thought it would be fun to imagine, take some guess work, speculate even.
The big thing that needs to kept in mind is that, this movie is directly influenced by Argentine history, or Argentine Current Events at the time. So in order to really guess at what this movie could have been like, I have to answer a few questions; Who was Hipólito Yrigoyen? And the most important one, what is the plot of this movie? I'll be honest, Argentinian history is not entirely my forte, I don't even know which things I should refer to as Argentine or Argentinian, needless to say I am a bit out of my depth here, but I wanted to speculate and talk about lost media and animation history, so that's what I'll be doing now.
So, first question; Who was Hipólito Yrigoyen?
Hipólito Yrigoyen, was the two-time president of Argentina, serving from 1916 until 1922, and then again in 1928 and 1930. He was of the Radical Civic Union, or Unión Cívica Radical, which is a Centrist and Liberal political party in Argentina. Yrigoyen was first to be elected under the Sáenz Peña Law, which guaranteed secret and compulsory voting. He was also a nationalist president, convinced that Argentina had to have control of it's transportation, energy and oil, as well has manage its own currency. He also decided to keep Argentina out of World War I and was nicknamed Peludo, which translates of "Furry" or "Armadillo"? Someone correct me on that. Things didn't entirely go well as his second term ended in a military coup in the September Revolution, which was mostly started when the Yrigoyen government took power from the legislature and cut off support for the Conservative, and this lead to what is called the "Infamous Decade", why does world history have to be so messy and problematic? Okay, I think I'm making this more complicated than I should be, to put it basically, Yrigoyen was the leader of the Radical Party in Argentina, and was outed in his second term in 1930.
With that context, what is the plot of El Apóstol?
So I am basically going to be reading the plot summary off of Wikipedia here, I would have loved to read the books Wikipedia cited, those would be Giannalberto Bendazzi's 1995 book "Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation" and his 2017 book "Twice the First - Quirino Cristiani and the Animated Feature Film", however I am unable to read or acquire either book at the moment. I do apologize for this, I would love to do a more thorough detailing of this topic, because it deserves proper detailing, but I have limits, and a lot of that is budget and availability. I won't quote Wikipedia word for word, but I'm going to be fully transparent here. Maybe I'll rewrite this if I get a chance to read those books.
Anyway, as said before, El Apóstol is a satire based on Hipólito Yrigoyen, dubbed "El Peludo", where he has a dream about speaking with the gods of Olympus and using Zeus' lightning bolt to destroy Buenos Aires, cleansing it of immorality and corruption. I imagine this would have been a very dialogue heavy movie, because I skipped over a bit of stuff, but the gist is there. So this begs the question, what is the movie really saying?
I think this is where my limited resources can bite me in the butt here, because the small Wikipedia summary only gives me that, the summary. I have to wonder if the movie is portraying Yrigoyen as having delusions of grandeur or as being reckless and careless, maybe both? Maybe it's saying that his goals are only possible in his dreams, or that he will end up destroying Argentina? I think the only way I could really know for certain is if I saw it in Argentina at the time.
That brings me to my ultimate conclusion, I don't think I would like El Apóstol if I saw it today. There is a certain disconnect between me and Argentinian politics and history that I feel would really keep me from understanding this movie. It kind of reflects my views on Momotaro, which my affection for was entirely based around its historical significance, rather than it being a great, or even a good movie. Momotaro was also propaganda that reflected the views and political scene at the time, and likewise there is a pretty decent disconnect between then and now, and I believe there is probably a bigger disconnect between American audiences and Argentina than there is with Japan.
Should El Apóstol be found? Well I think it's unlikely it will be found, the only known copy of the movie was destroyed in a fire in the 1920s, but if there is a chance, I do think it is worth uncovering, again for the historical significance more than anything else. That being said, I can't help but think that maybe it's not a bad thing we can't watch this movie. It's practically mythology at this point, and seeing the reality would probably destroy a lot of that. I can't imagine this movie is something that would really resonate with modern audiences, either outside of or within Argentina, but at the same time it would give us a look at animation history and Argentinian history, so maybe it would have some value at the end of the day.
This was a big effort for me, and I can't say I'm super satisfied with the end result, but I got to stop working on it at some point, or I'll just keep working on it until I die. If I get the opportunity I'll probably revisit this topic in the future, but right now, I hope I spread a little knowledge about animation history, and I can safely say, I will never do a blog like this again.
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