Margot Benacerraf
Margot Benacerraf (14 August 1926 – 29 May 2024) was a Venezuelan film director. She studied at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies, IDHEC) in Paris and is best known for her 1959 award-winning film Araya.
Margot Benacerraf
Guillermo Ramos Flamerich · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Born
- 1926. · Caracas.
- Died
- 2024. · Caracas.
- Nationality
- Venezuela.
- Occupation
- filmmaker, screenwriter, director, writer and cultural activist.
- Fields
- director.
- Education
- Institut des hautes études cinématographiques.
- Honours
- Páez Medal of Art, Order of Andrés Bello, Order of Bernardo O'Higgins, National Order of Merit, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and Order of Francisco de Miranda.
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Margot Benacerraf (14 August 1926 – 29 May 2024) was a Venezuelan film director. She studied at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies, IDHEC) in Paris and is best known for her 1959 award-winning film Araya.
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Margot Benacerraf (1926–2024) was a Venezuelan cultural activist, director and filmmaker, among other activities. The cultural activist was born and died in Caracas.
Margot Benacerraf studied at Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. The cultural activist was active in director.
Works by Margot Benacerraf are held at Museum of Modern Art. The cultural activist received National Order of Merit, Order of Andrés Bello and Order of Bernardo O'Higgins, among others.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 27 September 2026
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wikidata · Q467445 · wikipedia · Margot Benacerraf
In this article
Life and career
Life and career
Margot Benacerraf studied at Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. The field of work recorded is director. Work by Margot Benacerraf is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art. Distinctions recorded are Páez Medal of Art, Order of Andrés Bello, Order of Bernardo O'Higgins and National Order of Merit.
Margot Benacerraf was born on 14 August 1926 to Jewish immigrants in Caracas. After her graduation in literature and philosophy from the Central University of Venezuela in 1947, she won a scholarship to further her studies at Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City for three months. She then moved to France for specialized studies in cinema at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris. Benacerraf's two best known films, the 1950s documentaries Reverón and Araya, are considered "landmarks of Latin America narrative non-fiction". Reverón illustrates the life of the well-known Venezuelan painter Armando Reverón, and Araya portrays the day-to-day work of the workers of the salt mines of Araya, a village in the east of Venezuela. It was entered into the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, where it shared the Cannes International Critics Prize with Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour. Benacerraf founded the Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela in 1966 and was its director for three years consecutively. She was a member of the board of directors of Caracas Athenaeum, and in 1991, with the help of the writer and patron of the Latin American cinema Gabriel García Márquez, created Latin Fundavisual, the foundation in charge of promoting Latin American audiovisual art in Venezuela. Benacarraf died in Caracas on 29 May 2024, at the age of 97.
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Select filmography
Reverón (1952) Araya (1959)
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
2024
Margot Benacerraf died at Caracas.
Awards
Benacarraf received several decorations, among them the Venezuelan National Prize of Cinema (1995), the Order Andrés Bello twice, the Order Simón Bolivar, Order of the Italian Government, Bernardo O'Higgins Order of the Government of Chile, among others. In February 1987, Ateneo de Caracas inaugurated a movie theater named after her. In 2019, the Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts awarded Benacerraf the Paez Medal of Art 2019 for her life work.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Brueggemann, Tom. The Oldest Living Director Is a Woman — and Here Are the 24 Other Most Senior. IndieWire. 16 February 2024.
- 2.David, Parkinson. The 25 oldest living film directors. British Film Institute. 24 February 2024.
- 3.Kelly, Gabrielle. Celluloid Ceiling: women film directors breaking through. Supernoval Books. 380. 2014. 978-0-9566329-0-6.
- 4.Julianne Burton. The Women's Companion to International Film. University of California Press. 40. 1990. 978-0-520-08879-5.
- 5.Festival de Cannes: Araya. festival-cannes.com.
- 6.International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI). 12th Cannes Film Festival.
- 7.Abreu, Jesús. Cincuenta años de la Cinemateca Nacional, la memoria desapercibida. Comunicación: Estudios venezolanos de comunicación. 175 (3º trimestre). 10–13. 2016. 0798-1856.
- 8.Uricare, Joy. La ejemplar Margot Benacerraf. El Diario. 29 May 2024.
- 9.Muere Margot Benacerraf, la famosa directora de Araya. Efecto Cocuyo. 29 May 2024.
- 10.Moleiro, Alonso. Muere a los 97 años Margot Benacerraf, piedra fundacional del cine venezolano. El País América. 31 May 2024.
- 11.Caracas Virtual : Centros Culturales : ATENEO.
- 12.MARGOT BENACERRAF is one of the two recipient of VAEA's Paez Medal of Art 2019. VAEA.
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