Miss Mary

María Luisa Bemberg (14 April 1922 – 7 May 1995) was a pioneer feminist, film writer, director and actress born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. One of the first Latin-American women film directors and a powerful presence in the intellectual Argentina of the 1970-1990. In her work, she specialized in portraying famous South American women and the Argentine upper class.

The daughter of Otto Eduardo Bemberg and Sofía Bengolea, she was born into one of the most powerful families in Argentina, as her great-grandfather, German Argentine immigrant Otto Bemberg, had established the Quilmes Brewery, Argentina’s largest, in 1888.

On October 17, 1945, she married Carlos Miguens. Following their marriage – in the midst of the Perón era – the couple moved to Spain where they had four children before returning to Argentina. In 1959 she established and managed the Buenos Aires’s Teatro Del Globo with her associated Catalina Wolff. She was one of the founders of the Mar del Plata film festival and the Feminist Union in Argentina.

In 1970, she wrote the script for Raul de la Torre “Crónica de una señora”, a successful film on the Argentinean High-class with Graciela Borges and Lautaro Murúa and in 1975 the script for Fernando Ayala’s “Triangle of Four”.

She founded her own production company (GEA) with Lita Stantic and directed her first film, “Moments”, in 1981. Among her films, she wrote and directed “Miss Mary” (with Julie Christie, 1984), Nobody’s Wife (1982), Camila (1984), about the persecution and execution of a priest and his lover ordered by Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas (nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), and Yo, la peor de todas (1990), about the life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz with Dominique Sanda, Hector Alterio and Assumpta Serna.

Her last film was De eso no se habla (1993), starring Marcello Mastroianni.She received Konex Awards in 1984 and 1991 and the Honour Konex in 2001, and multiple awards in international film festivals.

She also participated as a jury at the festivals of Cartagena, Berlin, Chicago and Venice. At the end of her life, Bemberg was working on a script, based on the story El impostor by Silvina Ocampo (a distant relative) which was made into a film in 1997 directed by her long time collaborator Alejandro Maci. She died of cancer in Buenos Aires in 1995, at age 73. —wikipedia