The following article originally appeared in the June/July and September issues of the French magazine Banc-Titre/Animation Stand. The following English translation by Charles Solomon was done for the December 1984 issue of Graffiti, published by ASIFA-Hollywood. This publication, in honor of the centeniarry of Quirino Cristiani's birth, also includes a new introduction and an extra paragraph about Cristiani and Disney.--Editor

Cristiani in Santa Giuletta,on November 29, 1981, when he was being honored by the local government. Courtesy of Giannalberto Bendazzi.

It was 1980, and during a festival held in Turin, Italy, I happened to have breakfast with a man I had never met before, Simòn Feldman. He introduced himself as an Argentinean filmmaker (both animation and live action: a rarity); and hearing that I was an animation historian, he added, "I bet you ignore the [fact that the] first animated feature film was made in my country." I replied that I knew about it,- but my only source was a vague mention in a clipping given to me by my excellent colleague Bruno Edera.

When back home, Feldman (who I still thank for his collaboration) sent me some photocopied press clippings he had collected about the film and the people who worked on it.

It was the beginning of research that would lead me to track down the film's director, Quirino Cristiani, who was still alive and well in Bernal, Argentina; have him invited to his home village of Santa Giuletta, Italy; and eventually publish in 1983 a book on him and his work (Due volte l'oceano-- Vita di Quirino Cristiani, pioniere dell'animazione) that reached him in time to reward him against the oblivion he had experienced during the last 40 years of his life.

Now, being the centennial of his birth, I'm happy to celebrate the anniversary by republishing this article, originally written in 1982.

Since then, very little new has been discovered about the subject (probably some of the discs that accompanied his third feature, Peludòpolis, as an Argentinean animator told me at the last Annecy Festival). The text is then still correct--and a due homage to one of our least known pioneers.

Our story begins on July 2, 1896, the day Quirino Cristiani was born in the little Italian village of Santa Guiletta, near Pavia; he was the son of Luigi Cristiani, a municipal secretary, and Adele Martinotti, a housewife. His father, unfortunately, lost his job and was unable to feed a family with five children. America, the Mecca of the poor, especially the Italian poor, beckoned; so Luigi Cristiani went off to Argentina, where he found work. The rest of the family followed. That was in 1900.

In Argentina, Quirino Cristiani did not find the Indians with feathers in their hair that he expected. Instead he found Buenos Aires, a large city that was expanding at a feverish pace. He also found friends and happiness. In his teens, the immigrant peasant discovered his love for drawing. He drew on the walls of houses; he sketched animals in the zoo; and very briefly, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts. At that time, newspapers were full of political cartoons and comic strips. Quirino began to hang around newspaper offices, where he found editors willing to publish his caricatures. So, without becoming famous, he became known.

Meanwhile, another Italian, Federico Valle (born in Asti in 1880) had come to Buenos Aires. Valle had worked for the Lumière Brothers and the Urban Trading Co. as a cameraman and documentary filmmaker. He was probably the first man to employ aerial cinematography (with Wilbur Wright, at Centocelle, near Rome, in 1909). In Argentina, he became a producer, but his first love was the newsreel. And given the Argentine love--and especially of the citizens of Buenos Aires--for political discussion and satire, what could be better than newsreels with political cartoons in them? And who better to draw them than this young man, already destined for a bright future, and ready and eager to sell his stuff at a reasonable price?