ABSTRACT
This paper explores the relations between the film that ushered a new era of political documentary filmmaking in Argentina - Fernando Birri and the Santa Fe Documentary School's Tire dié [Throw me a dime] (1960) - and development theories, which sought to produce 'underdevelopment' as an object of knowledge within the geopolitical context of the late 1950& Tire dié draws its title from a sequence showing dozens of shantytown children shouting this phrase while running alongside a train. Instead of situating the conditions for the making of Tire dié strictly within the trajectory of Argentine cinema's political radicalization, this article links them to development theories originating in the US and in supranational institutions. Although focused on development, these theories also defined underdevelopment by elaborating a series of premises, equivalencies and symbols. When adopted and modified by Argentine political discourse, these theories came to constitute a new prism through which to examine and show social and economic marginality, equating it with underdevelopment. This article demonstrates that Tire dié deploys a documentary gaze on social and economic marginality that, while taking up characteristic categories of development discourse, both subverts its original connotations and critiques the false promise embodied in capitalist development.
