The first thing to say about Homer Alsina Thevenet —or HAT, for its acronym; that’s how he signed—it’s because he was Uruguayan, son of the teacher Judith Thevenet and the theater critic Eugene Alsina. He was born one hundred years ago, in Montevideo, on August 6, 1922. They say that his vocation as a film critic began with a broken collarbone: one night without lights in 1934 he was run over by a cyclist. His father, to encourage him, gave him a free pass to the neighborhood cinema. He was 12 years old.
Since then, the screen has become a window to the world of the imagination, of the impossible, but at the same time of everything that could happen if ingenuity and sensitivity shook hands. She began to analyze every movie, every scene, every line of dialogue. And she began to write. His career as a film critic began in the Uruguayan magazine Cinema Radio News of Rene Arturo Despoueywhom he always considered his teacher. He was 15 years old.
continued in the weekly March and in 1954 he began to work on the entertainment page of the Uruguayan newspaper The country. He later settled in Argentina where he wrote for the Primera Plana magazine and the Abril publishing house, but with the 1976 military coup he had to go into exile in Barcelona. He returned in 1984 to be Head of Shows for the newspaper The Reason and after Page 12. In 1989 she returned to Montevideo and founded The Cultural Countrycultural weekly The countrywhich he directed for 17 years, until his death.
He got several awards. In 2002 he was awarded the Silver Condor for his career by the Association of Cinematographic Chroniclers of Argentina. He also received the Book Legion Prize awarded by the Uruguayan Book Chamber. He was a pioneer in many aspects and even today he is an inescapable reference when it comes to writing and thinking about the seventh art. In the place Other Cinemas They assure that “he was the most important Spanish-speaking film critic.”
In 1975 he published American sound films and the Hollywood Oscars, one of the first books in Spanish on the subject. That could be a milestone, but his view of the cinema is much earlier. In 1942 she interviewed Orson Welles: he was the first Hispanic-American journalist to do so. Ten years later he saw Youth divine treasure of Ingmar bergman and was fascinated. In 1964 he published, together with Emir Rodriguez Monegalthe book Ingmar Bergman, a film playwright.
Bill Fernando Martin Pena in a 2011 interview with Clarion: “He was very careful with the prose and self-demanding with the quality of the information. He achieved a very direct and intense relationship with the public, and showed that a national newspaper could change people’s film culture. He supported auteur films that had no chance of distribution and got them released. Thus he modified reality from a means of communication”.
He published several books: film chronicles (1973), violence and eroticism (with S. Feldman Y A. Mahieu1974), Chaplin, all about a myth (1977), The film censorship book (1977), Texts and manifestos of cinema (with J. Romaguera1980), An encyclopedia of useless data (1986), Second Encyclopedia of Useless Data (1987), cinereadings (1990), From creation to first sound: history of american cinema (1993) and movie stories (2007).
In 2011, Martin Pena, Elvio Gandolfo Y Alvaro Buela investigated his journalistic work and built the incomplete works, in three volumes and four books: I, II A, II B and III. They are articles that were never reprinted and unpublished materials that they found among his personal papers and his correspondence. All written between 1965 and 2005 in Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Montevideo. Perhaps this is the best way to approach his thoughts, his very particular approach to him.
“He was a heavy smoker until he was 80 years old, he liked to imitate grouch marxand his generosity and willingness to be consulted were highly appreciated by several generations of journalists who took him on as a teacher, a position he fully enjoyed,” wrote Gandolfo, who worked with him for many years on The country— on the back cover of movie storiesthat posthumous book published by El Cuento de Plata in 2007.
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