The Image Man
The Image Man is an ethnobiography of Hermógenes Cayo, a self-taught woodcarver and painter who lives on the high Andean plateau of Argentina. The film portrays Hermógenes, his wife Aurelia Kilpe, and their children in their Andean lifestyle, as well as Hermogenes’ passion for painting, carving, building, and his devotion to the Virgin Mary. The film does not follow a traditional narrative structure, transitioning between themes and revisiting earlier themes later. In this way the film weaves a portrait of Hermógenes Cayo, the craft of image making, an indigenous Catholicism, as well as portraying the lifestyle of a solitary Andean family braving the harsh conditions of their surroundings. The relationship between individual and culture, as well as cultural change, is artfully expressed by Prelorán.
Directors
Jorge Prelorán
Filmmaker Jorge Prelorán was born May 28, 1933 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His father, an engineer, was Argentine and had studied in the United States where he met his wife, an American. Prelorán grew up speaking both Spanish and English and had dual citizenship. Initially pursuing a career in architecture, he studied both in Argentina and the United States and worked for a time as a draftsman. He made his first film, Venganza, with neighborhood friends in 1954. The film won the Beginner’s Festival of Cine Club Argentina that same year. In 1956 Prelorán was drafted into the US Army and served in West Germany until 1958. Upon his return he changed educational plans and began formal study of filmmaking, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Motion Pictures from UCLA in 1960.
Prelorán’s professional career as a filmmaker began in 1962 with a commission from the Tinker Foundation of New York for a series of films on the Argentine gaucho. From 1963-1969, Prelorán was under contract at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán to produce educational films; he also produced a…