Jorge Di Lauro

Biography

Jorge Di Lauro born on December 13, 1919 in Argentina, Buenos Aires. In 1936 he graduated from the University of Buenos Aires as a civil engineer. He immediately travels to the United States and enters the Film School of Southen University, California, and later to the School of Electrical Engineering, where two years later he obtains a Bachelor's degree in the specialty, which allows him to join the RCA Recording Studios in Hollywood. In 1939 he returned to Argentina and worked as sound director at the San Miguel Studios in Buenos Aires. He fulfills these functions in the famous film by Lucas Demare, La Guerra Gaucha (1942), which earns him a distinction as soundman. He arrives in Chile in 1944, hired by the state-owned production company Chile Films to fulfill the same function, a position in which he remains for several years, being responsible for the sound of more than twenty titles, including fiction and documentary films, both for the state-owned production company and for independent filmmakers. Married to the actress, filmmaker and multi-talented artist Nieves Yankovic, all his later work is linked to her, with whom he manages to establish a perfect communion not only sentimentally, but also artistically and ethically, which is rare in the national film industry. Of their work together, the celebrated documentary Andacollo stands out, which critics have pointed out as an essential title in the development of local documentary filmmaking. In 1974, while filming the documentary "Año Santo Chileno", he was arrested by orders of the military dictatorship. His cameraman, Jorge Müller, was taken to torture centers, his trail was lost and he is not heard from again to this day. The impact of this disappearance means that the filmmaking duo never films again. He then focused on teaching, and later on trade union activities. Together with his wife, he cultivated in what he did what they called "the sanctity of the trade", faithful to his Christian and humanist convictions. He died on May 16, 1990.