Julio Lencina

Who is Julio Lencina?

Julio Lencina is a cinematographer and director from Argentina who is known for his work in the cinematic world of the Andes.

Lencina's first job was as assistant cameraman on the film Palo y hueso, directed by Nicolás Sarquís and starring Héctor da Rosa and Miguel Ligero. Lencina went on to work with E. Stagnaro, Ricardo Wullicher, Mario Sábato, Valladares and others as director of photography. He worked on Los perros hambrientos and Yawar Fiesta, based on the novel by José María Arguedas and both directed by Luis Figueroa, as well as Chuquiago made in Bolivia by Antonio Eguino. He was cinematographer on the 1977 movie ¡Fuera de Aquí!, directed by the Bolivian Jorge Sanjinés, which explores the roots and process of exile. It tells of the struggle of indigenous Bolivian peasants against imperialist invaders, including evangelical U.S. missionaries and a multinational mining corporation.

Lencina co-produced with Sasha Menocki the 1988 Verónico Cruz: La deuda interna. The movie, directed by Miguel Pereira, describes the life of a young boy whose mother died in childbirth, and whose father left soon afterward to seek work in the city. The boy is brought up by his grandmother up in a mud hut in the mountains, almost entirely cut off from the outside world. He is befriended by a schoolteacher, who eventually takes him on a journey to try to find his father. The movie has been described as naive and achingly slow, but also "very pretty", and "handsomely photographed in sunlight so clear that the shadows of clouds moving across hillsides stand out in sharp relief".