Argentine Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The Argentine Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Spanish: Academia de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas de la Argentina) was an Argentine film industry association founded in 1941—during the Golden Age of Argentine cinema—as a local counterpart to the U.S. academy of the same name. The organization emerged from an initiative of the First Argentine Cinematographic Museum (Spanish: Primer Museo Cinematográfico Argentino), a film collection and dissemination project founded by Manuel Peña Rodríguez, a renowned critic at La Nación. Inspired by and based on the Hollywood organization, Peña Rodríguez conceived the Argentine Academy alongside fellow critic Chas de Cruz, a supporting member of the Museum. The Academy was founded as a non-profit organization, divided into branches that grouped members by their craft, such as directors, cinematographers, production designers, composers, and laboratory technicians, among others, with each branch electing its representatives. Like its American counterpart, the Academy presented its own annual film awards, regarded as Argentina's equivalent of the Oscars. The first edition of the awards, which honored 1941 productions, took place in 1942 and was attended by Orson Welles.