Realism and representation of popular classes in the cinema of the "60s' generation". The case of Los Inundados

This article is an inquiry on the representation of popular, lumpen and marginal sectors in the Argentinian film Los inundados of Fernando Birri, one of the most significant works of what Argentinian film criticism and history has labeled the "sixties generation". The hypothesis that serves as a starting point is that the type of formal and expository treatment articulated by the film constructs a more fluid and mobile representation of the popular and marginal sectors than the ones attained until then by contemporary Argentinian cinema. Furthermore, film representation of marginality is compared with the representations derived from the sociological research and theory of that period of time. The confluence of the representation of marginality of both fields provides a framework to understand the relative innovation of the approach on the subject configured in Los inundados.