Cinema, Modernization, and Science
The Rockefeller Foundation Documentary Harvest
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48162/rev.48.001Keywords:
Documentary film, propaganda, philanthropy, agriculture, Green RevolutionAbstract
In 1962 the Rockefeller Foundation (FR) released the documentary Harvest, designed to disseminate the scope of the agricultural programs that, since the 1940s, had been initiated through collaborative agreements with different Latin American countries. Harvest addressed a specialized audience –in the United States– made up of government personnel and private agencies dedicated to international technical assistance, as well as scientists and students from the agricultural field. It was, therefore, an internal propaganda campaign that privileged the cinema as a diffuser. From transnational history, the article analyzes the conception of the documentary, its production process and its distribution. The research proposes that –appealing to the American audience– the narrative of the documentary was aimed at affirming the idea that the FR had established a model of technical assistance that could be taken up by other programs. Within the framework of the cultural diplomacy campaigns that the United States directed towards Latin America to promote of hemispheric unity, during the Cold War. Likewise, the documentary sought to demonstrate the growing role of the RF in the articulation of scientific networks and exchanges, from which a model of agricultural modernization was internationalized that in 1968 was named: Green Revolution.
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