Argentine writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky died Sunday at the age of 85.
Tributes poured in for the artist. “Edgardo Cozarinsky has died, and it’s as if many people left with him. He was a writer, a filmmaker, a playwright, an actor, a milonga dancer, an intelligent, kind and talented guy,” wrote Argentine writer Pedro Mairal on the X social network.
A wake took place at the National Library in Buenos Aires, as informed by those close to the deceased.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1939, the intellectual authored 27 literary works, chief among them La novia de Odessa ("The bride from Odessa"), Lejos de dónde ("Far from where), Vudú Urbano ("Urban Voodoo," with a prologue from Susan Sontag and Guillermo Cabrera Infante) and En el último trago nos vamos ("We’re leaving with the last drink"), which earned him the Hispanic-American Short Story Award of the Fundación García Márquez in 2018.
During his youth, Cozarinsky collaborated with the influential magazine Sur, where he began a friendship with writers Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares, and met Jorge Luis Borges.
During his filmmaking phase, Cozarinsky was also prolific, directing 23 movies and penning screenplays for 19 others.
As a writer, he published another score of works, including novels, essays and short stories.
In 1974, Cozarinsky moved to France, where he focused on film properly. He directed documentaries about such figures as Ernst Jünger and Stefan Zweig and fiction films such as Ronda Nocturna ("Night Round").
His career took him to shoot mainly in France, but also in Budapest, Tallinn, Rotterdam, Tangier, Vienna, Granada, Saint Petersburg, Seville and Patagonia, his works premiered at some of the most prestigious festivals, such as Cannes, Rotterdam, San Sebastián, Venice, Cinéma du Réel and the Berlinale.
A descendant of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who arrived in Argentina from Kyiv and Odessa in the late 19th century, Cozarinsky studied literature at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
He was exiled in Paris in 1974, where he delved into cinema and European cultural television, standing out as one of the creators of the “documentary essay” focusing on characters like Ernst Jünger and Paul Bowles, to Stefan Zweig and Jean Cocteau, among others.
In 2015, the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero distinguished him with the title of honorary professor and also with the Literary Lifetime Achievement award of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, and the Film Lifetime Achievement award of the International Mar del Plata Film Festival.
Cozarinsky returned to Argentina in 1989, and ever since he was devoted to his passion for tango, which he danced passionately, which led him to publish his book Milongas in 2007.
– TIMES/NA/AFP
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