The story
Founded by Miguel Machinandiarena in 1937.1
Estudios San Miguel was founded and owned by Miguel Machinandiarena (1899–1975).
Machinandiarena was a Basque from Navarre who had emigrated to Argentina in 1915.
His family was very wealthy, had large real estate investments and controlled the Casino de Mar del Plata.
Miguel Machinandiarena founded the company in 1937 with his brothers Narciso and Silvestre and began to build the studios and laboratories in the town of Bella Vista.
The studio absorbed SIDE (Sociedad Impresora de Discos Electrofónicos), which had pioneered the tango format with a trilogy of films, but failed to establish a solid business model.
In 1940 Estudios San Miguel launched its first production, Petróleo, directed by Arturo S. Mom.
Machinandiarena was one of the great promoters of the Argentine film industry.
For a while the studio was one of the largest Argentine film companies.
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The Italian director Catrano Catrani, who emigrated to Argentina in 1937, became artistic director of the studio.
He and other directors at the studio were assisted by Catrani's wife, Vlasta Lah, who later directed Las furias (1960) and Las modelos (1963).
The set designer and later director Ralph Pappier designed the sets of La guerra gaucha (1942), En el viejo Buenos Aires (1942) and Madame Bovary (1947).
In 1944 Pappier created the first special effects department for the studio.
Pappier and Homero Manzi made Pobre, me madre querida in 1948.
The Peruvian poet and author César Miró was a technical adviser at the studio from 1944 to 1953, when he moved to Paramount Pictures in Hollywood.
The future producer and director Hector Olivera joined the studio as an assistant in 1947.
Later he moved to Artistas Argentinos Asociados and then became a co-founder of Aries Cinematográfica Argentina in 1956.
The scriptwriter, producer and director Enrique Carreras joined the studio when he was very young.
He later founded the Productora Cinematográfica General Belgrano in 1949 and directed his first film, El mucamo de la niña in 1951.
The studio's last production was released in 1952. As of 31 December 1954 the studio had a debt of more than six million pesos.
From Wikipedia’s article on Estudios San Miguel, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3