Days after the biggest movie celebration of the year, a question has popped up: Was there ever a Peruvian Oscar winner?
Unfortunately, at this year’s 89th Academy Awards event, nobody from Peru was nominated. However, back in the 70s, Antonio Panta, a lighting technician on movie sets, won an Oscar for the Best Cinematography.
He was only 17 years old when he left Peru to go to the US. In 1945, without any knowledge of English, he found odd jobs, such as shoe shining. This is how he met John Wayne, the famous movie star known for his roles in Westerns.
“My dad was like his official shoe cleaner and [Wayne] took him on set,” Julia Panta told El Comercio.
Wayne took him to the Hollywood sets and introduced him to the cinematography industry. During one of Panta's visits there was a problem in the electric system and he offered to repair it. After this, a Hollywood producer invited him to be part of the technical team.
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Panta would go on to study electricity in Los Angeles and TV production in Chicago. Through the years, he took part of important productions such as “Buck Rogers,” “Battlestar,” “Mystic Warriors,” “The Exorcist II,” and other films. He described his participation in those movies as 'a fantasy world.'
One of the highlights of his career has to be when the Oscar award was given for his participation on the first Star Wars film. This is confirmed by his daughter, Julia, although the Academy Awards’ database makes no mention of Panta.
Julia tells El Comercio that when her father died in 1992, she traveled to his home in Los Angeles. It was here where she insists that she saw the Oscar award in a display case.
Not much is known about the award given to Antonio Panta, but his is certainly a story to be told on how a Peruvian immigrant with few resources made it to the Academy Awards – or at least, to Hollywood.