The golden age of Latin American Cinema — 2 Ep. Serie

A documentary directed by Ramon Suarez.

Synopsis

The Serie is com­posed by the two fol­low­ing episodes :

The golden age of the Mex­i­can cin­ema: Dolores Del Rio

This Mex­i­can story began at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, in France, in 1946. That year, a Mex­i­can film was awarded the Palme D’or which advised the world of cin­ema and the pub­lic that some­thing had changed in Mex­ico. That film, called “Maria Can­de­laria” had been made by Emilio Fer­nan­dez and the main part was played by Dolores Del Rio. Many in the pub­lic were sur­prised to find out that the superb actress, play­ing a tragic fig­ure, beau­ti­fully filmed by Gabriel Figueroa, was one of the favourite and most exotic actresses in the Amer­i­can cin­ema indus­try .She starred in Raoul Walsh’s and King Vidor’s movies but also played in a large num­ber of musi­cals in the Hol­ly­wood way… The film swept the prizes at many film fes­ti­vals, and Dolores became an icon.

The golden age of the Cuban cinema

In March 1959, will be cre­ated in Havana the ICAIC, the Cuban Insti­tute of Art and Cin­e­mato­graphic Indus­try. It is the first act of the cul­tural pol­icy of the new mode. Dur­ing the ten years which will fol­low, under the aegis of this orga­ni­za­tion the Cuban cin­ema makes incred­i­ble great strides. With the ICAIC, a new gen­er­a­tion of sce­nario writ­ers emerges and is put at the work – of Gutier­rez Alea in Hum­berto Solas — of Alberto Roldan in Julio Gar­cia Espinosa. The films which these young real­iz­ers will make con­cern nei­ther a school, nor of a kind. It acts of a pop­u­lar cin­ema in its gaso­line and its accounts. For­eign real­iz­ers will also come them to work in Havana for this period: Chris Marker, Joris Ivens, Agnes Varda, Armand Gatti will turn to Cuba. It is the his­tory of this excep­tional adven­ture — which lasted eight years — that we will tell in this doc­u­men­tary, inter­fer­ing inter­views and extracts films.