Cinema
Alma provinciana
Félix Rodríguez · 1926
Synopsis
Don Julián, a landowner in Santander, has two children, and each loves outside their class. The daughter, back to spend her holidays in the country, falls in love with the farm's steward, which her father flatly refuses. The son, Gerardo, studies law in Bogotá, leads the life of the capital's students and meets Rosa, a peasant girl who has come to work in a spinning mill where she is mistreated. The two stories advance in parallel, one in the fields and the other in the city, and run up against the same refusal.
Context
Shot in 1925 in Santander, on the Bogotá savanna and in the capital, it was released at the Faenza theatre on 13 February 1926. The only print was kept for more than fifty years by the director's widow, which explains why it survives. The restoration revealed the use of imbibition, a dye bath that tints black-and-white film stock. The ways of the province and those of the city are shown without one being given as better, which is rare in the melodrama of the time.
Who it is for
Two hours of silent film, with Spanish intertitles. The acting and the technique are those of enthusiastic amateurs; one also watches it to see the Bogotá of 1925.
Prizes and reception
The only Colombian silent feature film to survive almost complete, and the most widely seen of that period. On its release it won a commercial film competition.