Feature film
Portrait of Teresa
Retrato de Teresa
Pastor Vega · 1979
Synopsis
In Havana, Teresa, a textile factory worker and mother of three boys, gets through cooking, washing and housework every morning before leaving for work, then rehearses in the evening with an amateur dance group preparing for a competition. Ramón, her husband, a television repairman, puts up badly with her late returns and would like her to stay at home. At a union meeting, she complains that men do not help at home and that the nursery has been waiting too long to be repaired.
Context
The screenplay, written by Ambrosio Fornet and the director, starts from the family code adopted in 1975, which asks men to share domestic tasks and childcare when their wife works outside the home. Daisy Granados, wife of Pastor Vega, plays the title role opposite Adolfo Llauradó, under the camerawork of Livio Delgado. Released in Havana in the summer of 1979, the film drew two hundred and fifty thousand spectators in two weeks, the largest audience since Memorias del subdesarrollo, and opened a wide debate on the place of women; Margaret Randall reports that Cuban women used it, like the code, to defend their rights.
Who it is for
More than an hour and forty minutes, in Spanish and in colour. It is better to know that a Cuban law of 1975 required husbands to take their share of the housework.
Prizes and reception
Best actress award for Daisy Granados at the eleventh Moscow festival, in 1979, and an immediate success with the public in Cuba.
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