Feature film
Souls on the Coast
Almas de la costa
Juan Antonio Borges · 1923
Synopsis
On the coast of Montevideo, near the sands of Malvín and Buceo, Nela lives alone with her son in a fishing district, where one of the fishermen harasses her. A young man, Jorge, taken in by the people of the shore after a shipwreck, defends her and falls in love with her. But Nela falls ill with tuberculosis and must enter hospital, while Clarisa, the daughter of the doctor treating her, tries to seduce Jorge.
Context
Produced by the Charrúa company, run by the tailor Lisandro Cavaliere, the film is written with Antonio de la Fuente and shot on location, on the coast itself; as the country has no film actors, circus performers are hired, and Luisa von Thielmann plays Nela. It deals with the treatment of tuberculosis by artificial pneumothorax. The poster presents it as “the first Uruguayan film”: it is the oldest surviving fiction feature of the country. Only forty to fifty per cent of it remains; restored at the National Film Archive of Mexico, it was screened at the Montevideo festival in April 2015.
Who it is for
A silent melodrama of about an hour, partly preserved, for those who wish to see the beginnings of fiction cinema in South America.
Prizes and reception
A box-office success on its release, shown in more than fifty cinemas in Montevideo and the interior; the press then declared it the first work of national cinema.
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