Cinema
Ukamau
Jorge Sanjinés · 1966
Synopsis
On the Island of the Sun, in Lake Titicaca, Andrés Mayta, an Aymara peasant of the community, has gone to sell his produce in Copacabana. During his absence, the mestizo merchant Rosendo Ramos assaults and rapes his wife Sabina; before dying, she has time to name her attacker to her husband. Andrés Mayta stays silent, despite the assemblies where the community talks about the crime, asks nothing of the authorities and goes back to the land. He waits.
Context
The film is shot in black and white for the public film body, from a screenplay by Sanjinés and Óscar Soria, with music by Alberto Villalpando; it runs for seventy-two minutes and is spoken mostly in Aymara, with Vicente Verneros in the role of Mayta. Its title means “that's how it is” in Aymara, and the group the filmmaker founded took its name from it. David Wood reads it as an allegory: Mayta stands for the most exploited class, and the greedy mestizo for the last link in the chain.
Who it is for
In subtitled Aymara, seventy-two minutes, with spare editing. The rhythm follows that of work on the land, not that of the story.
Prizes and reception
A landmark in the history of Bolivian cinema; on its release, the press called its makers enemies of the homeland, and the Barrientos government removed the filmmaker from the Institute.
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