Cinema
Wara Wara
José María Velasco Maidana · 1930
Synopsis
In the sixteenth century, during the Spanish conquest of Collasuyo, the Aymara part of the Inca empire, the poet Arawicu foretells the punishment of the divided Incas. After the massacre of her people, Princess Wara Wara takes refuge in the mountains and becomes the symbol of resistance; rescued from two soldiers by Captain Tristán de la Vega, the only conquistador who respects the Indians, she is bound to him by a love that the hatred between their peoples makes dangerous.
Context
Loosely inspired by La voz de la quena, a book by Antonio Díaz Villamil, the film was shot between La Paz and Lake Titicaca, with Juanita Taillansier in the title role and the painter Arturo Borda; a first cast was abandoned when the actress Ana Rosa Tornero left the shoot. Shown on 9 January 1930 at the Teatro Princesa in La Paz, it was thought lost until the director's grandson found the reels in 1989; the Bolivian Cinematheque reconstructed it over twenty years and presented it restored in 2010, with music drawn partly from Amerindia.
Who it is for
To see how Bolivian cinema of the twenties told the story of the conquest, between romance and Andean landscapes.
Prizes and reception
The press of 1930 spoke of a superproduction; the historian Carlos Mesa sees in it an idealisation of racial mixing.