Cinema
A Man, When He Is a Man
El hombre cuando es hombre
Valeria Sarmiento · 1982
Synopsis
In Costa Rica, the director questions men of all ages about what love means to them, and edits their answers together with boleros and excerpts from classic love films, according to the Harvard Film Archive. Memoria Chilena sees in it a documentary about the power relations that subjugate women in Latin America, extending to violence and polygamy; Women Make Movies speaks of a film with a dark humour about the social climate and the traditions that feed machismo and the domination of women.
Context
Shot in Costa Rica and co-produced with France and West Germany, according to the Harvard Film Archive, the film runs for about an hour. Memoria Chilena reports that the Costa Rican embassy in Paris complained about it. Malcolm Arth, of the Margaret Mead festival, sees in it an astonishing work that brings out the comedy of the male pose. Long little shown, the director's documentaries have received renewed critical attention in recent years.
Who it is for
A documentary of about an hour, funny and biting; distributed in English under the title A Man, When He Is a Man.
Prizes and reception
Acclaimed at the Margaret Mead festival in New York, and rediscovered along with all of its director's films.
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