Cinema
Flores del valle
Máximo Calvo Olmedo · 1941
Synopsis
A young country girl, whom her family has had carefully educated, is presented to city society. The film opens on this evening: she plays the violin before an assembly that judges her. Around her cross women of the Cauca valley, those of the houses and those of the fields, and songs written for the occasion punctuate the story. What she has learned separates her from her own people without letting her into the others' world.
Context
The first spoken sound fiction film shown in the country, fifteen years after the last silent feature: between the two, production had been reduced to newsreels, for which the director worked as a cameraman. He produced it through his own company, set up five years earlier, had two women of his family act in it and entrusted the music to a master from the capital. A sound film had indeed been shot in 1938, but it was never screened in cinemas.
Who it is for
Sixty-seven minutes originally, in Spanish. A musical comedy of 1941, with the acting and sound recording of the very first attempts.
Prizes and reception
The first Colombian sound feature film, shot with equipment that its author had built himself.