Feature film
Mascaró, el cazador americano
Constante Diego · 1991
Synopsis
Oreste, nearly thirty, leaves the port of Arenales where he has always lived, aboard an old steamer with no destination, El Mañana. There he meets the strange Prince Patagon, who wants to join a circus, and together they set up one that goes from one poor village to the next. Mascaró, a man dressed in black pursued by Captain Alvarenga, keeps reappearing on their route, and the people the circus visits do not come out of it the same.
Context
The novel adapted is the last by the Argentine Haroldo Conti, winner of the Casa de las Américas prize in 1975, arrested at his home in Buenos Aires on 5 May 1976 by the military dictatorship. The filmmaker had wanted to bring it to the screen since at least 1983. The film was born during the Special Period, from a Cuban co-production with Spanish and Venezuelan companies, and mixes with the live-action footage animated vignettes and intertitles borrowed from silent cinema. Reinaldo Miravalles, Víctor Laplace and Mimí Lazo play the leading roles.
Who it is for
One hour thirty-eight minutes, in Spanish. A fable of travel and the circus, told in the first person by Oreste.
Prizes and reception
Presented at the thirteenth New Latin American Cinema Festival in Havana, in December 1991; screenplay awarded in its category at the eleventh festival.
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