Feature film
Black Angustias
La negra Angustias
Matilde Landeta · 1950
Synopsis
Angustias, a poor, illiterate young mulatto woman, lives in a small village with her old father. Pursued by a man, she stabs him and flees; an orphan, she wanders through the country's desolate landscapes. During the revolution, a song heard around a fire decides her to join up: she becomes a colonel in the Zapatista army, faithful to her father's rebel legacy. A schoolteacher, Manuel de la Reguera, comes to teach her to read.
Context
Adapted by the director and Francisco Rojas González from the latter's prize-winning novel, and produced by her brother Eduardo Landeta for the company Tacma, the film was shot at the Churubusco studios and photographed by Jack Draper. María Elena Marqués plays Angustias. It cost about three hundred and fifty thousand pesos and was released on 19 January 1950. The choice of a white actress in make-up to play a Black woman has been held against it.
Who it is for
A film of an hour and twenty minutes, in black and white, which can be followed without knowing anything about the revolution.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its director's major work, and screened again today by film archives and festivals, from Amsterdam to Morelia.
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