Cinema
Yawar fiesta: fiesta de sangre
Luis Figueroa · 1986
Synopsis
A feast of blood: in Puquio, in the Ayacucho sierra, the Indian communities celebrate the yawar punchay every year, a bullfight in the Andean manner. The landowners and the authorities want to abolish the custom; the community then unites against them and against the churchmen to defend its festival. The narrative combines the material life of the town and its magical side, around a central sequence in which the wild bull Misitu confronts a condor tied to its back.
Context
The film adapts José María Arguedas's story published in 1941. María Barea produced it for the company Pukara Cine, and Eulogio Nishiyama, a former companion of Figueroa in the Cuzco movement, operated the camera together with Julio Lencina. One invention sets it apart from the book: the condor tied to the bull's back, absent from the text but a real variant of the festival, practised in Ayacucho and Apurímac. Released in Lima in 1986, it was judged by Ricardo Bedoya to be loosely and unevenly constructed, but strong in its testimony about the ritual.
Who it is for
One hundred minutes, in Quechua and Spanish. It is important to know that this Andean bullfight is still practised: what is shown on screen is not a screenwriter's invention.
Prizes and reception
Honoured at the Latin American film festival in Biarritz in 1982, four years before its release in Peru.
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