Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo Agarrando Pueblo / The Vampires of Poverty 1978
Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo Agarrando Pueblo / The Vampires of Poverty 1978
In the early 1970’s there appeared a certain type of documentary that superficially appropriated the achievements and methodologies of independent film to the point of deformation. In this way, poverty became a shocking theme and a product easily sold, especially abroad, where it is the counterpart to the opulence of consumption... We made a kind of antidote or Mayakovskian bath to open people’s eyes to the exploitation behind the miserabilist cinema which turns human beings into objects, into instruments of a discourse foreign to their own condition.
Carlos Mayolo & Luis Ospina
Agarrando Pueblo / The Vampires of Poverty 1978 made with Carlos Mayolo is a classic and still provocative work exploring the role of film in social and political life. Following a film crews search for the most abject subject to exploit in their ‘militant’ film, the work is a landmark in the history of documentary film questioning the values and motivations of so-called ‘political’ filmmakers. The screening will be followed by Luis Opsina’s seminal chiller Pura sangre / Pure Blood 1982 an ironic commentary on Colombian social inequality made in the guise of a Roger Corman movie. Linked by the theme of vampirism, these films adapt existing genres to create modern political parables – as Ospina has commented ‘the story of the vampire has always been a political one... It is a tale of power.’
A key work of what Carlos Mayolo described as ‘Gótico tropical’ (Tropical Gothic) cinema, Pure Blood marks a development in the work of the Grupo de Cali filmmakers following the suicide of Andrés Caicedo in 1977. Shifting from documentary works to experiment with narrative feature films, Ospina created a unique hybrid that mixes genre conventions with intellectual parody. Pure Blood is a biting satire on Colombian landowners, social divisions and the vampirism at the heart of capitalism in Latin America. Inspired from a story from Ospina's youth, the film follows the 'Monster of the Valley' an urban legend of a figure who prayed on the bodies and blood of young men. The film centres on a bedridden sugar tycoon who communicates with the outside world by closed circuit TV and is kept alive by blood transfusions.
Presented by Luis Ospina.
Pura Sangre / Pure Blood
Luis Ospina, Colombia 1982, colour, sound, 90 min
Agarrando Pueblo / The Vampires of Poverty
Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo, Colombia 1978, black & white and colour, sound, 27 min
Programme duration: 117 min
Tate Film is supported by LUMA Foundation