ACTAS DE MARUSIA - (Miguel Littin, 1976).
One of the most important movies of Mexican cinema of the decade, this film is the moving story of the bloody military repression of a miners' strike that happened in Mexico at the beginning of the past century. The images of the desperate fight of the miners and their families against the Army are shocking and involving at the same time; despite a not so huge an admirer of the Latino/American "political concerned cinema" I recognize both the cinematic value of the film and its importance, to the Latino people, as a milestone of that particular genre I call "Cinema manifesto". The Chilean emigree director Littin (with the iconic support of Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté) "think of the present recalling the past" and establishes his vocation as a "militant filmmaker" by renouncing any cinematic refinement by choosing, instead, an intense, suffered adherence to the reality. I consider this film, if not entirely successful under the cinematic plan, a noticeable effort to use cinema to contribute to the social (and individual) awareness of the poorest exploited people.
r.m.
