Flamenco

We screened this film at the San Francisco FF in 1996 with this note: "Duende, that untranslatable Spanish word rendered as "inner burning" or "restless demon" by the dictionary, is evoked more poetically by Federico García Lorca: "Duende is a power, not an act, a struggle, not a thought. I heard an old master guitarist affirm: 'Duende doesn't come from the throat; it rises within from the soles of the feet.'" The dark current of duende, this passionate lamentation rooted in the Spanish earth, is the unifying principle among the song and dance traditions gathered under the mantle of flamenco. Edgar Neville's 1952 documentary-fiction captures the great masters of these many styles in the breathtaking regional settings of their origins. The great masters of Spanish dance, song and music are immortalized against the backdrop of the Iberian landscape. The film was shot in Cinefotocolor, a then-innovative, now long-obsolete process, in hues to rival Technicolor's rich saturation. Filmoteca Española has restored this invaluable legacy, unseen and deteriorating for decades, to its original splendor. —Alicia Springer