Progress and decline of Peruvian cinema
In 1960, Kukuli became the first film to be shot in Quechua. Directed by Eulogio Nishiyama, Luis Figueroa and César Villanueva, it tells an Andean tale. Armando Robles Godoy was the first Peruvian New Wave auteur, inspired by the great European figures of the time (Resnais, Antonioni). He produced two masterpieces inspired by his years living in the heart of the forest: En la selva no hay estrellas (1967, Gold Award, Moscow) and La muralla verde (1969, Gold Hugo, Chicago).
In 1972, a new, reformist military government set up a legal framework to encourage national production. In the years that followed, two directors turned their attention to the Andean peoples: Luis Figueroa, with Los perros hambrientos (1976) and Federico García Hurtado, with Tupac Amaru (1984). The 1980s also saw the birth of the Chaski group, comprising Alejandro Legaspi, Fernando Espinoza and Stefan Kaspar, who made two films portraying Lima street children: Gregorio (1982) and Juliana (Unicef prize at the 1989 Berlinale).
The 1990s were marked by a sharp decline, due to the repeal of the law introduced by the government in 1972. The revival began in the early 2000s. In many of Peru's major cities, multiplexes appeared alongside malls. Their programming is mostly mainstream American cinema. In Lima, there are still a few important and interesting festivals with a more specialized focus.
A country marked by armed conflict
The cinema focuses on recent history whose wounds have not yet been healed. Magallanes, by Salvador del Solar (2015), presented in competition at the Goya, presents a gallery of characters who must face the ghosts of the armed conflict that shook Peru in the 1980s and 1990s when the Shining Path entered guerrilla warfare in the Ayacucho region. Most recently, La Hora Final (2017) traces the operation that decapitated the country's most famous paramilitary organization.
Francisco Lombardi, with The Mouth of the Wolf (1988) also tells the violent clashes between the Peruvian army and the faction of the Shining Path of the Peruvian Communist Party. It will be awarded in Havana and in San Sebastian. Among the important figures of the Peruvian cinema, Claudia Llosa holds a place of choice. She won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale for her film Fausta in 2008. It tells the story of a young girl marked by the events of the Shining Path. It was first screened in February 2009, during the 59th Berlin Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Bear, and was nominated for the 2010 Academy Awards in the "Best Foreign Film" category. She had already directed in 2006 the film Madeinusa. In 2014, she signed Aloft with Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy and Melanie Laurent.
Dias de Santiago (2004) by Josue Mendez tells the story of the return from the front of a young Peruvian soldier, who finds himself projected in the middle of the capital in morals that conflict with the righteousness of his military training.
Most recently, Cancion sin nombre (2019) narrates the misadventures of a woman who gives birth during the events of the 1980s. The clinic that provided her with care refuses to tell her where her child is, so she investigates with the support of a journalist.
On the documentary side, the team of Ernesto Caballos Damián and Guarango Productions make committed films, the latest of which, Hija de la Laguna (2015), looks back at the water conflict in Cajamarca and the respect for the Yacumama (mother-water in Quechua). El Choque de Dos Mundos (2016) by Heidi Brandenburg and Mathew Orzel returns to a recent fact of Peruvian history, el Baguazo, a confrontation between the Awajun indigenous communities and the soldiers of the Peruvian army who received the order to attack.Trends in contemporary cinema
In 2018, Ayacucho is once again in the spotlight with a film by Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio called Retablo. Here we slip into the world of the artisans who make the retablos, the small wooden huts with two doors that hide characters and a story carved from medlar flour and potato. This international co-production, selected at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival, evokes the repressed homosexuality of a father and the difficult opening to the world of an Andean people anchored in its traditions and fragile in the face of modernity.
Contracorriente (2009, San Sebastian award) by Javier Fuentes Leon tells the story of Miguel, who lives in the fishing village of Cabo Blanco in the north of the country. In this traditional world, he has a hidden affair with a painter, Santiago. When Santiago dies, his ghost appears to him and he continues his romance with him for a while. But the village gets wind of the romance and Miguel's wife leaves him.
In a country that offers a relatively weak cultural support policy, we find a lot of documentary creativity and we can only be happy about it. Of note is the tribute to folklore and music in Javier Corcuera's Sigo Siendo, and Mariana Tschudi's Pacificum (2017), the ode to the Pacific Ocean.
More recently, Peruvian comedies have been very successful: Asu Mare (over 3 million viewers) by Carlos Alcántara, Viejos Amigos by Fernando Villarán or A los 40 by Bruno Ascenzo. Not to mention the offbeat comedies by Alvaro Velarde, El destino no tiene favoritos (2003) and Como quien no quiere la cosa(That Thing You Love, 2013). Horror films also have their local vintages, the best known Cementerio General in two volumes.Herzog and Kinski in Peru
Among the great foreign classics, let's mention the masterful works of German director Werner Herzog Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, shot in Peru. In these two films, actor Klaus Kinski revealed the full extent of his talent and madness. The first, released in 1972, tells the story of a Spanish expedition in search of El Dorado in the Amazon rainforest in 1560, while the second, made in 1982, tells the picaresque story of Fitzcarraldo, a man who embarks on a rubber tree business to finance the construction of an opera house in Iquitos, deep in the Peruvian rainforest, worthy of the Manaus Opera House, where the great Caruso would sing.
