Prisoners of the Earth

Prisoners of the Land
Prisioneros de la tierra
Directed by	Mario Soffici
Written by	Ulyses Petit de Murat Darío Quiroga
Cinematography	Pablo Tabernero
Edited by	Gerardo Rinaldi José de Nico
Music by	Lucio Demare
Production company	Pampa Film
Distributed by	Argentina Sono Film S.A.C.I
Release date	1939 (1939)
Running time	85 minutes
Country	Argentina
Languages	Spanish Guaranì

Prisoners of the Land (Spanish: Prisioneros de la tierra) is a 1939 Argentine drama film directed by Mario Soffici. The film premiered in Buenos Aires. The film is often cited as one of the greatest in the history of Argentine cinema, and established Soffici as a "social" filmmaker.^[1] It was awarded by the Municipality of Buenos Aires as the best film of the year, and the Silver Condor Award instituted by the Argentine Association of Film Critics.

Cast[]

• Homero Cárpena
• Roberto Fugazot
• Elisa Galvé as Andrea
• Ángel Magaña as Esteban Podeley
• Francisco Petrone as Köhner

Restoration[]

In 2019, the Museo del Cine of Argentina, with the support of Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation and the laboratory of the Cineteca di Bologna, restored "Prisoners of the Land" from two 35mm prints of the film found both in Paris at the Cinémathèque Française and in Prague at the Czech Film Archive. The discovery of this two prints was crucial, due to the lack of a national cinematheque and protective cultural politics the original argentine negative was lost during the last century, and the only copy left in the country was a degraded 16mm. Paula Felix-Didier, head of the Museo del Cine and principal responsibility of the restoration, said about the significance of this new copy: "This is a new possibility of seeing one of the fundamental films of the history of Argentine cinema again as it had been decades ago could not be seen, and once again having a deep heritage rescue to understand the history of Argentine cinema and its evolution".^[2]

This 2019 restoration was first shown at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna and later, in December, it was first screened in Argentina at the MALBA, in Buenos Aires.^[3]

References[]

Further reading[]

• Tomas Abraham article about Soffici (in Spanish)

External links[]

• Prisioneros de la tierra at IMDb