pongo

Further to my earlier Arguediana, here's a lovely little cinematic version of the "Sueño del pongo" ("Pongo's Dream"), a traditional Quechua story collected and elaborated by Arguedas. The film was made in Cuba in 1970, adapted by Roberto Fernández Retamar. It's shot using atmospheric black and white still photographs.


See also the text of the story in Spanish and in English. It begins...

"A little man headed to his master's mansion. As one of the serfs on the lord's estate, he had to perform the duty of a pongo, a lowly house servant. He had a small and feeble body, a meek spirit. His clothes were old and tattered. Everything about him was pitiful.

The great lord, owner of the mansion and lands surrounding it, could not help laughing when the little man greeted him in the mansion's corridors...."