[Comedia del Taller Garland] / [A comedy by the Garland Workshop]

[Comedia del Taller Garland] / [A comedy by the Garland Workshop], 1927. My screenshot from YouTube.

[Comedia del Taller Garland] / [A comedy by the Garland Workshop], 1927. My screenshot from YouTube.

THE REEL EMERGENCY PROJECT
[COMEDIA DEL TALLER GARLAND] / [COMEDY BY THE GARLAND WORKSHOP]
[Comedia por el Taller Garland]
(Taller Garland, Peru, 1927?)
    Dir: Guillermo Garland [?]; ph: Guillermo Garland [?]; cast: Luis Angosto, Angélica Sánchez, Oscar Lores, Felíscar Sánchez B., Abel Lores, Raquel L. de Garland, Graciela Lores, children: Héctor Garland & Hugo Espinoza; 35 mm, 947 ft, 16’ (16 fps), Archivo Peruano de Imagen y Sonido / George Eastman House. Preserved by George Eastman House on behalf of the Archivo Peruano de Imagen y Sonido, Lima, as part of The Reel Emergency Project (2003).
    Spanish intertitles.
    Introduced by Paolo Cherchi Usai and Irela Núñez del Pozo .
    [Comedia del Taller Garland]: video of the introduction and the film itself in YouTube.
    Grand piano: David Drazin.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro, 12 Oct 2004.

Irela Núñez del Pozo (GCM): "Guillermo Garland shot this comedy, using his family and relatives as actors, as a divertimento piece. Using a story outlining the complications of a young limeño in getting rich and settled, Garland succeeds in joining on various levels the dichotomy of city/country, a dominant theme in Peruvian and Latin American cinema in the last years of the silents."

"The film remained in the family house, built in the 16th century in the historic center of Lima, until, almost by a miracle (provoked by a desperate search for possible surviving fragments, due to recently won aid from The Reel Emergency Project), the grandson of the director found the second reel, as well as two negatives of a documentary yet to be identified."

"Garland holds an important place in Peruvian silent cinema history, as the director of many travel documentaries, including the features La conquista de la selva (The Conquest of the Jungle, 1929) and Bajo el cielo peruano (Under the Peruvian Sky, 1931), and as the cinematographer of the sumptuous historical drama La Perricholi (1928), directed by the Genoese pioneer Enzo Longhi, which represented Peru at the  Seville Exposition in 1929 and was also shown in Paris and Santiago de Chile."

"But this family comedy is also a significant surprise, for two reasons. The first is that Garland’s work has hitherto been known only via paper documents, no other films of his having survived. The second resides in the fine level of film language of this exercise: the outstanding treatment of the physical tempo of his spontaneous actors, and the tight editing, a result of a good understanding of genre and its technical rules, while still being, every second, very limeño‚ very much exemplifying the point of view and the social premise on which this situation comedy is based. It is even more important in the context of Peruvian silent film, of which less than 20 reels have survived, not even half of which have been restored until now."

"Film was a precious commodity in Peru in the 1920s. When Mr. Garland himself originally projected the film, slowly turning the crank and sometimes even almost stopping it, to let close relatives or friends read the intertitles or look at the actors’ features, it was a living demonstration of how the film was spared to the utmost. We have calculated that the film was originally projected at 14 fps, which reveals the eternal scarcity of resources in my country in 1927."

"This film was preserved in 2003 by George Eastman House on behalf of the Archivo Peruano de Imagen y Sonido, Lima, as part of The Reel Emergency Project, an initiative aimed at providing support to archives with limited financial resources." – Irela Núñez del Pozo (GCM)