2013 Essays

Stefanía Socha

Lucioni, Mario; Núñez, Irela

Before the 1980s, the history of Peruvian cinema was based more on interviews with early filmmakers than on contemporary sources. Such informality produced misattribution. Even in 1990, Ricardo Bedoya’s 100 años de cine en el Perú: Una historia crítica attributed the film Los abismos de la vida/The Abysses of Life (1929) to the prolific Chilean director Alberto Santana. However, an advertisement from a 1920s Peruvian fan magazine El Refugio included a photograph of the writer and director of Los abismos de la vida: Stefanía Socha. Images from the magazine were intriguing. They suggested a well-defined, eventful plot, with interesting atmosphere and archetypal characters. The lead character was a naive yet modern girl, almost a flapper. She was set against a fierce lady-killer antagonist, as well as a lecherous Asian man, and finally against the hero, who started out as a shy admirer of the girl.