Still image from Memmortigo via EAFA.
Spain
Esperanto
00:15:53
350 ft
16mm
B&W
Silent
"Avant-garde surreal film investigating pessimism (embodied by a grey man who tries to commit suicide) and optimism (represented by a joyful young woman and her two children)." (EAFA Database).
The film's title, "memmortigo," means "suicide" in Esperanto.
The film leader in EAFA's online video of Memmortigo states it won the Wallace Heaton Silver Trophy (for Best Photography) in the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers contest (likely in 1933 or 1934).
Copies of this film are availabe via: the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers collection held by the East Anglian Film Archive; the Repositori digital de la FilmoTeca de Catalunya; and the University Union Catalogue of Catalonia.
IAC Film Library Catalogue (Silent and Sound). Institute of Amateur Cinematographers, 1975.
Institute of Amateur Cinematographers Collection, East Anglian Film Archive
"Ernest Sant sees only bad things and Rosita Garcia responds with their good counterparts. The film begins with an introspective man, clad entirely in black. He wanders the countryside, having bizarre encounters and often provoking hazardous incidents. A woman and two young children - possibly his family - continually try to counteract his black mood. Ends with a well staged effect, in which the man's black garb - his 'cloak of pessimism', is literally lifted form his back and he dances away: now, like the woman, dressed in white" (EAFA Database).
Amateur Cinema