The Telluride Film Festival announced today the complete lineup for its 50th edition, which includes a special tribute to Cuban-born Mexican actress Ninón Sevilla with the screening of two of the films she starred: Victims of Sin / Víctimas del pecado (1951) and Take Me in Your Arms / Llévame en tus brazos (1954). The American festival had presented Sevilla with a Special Medallion in its 21st edition.
Rarely screened in the United States and long due for rediscovery, Victims of Sin is famed Mexican director Emilio Fernández’s unique blend of film noir, melodrama, and musical. Acting-dancing sensation Sevilla plays Violeta, a cabaret performer who adopts the abandoned child of Rita (Rita Montaner) and Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta), her murderous pimp.
Motherhood forces Violeta to give up her career, but the kindhearted club owner Santiago (Tito Junco) saves her from a life of poverty and prostitution—until Rodolfo, freed from prison, seeks to reclaim his son. Best known for the award-winning María Calendaria (1944) and The Pearl (1947), Fernández infuses Victims with impassioned songs and performances by Sevilla, an icon of Mexican cinema and a purveyor of African, Caribbean, and Cuban dance styles.
Directed by Julio Bracho, Take Me in Your Arms is a melodrama set in a little fisher's village in Veracruz, where Pedro (Andrés Soler) and his two daughters Rita (Ninón Sevilla) and Martha (Rosenda Monteros) live. Rita loves a young man named José (Armando Silvestre) who has been fired from a sugar mill for organizing a strike. So, he and Rita can't marry soon. After a good fishing, all in the town celebrate a party. But Don Antonio (Julio Villarreal), the owner of the sugar mill, comes to collect Pedro the money that he lent him for a boat. As Pedro can't pay him, Don Antonio asks as pay to one of his daughters. Rita listens and she decides to go with Don Antonio to save her father and her sister. Before leaving, Rita makes love with José. When she leaves, José thinks that she has left him.
The 50th edition of the Telluride Film Festival takes place August 31-September 4 in Colorado.
