Celia Gámez
The incredible story of Los Xey, a musical group born in San Sebastián, Spain, in 1940, which achieved and maintained an extraordinary worldwide success until its dissolution in 1961.
This is a masterpiece of found footage and archival cinema largely ignored. Using vast collections of photographs and family films acquired in the flea markets and to expatriates, combined with images produced by mass media and Franco official regime, this film traces the history of the people of Spain from civil war to the raising mass culture and consumption in the '70s. The "particularity" is that all the chapters are distinguished among them by a popular song, related with the content shown, with deals with the invented and surrealistic world invented by people to survive in starvation, repression and lack of freedom. This strategy takes that to the origins of cinema, to the cabaret, and to cinema as a colective party in the theater.
Love, music and entanglements: a showgirl tries luck in tragedy, but she will be surprised by the arrival of her son from Bombay, with ideas very different from those of Spain; while the successor of this one - and neighbor - gains a plus doing "favors" to the gentle admirers.
Áurea Diamantina, a movie star who has quarreled with her husband, stays at a grand hotel where, in order to get free publicity, conspires with her manager to simulate a kidnapping. Meanwhile, her jealous husband hires a private detective to keep an eye on her.
Government functionary is smitten by a musical-theatre gal. Everybody suffers.
