The Colombian filmmaker Jairo José Pinilla Tellez’s narrative feature debut, Funeral Siniestro (1977), opens on a shot of the entrance to a village church; a priest emerges and leads the pallbearers and funeral attendees to the cemetery. The brightness of the midday sun combined with the sight of serious, suited men in sunglasses and a droning electronic soundtrack lend the lengthy sequence an uncanny feeling. A conversation back at the recently deceased’s hacienda between his widow and brother reveal that the late man’s daughter (Isabelita, as she is called by the family and neighbors) has been a problem for her stepmother; not to worry, the uncle soothes his sister-in-law Lucrecia, as half the estate will go to the little one and fund her education at a school in the impossibly-distant Bogotá. The film then traces a sordid tale of child abuse and neglect, an adulterous love affair, and fumbling, bloody violence, as Lucrecia attempts to rid the hacienda of anyone who might stand in the way of her and her lover’s happy ending—particularly poor Isabelita.
Such is the quietly menacing, sometimes meandering first half of Funeral Siniestro, a somewhat predictable Cinderella and Tell-Tale Heart mashup interrupted by domestic terror, visions of a gruesome corpse come back for vengeance, and flashes of alarming cruelty. Lucrecia’s brutality turns ever more brazen until a fateful accident interrupts the pastoral nightmare and the film shifts into high atmospheric gear. In its final act, Funeral Siniestro becomes a cringingly horrible nightmare that slow-burns into a wild concluding conflagration, carried along by the powerful effects of flickering candlelight and a subtly building, repetitive soundtrack.
At the time of Funeral Siniestro’s production, Colombian filmmaking was devoted almost entirely to what was referred to at the time as “Pornomiseria,” which depicted marginalized citizens struggling with poverty and miserable conditions. These films, produced throughout Latin America, were favored for international distribution and considered “arthouse” fare, while genres like horror and science fiction were nearly non-existent amongst Colombian productions. Pinilla therefore struggled to secure financing and had to argue for a week of screentime from Cine Colombia theaters. Due to the popularity of the film with audiences, Funeral Siniestro played for another four months. Pinilla frequently declared that this success with the masses was his aim; he notably claimed to prefer “Superman to Bergman,” shorthand for his desire to entertain over and above creating “art” or conveying a political message.
This emphasis speaks to some of Pinilla’s directorial choices. For one, he relied almost exclusively on amateurs—the town’s actual priest, for example, led the opening funeral sequence—and, because he felt these non-actors weren’t capable of both performing their roles and acting the dialogue, Pinilla overdubbed the audio entirely, a practice that he continued to use in his films through the early ‘00s. Though the production of Funeral Siniestro was plagued by accidents, including the injury of a cameraman as he filmed from within an actual grave and the near-drowning of Derly Diaz, the actor portraying Lucrecia, accidents also contribute to its overall effect, as when footage from an actual solar eclipse is inserted in the midst of Isabel’s nightmare-come-to-life, without motivation or explanation within the film’s narrative. Pinilla claimed Funeral Siniestro was inspired by a childhood memory of being terrified at having to view a corpse, and the desire to inspire that terror within audiences in turn. The use of fairytale tropes, like that of the “wicked stepmother”; the film’s brutally moralistic conclusion; and the technical naîveté Pinilla cultivated contribute to the overall effect of a shared, vivid nightmare, a space where shabby environs and banal performances meet with storytelling twists that defy ordinary logic and a richly haunted aura.
Funeral Siniestro screens at Spectacle tonight
