Rosario Pí: una narradora pionera e invisibilizada

Abstract

Rosario Pi Brujas (Barcelona, 1899 - Madrid, 1967) was one of the pioneers of Spanish Film. Her mark in Spanish Cinema can be defined as versatile and stout. She came to the film industry from the hand of the Mexican director Emilio Gutiérrez Bringas and the Spanish director Pedro Ladrón de Guevara, with whom she founded the Production Company Star Film, producer of films as Take me to Hollywood directed by Edgar Neville in 1931, and The man who laughed of love directed by Benito Perojo in 1932. Rosario Pi also was a scriptwriter of films like Twelve men and a woman directed by Fernando Delgado in 1934, and of The Wildcat directed by herself in 1935.

Along with Helena Cortesina, both of them are pioneers of Spanish films made by women. With the outbreak of civil war, they would become exiled women at first and unseen artists in the end. Rosario Pi fled with the actress María Mercader to Paris. Later, they relocated to Italy.

She was a storyteller ahead of her time, introducing to Spanish cinema feminine archetypes who were both independent and sexually liberated. She also presented and condemned male violence, a complaint that would take decades to be established within filmmaking in our country.

In spite of this, the filmmaker was rejected during the Second Spanish Republic because she was accused of being a fascist. Later, she was disregarded by the Franco regime, who would not accept a filmmaker, never mind a pioneer, who was a woman. Rosario Pi returned to Spain during the postwar period, but she never made films again. Her last job was running a